Phoenix

Yeah, being a Bears fan, I know inconsistent. Best year of his career was with Gase, though. He may end up with a decent body of work after 16 games.

So, ever since I was 18, I've had back problems. It first started at work the morning after a pickup basketball game--I leaned over to pick up a product for a customer and something went *ping* in my back. I had a flood of pain and couldn't get up for a few minutes. Somehow I managed to walk out, drive myself home, and end up laid up on the couch for a week. In the years after, I'd have lingering back pain that came and went. Sometimes it'd be gone for months at a time. I also started putting on weight at 14, and that's been up and down ever since (currently still quite up). I drastically reduced my physical activity after that injury, which I'm sure did not help with that. I also had a slip and fall at a different job in late 2009. Again, lots of pain for a while, but it cleared up. Never thought much of either at the time. In 2011, I drove back out to Oregon to give grad school another shot. Just me driving, it was a three-day trek out there. I started developing back pain about a day into the drive, but nothing for it--had to keep pressing on. By the time I got there, I had to very slowly move my stuff into the place I was renting. This back pain became nearly chronic, and has been, for the most part, over the past six years. I kind of dealt with it then because I didn't have health coverage, but when the country's health coverage changed in 2014, I was finally able to see doctors and fully diagnose the problem. As it turns out, I had spinal disease in both the upper and lower spine, with two deformed vertebral discs. To this day, we can't determine when it started, whether it's genetic and just developed over time (my father had a cervical disc removed), or whether a specific incident like the ones I mentioned were the cause. I had surgery to remove the upper disc late last year, but it turned to be mostly asymptomatic--there was no change in my condition. The surgeon was insistent that it be removed because the manner in which it was pressing the spinal cord was precarious--a single mild car accident, for example, could have caused me to become quadriplegic. I suppose it's good that I don't have to worry about that, but it's little comfort when I still have lingering symptoms from it. I saw a neurologist recently who told me that the problems I have with my hands will likely be permanent. It could be worse, as I can still use a computer, drive a car, and so forth (at least most of the time), but when it gets bad, I drop things and have poor use of my hands, especially the right one. Right now surgery isn't suggested for my lower back, even though it's causing all of the nerve pain I'm having today. It's not threatening loss of function of my legs (at least not yet), and the weird position of the disc in my lower spine is not exactly consistent with what the surgeons expect to be causing problems, so they don't want to touch it. I'm trying physical therapy again, and I write this having come back from a session, hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this time around, the sessions will push back the pain a bit. It's the pain that's keeping me from normal life--I can't work because the episodes make me unreliable, much less physically able to commute. Thankfully, my family has been able to support me, or I don't know where I'd be right now. I've also been seeing a behavioral therapist for a year. I've long talked about depression as that's been a longer battle that I was able to address sooner; I may have even talked about it here at NL. One of the areas in which we've made real progress is my coping skills, especially with regards to my relationship with food. I have a binge eating disorder that has greatly been mitigated by the sessions, and, as you can imagine, is largely responsible for my weight gain. Between working with my therapist and being told I wouldn't be having surgery on the lower disc, I've somehow managed to finally get on a successful diet. I've lost 30 pounds over the past few months. Given what little I can do for my pain, inching myself closer to a healthy weight is one thing that I can control, and while I have no promises that losing weight will improve the disease symptoms, it could help. Perhaps I'll update here as my journey moves along, but it's been a slow one. We will see where it leads, but I suppose I'm optimistic.

I'm so guilty of this. Maybe *I'm* the social oddball for enjoying idle chat?

To add another wrinkle to this conversation, the protest has brought another issue back into the national discourse that has bothered me for a long time now: the pageantry and nationalism displayed before NFL games, I find it uncomfortable. It's what baffles me when folks say they oppose Kaepernick's protest because it brings politics onto the field. That's been done at least since Super Bowl XXV to what it's evolved to today: service members on the field (who are there, by the way, not out of the kidness of the NFL, but as part of a paid deal with the Department of Defense). Flyovers. Flags of larger and larger size. It's political, and folks like @Rapture brings some sorely needed outside perspective to the matter--much of the world just does not do this sort of thing. I'm not religious, but Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. They view it as idolatry and swearing blind fealty. I can't help but wonder if they are onto something.

Welcome back!

Oh, that's right, you are in that business aren't you. Well, I guess I have to make a post now. To answer your question about it unlocking cultural bits, it definitely has with Japanese, far more so than learning ever did with French or Spanish. Granted, I stopped taking those at a pretty young age (like, 12ish) and didn't advance as far as I have into Japanese. Part of the reason for that, though, is how the language is so different--I was just talking with @Kenai recently about how the language has simple, nuanced ways to be sarcastic that just don't translate into English. I also get interested in the etymology because it's a super old language, well over a millenium. Between that and the fact that the culture remained so insulated from the rest of the world for years and years, there's a sort of deep, historical purity to it.

If I remember right, @Kenai was watching GLOW, too.

Yellow belly? Damn. No honeymoon period with the Dolphins fans? lol

You? Bossy?

Inspiring--I have colored pencils and a printer but hunching over on my desk isn't going to work for me physically. Maybe if I figure out some sort of way to do it more comfortably--my therapist keeps recommending it.

This Wendy's TV ad is making me crave a burger.

Hah, I did enjoy seeing the Patriots lose in the opener.

Yeah, same for me on desktop.

Damn. Bad year for the Giants. I don't know if underachieving like them or having just a flat-out bad product like my team (the Bears) has is worse. It probably wouldn't be half as frustrating for us this year if it wasn't so plainly transparent that there's no justification for our starting quarterback being under center this year.

I haven't watched a lot of new TV lately, but I highly recommend last year's HBO series Westworld. It has a slow start but once the hook comes, it's really solid.

I've recommitted to Japanese language study this year. I let it languish for an embarrassingly long period of time since coming back from Japan, so I'm still playing catch-up to a degree. However, by the end of the year, I should be going into totally new content. It's frustrating at times and there are days I just want to quit it altogether, but since I became disabled it's scratched that productivity itch I've had. So I have to keep going! Maybe I'll make a blog post about it--there's a lot of great tools out there now for self-study I wish I'd had back when I was taking college classes, and I'm sure many of them can be applied to learning any language.

It didn't take much convincing, but I DO think everyone should be warned that motherhood has given her the magical powers of The Nag.

Thanks for bringing it back. Maybe I'll actually blog more than once a year this time....

Funny running into you here.

Erryday husslin. You've been doing well with that lately though!

Good to be back. How are things?