kareina

In some ways I didn't really miss lord_kjar at all while he was off in Scotland for a training course this week. After all, we spent hours every evening talking via Skype or G+ hangouts(depending on if anyone else was joining us, since G+ is designed for group chats). But some things just can't be done over video call. My poor back is much, much happier now that he is home to apply massage and stretching done by someone else (always so much better than what I can do on my own) and helping things back into alignment. It still isn't perfect, but part of that was my own fault for not taking it easy enough this week, I think.

It was on Sunday that I did something wrong to my back at fighter practice, and Monday it was still quite unhappy with me--lots of sore, tight muscles and stiffness. I treated with frequent hot showers, tiger balm, and sitting in a nice, supportive rocking chair instead of the (normally really comfy) recliner. By Tuesday evening it was feeling pretty good--no pain at all, and fairly reasonable flexibility, given how stiff it had been. It was a little stiffer on Wednesday morning; I think that whatever I did to it would have benefited from sleeping on my back, but I cannot do that, I must be on my tummy or side to sleep, so I think the hint of curve to the lower back that happens in that position wasn't really beneficial to the healing process. But despite feeling a little stiff when I first got up, I felt pretty much normal by mid-morning. That is when I forgot the key rule in recovering from this sort of issue: Continue to take it easy for a day or three after it feels better.

Instead of taking it easy I decided to get to tasks that would have been done on Sunday if I hadn't hurt myself, and I grabbed the vacuum cleaner from its closet in the kitchen and carried it down the hall to the living room. In the time it took to get it there and go to plug it in my back started hurting. At least as much as it had on Sunday. Not good. Rather than actually using the vacuum in that state I left it where I had set it before plugging it in and returned to trying to fix my back issues: laying on the floor with the little foam ball under my hip and lower back. Frequent hot showers, and more tiger balm. Naps. I didn't get any more work done that day. I am such a wimp. It is a good thing that I am rarely sick or injured.

By Thursday I was feeling a bit better, enough to accomplish useful stuff in the afternoon and evening, and by Friday I was doing a fair bit better. Then Friday evening lord_kjar got home, and my back (and the rest of me) was much happier. Today he helped me do some rearranging in the living room so that my temporary solution of sitting in a rocker to use the computer is now a permanent one. We now have the monitor stand on one side of the rocker, and the laptop stand on teh other, so that I can use the large monitor as my primary monitor, and the laptop as a secondary monitor. I really like the set up, though I have rotated the large monitor back to landscape as its default orientation, since I need to use spreadsheets in my work so often, and that is the more useful shape for spreadsheets. However, when I want to read a pdf I simply rotate the monitor back to portrait and use the full-screen mode (and some people wonder why I prefer pdf to books--it is sooo much easier to read them!)

Tomorrow we have some couch surfers coming from the Netherlands, and Monday morning I depart for the departmental "kick-off retreat", where I will do a short presentation on my research and listen to others do presentations about what they are up to. We stay the night at the hotel (a two hour bus ride from here), and come back to town the following evening.

Today's really good news was an email from the Australian Journal of Earth Science , who have accepted my article for publication. The editor sent me a document with some minor additional editorial suggestions and some questions, which I have already dealt with and returned, and a request for high-resolution versions of the figures, which I need to deal with tomorrow. Hopefully I will get that completely done in the morning before our guests arrive, so that it is done and off my plate before I head out of town. It was really frustrating to have spent so long since completing my PhD to get this article finished and ready to submit, but all of the extra effort we put in before submitting turned out to be worth it, since it was accepted on the first go (well, there were some minor revisions suggested by the reviewers, which I made and returned to the editor within 48 hours of receiving the email, including waiting for replies from my erstwhile adviser).