Back In Back

National Guard isn't going to happen.

My back got worse today. Wasn't doing anything, just suddenly sitting became painful. I've spent the majority of the evening lying on the floor to keep my back supported. Even sitting up to type this kills.
Before, on a normal day, I could have done it. The physical training and all that. But if I wake up on day two of basic training and can't put my boots on, let alone do push-ups and run around with a sixty pound backpack...This has made it obvious that whatever happened did not heal, it just went away for a while, and if it came back once now, it's going to come back again later.

I walk around and think I feel okay, then I lie down. Then I realize how much effort it actually took me to get there, and that I can barely move myself into a flat position.

So I'm not joining up. I can't even rely on myself and it sucks.
I haven't felt this down in so long that I can't remember the last time.
I'd kick something or go for a bike ride, but, well, I can't.

SOTD: Lifehouse - You & Me

EDIT: Here's an idea of what it's like right now. I sneezed a few minutes ago. The jolt from the sneeze was enough to make me fall down onto one knee.

Revenge Of The Spinal Fiend

So I haven't posted because I've been crippled. Saturday, my dad and my sister and I were loading up all the larger tools we had used on the roofing/deck-enclosing project into the smallest of our fleet of trailers. He mounts his saws to tables, which makes them easier to work at, but a lot harder to move. This particular table was not very well designed, and you had to lift it from the very bottom whilst balancing the top-heavy ensemble lest the saw fall over.
My back decided it wanted a week or two of vacation. It hasn't hurt this bad since my famous sledding crash a few years ago. Walking from one end of the house to the other and back hurts. Can't bend over to put shoes or socks on, have to sort of twist my leg sideways to get within reach. Obviously can't lift or carry very much. Have to sit on the floor to get into the bottom of the refrigerator. I'd expected it to go away by now, but it hasn't. I know how these poor people feel who are stuck in a wheelchair with exception of still being able to use my legs.. Just so many things you can't do, moving yourself around with your arms as much as possible, etc.

Tried to work at the neighbor's for a while on Monday. After an hour and forty minutes of hauling rocks, gave up. Since then I've spent pretty much all day every day in my chair here. The only physical thing I can do is play my drums. They give everything a workout except my lower back, which is perfect.

Back to Saturday...the siding on the back deck is finished, and when we stopped at Menards to get some more sophet/soffet/Idon'tcareit'sanalluminumsheetthatgoesundertheeaves I also bought a much bigger pump for my garden, along with the stuff to make a filter cage. So now that's running. My sister has the camera today, so no pictures.

Went to youth group on Thursday. That was a mistake. Me, my sister, and my fan club, the WatsonAlexanderAbbotShooks. Even their two-year-old daughter stares at me constantly. As soon as anyone has a plan for getting them to turn on me, I'll buy it from you. The event was at a nearby lake. They brought hot dogs, but no mustard. A charcoal grill, but no lighter, and a can of beans, but no can opener. Dan and Laci must be under a lot of stress of something.

And now today.

BOTW: The band of the week, since I haven't been posting regularly, is Lifehouse. After Casting Crowns and Skillet, they are my favorite band. Similar sound to Sanctus Real, kinda. They have a lot of those songs that play in the background on TV shows that you never pay attention to.

FTTDOTD: Take me to a wheelchair dealership that allows test drives.

EDIT: Finally learned to swallow a pill today. Write a chapter in 'The Tale Of A Pathetic Person' in my honor, Sentry.

Invisible Fences Make Good Neighbors

Haven't blogged much because haven't had much to...blog. 'Blog' should not be a verb.

Been work. Monday was all errand-running. Got a bunch of library books. It feels good to be able to grab a good book and read whenever I want to. I've missed that since finding books got more difficult. Read 'em all, I like to think. :-)

Book sale for homeschoolers as well. Bought a bunch of the 'Uncle Eric' books. They explain politics and economy, basically. I love 'em. The sellers robbed me on the prices, but the books WERE in very good condition, and they're something that I'd like to have around and be able to re-read later. They're not especially easy to find.

Tuesday, raked Tim's mud. He wants the clay raked free of rocks and sod around his substantial pond. Was an okay job, really. The sprinklers had to run the entire time to keep the clay from getting hard, but it was rather slippery instead. Took some time off to bury their invisible fence using a sidewalk edger to dig a trench and a screwdriver to push the wire in. Yeah, Tim has some goofy ideas about how he wants things done (such as the door-painting incident) that don't turn out well. I don't think he'd appreciate any initiative either though. Best bet is to do it his way and let him deal with the mixed results.

Wednesday, washed windows with some of the youthgroup. Some of the youthgroup equals Alyssa, a girl from church, and my fan club, the ShookAlexanderWatsonAbbot sisters. (Feel sorry for me. Please.) They didn't seem to want to put forth a lot of effort into the cleaning.

Then did some trimming and laundry around and in the house. Garden needs work. Slowly making progress on wood-burning projects. Slowly. I hope after finishing this pond Tim doesn't have any jobs for a few weeks. The money is nice, but I spent all winter finding new hobbies to keep me busy so the summer wouldn't feel wasted like so many previous ones have. I succeeded admirably, and then got a job. Ingenious. Now I have piles of things to do. Being busy is a good feeling too, I suppose, but when everything you get done is for someone else, it doesn't feel nearly as good. I'm sure coming home and seeing your lawn looking nice, but being fifty dollars poorer isn't such a great feeling either. Silly employers. :-D

Travis wants to set an official bike-riding time in the evenings and an official running time in the mornings. He really wants that 8:30/9:00 time slot for biking. That's my 'sit at the computer' time, and he can't have it. I don't do much of that any more either.

Listening to music has been annoying me lately...just not enjoying it much. Preferring quiet. So no song of the day.

Abusing The Rule Of Thirds

Still Tired. Been so all week, both on the busy days and on the lazy days. Supposedly all this sleeping and eating and bumping into things makes me taller. We will see.

For now, a very long photoblog. I love photoblogs. Can post something long and funny and interesting without having to actually write anything meaningful.

Oh, and the rule of thirds mentioned in the title. It's when you draw an imaginary tic-tac-toe board over your picture, and then line up your points of interest on the intersections of the imaginary board before taking the shot. Makes for more dramatic pictures, supposedly. I used it on almost every picture in this collection.

So took a bike ride on this awesome Sunday morning, brought the camera, and these are the results:

This is just up the road from our driveway...this sandal has been sitting in the road for almost a week now.

'Shopped to look warmer. City pictures look cool with extra blues and such. Makes them look cold and artificial, though I've seen some orange-ish ones that looked pretty cool too. Country pictures, though, look better with extra yellow. Makes them look almost nostalgic.

Lesser swine.

Greater swine.

Mud hole. They also tend to excrete in the corners, so this area hums with flies.

Their muddy faces. Pigs are stupid and smelly, but strong. Their noses are slimy and muddy, the rest of them is dry and dusty. Their hair is coarse. They taste good sliced thinly on pizza.

A pair of large old trees in the neighbor's yard.

Photoshopped for no good reason. Don't much care for how this one turned out.

We are experiencing financial difficulties, please stand by. And mow the lawn while you're at it, would you? This house is one of three or four on a strip of road in the developement. They are economy houses, small and cheap. It's been years and they haven't sold. Silly developers. People who move to the country and into developements want small yards and big houses.

One street name isn't good enough. Whenever the road changes direction more than twenty degrees, the name changes. Those crazy developer types again.

A swamp. Right next to the road. Down a steep hill. There's no guard rail. Just about don't feel safe WALKING down that stretch of road, let alone driving on it in the rain and snow at forty miles per hour.

I like pictures of street signs.

A quick photoshop job later, and it's night. Best part is, this photo was taken at ten-thirty in the morning in direct sunlight. Bethany wants me to photoshop her in walking away with a guitar.

The barn on the left belongs to the church drummer, the field on the right is plowed with horses and antique plows every Spring.

Grass meets mud meets tar. Part three of the series?

This turned out really cool, with the glare and everything. Old barns make nifty pictures.

A field?

That's a sheep at the bottom there. The vines and bushes were too high to take a good picture over.

More big flat spots.

'Pleasant View Farms Mineral Reclamation' It's a gravel mine, people. Stop fooling yourselves.

'Pavement Ends' That's what they WANT you to think.

The old 'tree in a field' shot that has been taken about five million times.

Where my mom drove off the rode last winter. Same tree as last shot, different angle. The blue treeline in the distance is pretty sweet.

Whilst riding the bicycle downhill over potholes with one hand watching the camera screen instead of where I was going. The sacrifices I make.

Do the Dew. Just pretend it's not an Iced Tea can.

Sleepy Coffee. It's a foam coffee cup with a sock on top like a night cap. You can see the iced tea can floating away in the background. Found all of this on the side of the road, decided to have somje fun. Almost rode back to get the sandal to put under the cup.

The best picture is always the tunnel of trees just before my house.

Tim's backyard. The pond obviously needs about another week's worth of filling from the garden hose. Personally, I think he should pour kerosene over the water and call the fire department to come put it out for him. Fill that pond right up, courtesy of the township tanker truck. ;-)

And that's it.

SOTD: All of my music-playing devices have ganged up on me again. They seem to align themselves to all play the same song from time to time. Today it was Skillet - Say Goodbye

Five Teenaged Kids On An Old Man's Shed, Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Ice Tea

The summer todo list has been really handy. Granted, it grows faster than I can cross things off it, but the feeling of always being busy and getting things done is good. The running, when I have time for it, is finally starting to show some results. If I want to run a quarter mile to the neighbors' to work or something, I can do so without being out of breath. It's pretty cool.

Basically been working all week. Most of it has been at Tim's. He had the pond in his backyard dug out bigger. So big he could put a coupla boats in there comfortably now. It's even got a beach. I'll sneak over and take pictures when it looks more finished. His dogs are great. Always making a mess of his yard so I can be paid to fix it.
Also took their door off to paint it. Their dogs keep scratching it, which is why it had to be re-painted, but old habits die hard. While I've got it up on blocks in the garage drying, they go over and scratch it anyway.

Then this morning, went to some people from church's house and shingled their garden shed. Was pitifully easy work, if not for the hoardes of other kids who didn't know how to do it. Some caught on fast, some didn't try, some were terrified and huddling in the middle of the roof. Yeah, they were all of eight feet in the air and dizzy with vertigo. Everybody did okay though, and it looks halfway decent. We had two air-nailers, which was cool. They jammed on a predictable cycle, which wasn't cool. Bob, our supervisor, (he's a guy from our church who does a lot of volunteer construction work) spent pretty much the entire time unjamming guns, which was cool. Most everybody got over their fear of power tools. That wasn't cool.
Cool?
It looked okay when we were through.

Travis is paying me twenty bucks to feed his pigs three times a day this week while he's on a trip. It would be okay if not for his grandpa shuffling around mumbling about how wrong Travis has everything set up, and how wrong I am feeding them, and getting everything mixed up and not realizing it. I've taken to sneaking over there to feed the pigs when his grandpa is inside. Orientation: Travis lives across the street, his grandpa lives next-door-ish to him. Tim is also next door to Travis.

Spent the rest of the day bumping into things and tripping and dropping things, the crown achievement would be slipping on a pile of plywood across the only walkway whilst carrying an old wooden extension ladder which was knocking things down and catching on things and I fell and twisted my ankle and bruised my shoulder.
This 'growing' buisness sucks.

Then had Dad swearing and yelling because...I'm not sure why. Was helping him put up some siding, when he asked if I was doing things correctly, I pointed out that I had never done this before and that I had no idea. He carried on anyway and ended up making a mess because I hadn't linked the siding correctly. Took it apart and looked at it, now I know how it goes together, but. He has bursts of impatience which are released with wild abandon in the form of physical destruction and verbal abuse. I have thankfully not inherited that.

FTTDOTD: Learn to juggle. Then teach me.

SOTD: Tenacious D - Tribute (Funny song. They swear once, but honestly, we've heard it all by now.)

Shingled Photoblog

Exif-JPEG-422 © This photo is public. Change? Uploaded on Jun 11, 2007 | Delete 0 comments

The back deck, all enclosed. Siding is coming soon.

Inside. It's bigger than it looks here.

Shingling in the rain

New shingles on the left. We didn't do so well on that section. Old shingles one the right, peeled off to the plywood on the far side.

Nice view from up there.

The dumpster.

The big space laser on top, the internet antenna on the bottom.

You Know You've Been Drumming For Too Long When...

You start drooling. Yeah. Break time.

So I spent the week scraping the old three layers of shingles off of the roof and putting new ones down. The first day we had a huge, windy rain storm. We had some shingles stripped off, but no new ones put down. Luckily we had purchased a gigantic one hundred dollar tarp for just such an occasion. So we frantically spread it and dropped some shingle bundles around the edges of it. Shingles weigh about eighty pounds a bundle, so they're plenty heavy.
Well the wind comes a-whipping up the hill behind the house, catches the tarp and tosses those shingles right off the roof into the yard.
So then we got to carry them back up the ladder and run around on this tarp, which is now wet from rain and billowing all over the place, which is rather dizzying. (ever been to the ocean? It's like that, only you can fall off) Put down twice as many bundles, and hid inside.
The power didn't even go out.

The rest of the week was less eventful. Guarunteed everyone I wouldn't sunburn. They all said they were sure I would.
Guess who didn't burn.
Got an acceptable tan finally though.
On Tuesday an old friend of my dad's, who is a small-time contractor joined us to get the back deck enclosed and tied into the house whilst we worked on the roof. He was British. Funny guy, cool accent.
So after a week of that buisness, we've got it all done. Learned a bit. Got to do all the edge work 'cause nobody else would go near it. Rolled off once at a spot where there was another roof a few feet below the edge and yelled. Freaked everybody out, they all half jump up, then see that I'm on the lower roof. That was fun. Working by the vent pipes for the bathrooms: Not fun. Ever wanna prank somebody though, plug that thing. Eventually their toilet won't want to flush anymore, plus it'll stink.

Went to another big sale on Saturday, bought tools mostly.

Sunday, the pastor didn't pray long enough for me to get any sleep in the sound booth. Ah well. Labled some of the knobs on the sound board that needed labeling. Someone bought the wrong CDs for the service-recorder. Brilliant.

Lately been just slowly, leisurely working on getting the door and electric set up in the newly enclosed back deck. Pictures are forthcoming, it looks awesome.

Tried to drum. Hard to do after a week of toting a nailgun around. Not that I regret it. Nailguns are fun, and everyone else would rather align shingles than heft that thing all day. As long as you can still aim it straight at the end of the day and don't mind the weight, it's a pretty easy job. Duane, the contractor, had a Co2 powered one. That was outrageous. Ours was air-compressor powered, so you have to trail a hose around behind it, Duane's was cordless and much lighter. It was wicked awesome. Five hundred dollar tool though.

So, busy all week, but not loads to tell. Good week, glad it's over. I've got a lot of sitting on my butt to do, so please excuse me.

SOTD: Skillet - Best Kept Secret (Because everyone knows that Skillet rocks and choosing a Skillet SOTD is so difficult. Best Kept Secret is just what's playing now.)

FTTDOTD: Bring a little red wagon to the gym. Set it on the running machine and tie the handle to the machine. Turn the machine on full power, and get in.