June 8, 1989
Dear Everyone:
Any plans that I had for last weekend were scrapped when the very, very, VERY first thing I did Saturday morning was destroy my back.
Don’t ask me what I did because I didn’t do ANYTHING! Near as I can figure, it just up and sprained itself. Before you scoff at that, that is exactly what the doctor told me happened the last time. So I decided to do what the doctor said to do last time: Take pain relievers, stay still and apply heat.
I decided that this was a mandate from God to spend as much time as possible in front of the TV, with my feet up on the coffee table and a heating pad behind my back. Fortunately, there is a new video store in the shopping center across the street from me. I watched everything from high brow (Hope and Glory) to low brow (Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold) to very low brow (Russkies). This last I did not actually pick out; someone had placed it in the wrong jacket. Still, it was there, so I watched it.
I didn’t find Hope and Glory as charming as everyone had said it was, but maybe that’s because everyone said it was so charming – and my back was killing me. Allan Quartermain… (etc.) was about what you’d expect; perfectly suited to a wasted afternoon. The best line came when a minor villain tried to impress everyone with his physical prowess by breaking a large rock with his forehead, whereupon Quartermain (Richard Chamberlin) turned to his companions and asked: “How does anybody find out that they can DO that?”
By Saturday night, my back had simmered down to the point where I could go to bed and get some sleep, although I was reminded of it the moment I got out of bed Sunday. Many more hours of diligent TV-watching and by Monday morning I thought I was in pretty good shape.
Until I got on the Vanpool and discovered just how bumpy and jerky that van ride really is. By the time I got to work, my back was one, nagging ache. Not bad enough to interfere with my work, of course; just enough to annoy me all morning. Even double doses of Advil didn’t kill it completely, so at lunch time, “Melanie” and I decided to go for the ultimate: Apply Chocolate. We went to See’s and picked out an assortment of dark and light chocolates which didn’t make my back feel any better, but which certainly made my taste buds happy.
“Melanie” also came up with a very helpful suggestion. She said that the heating pad which I had been using (and which, by the way, the thermostat had given out on – it only has one setting now: HOT) wasn’t big enough. I needed to warm the entire back, not just a piece of it. So, based on her suggestion, plus input from “Rowena”, when I got home I dragged out the old electric blanket, folded it into fourths and laid it out on tope of the sofa. Then I laid on top of the blanket with the heat setting around medium. For 3 hours I backed my back while watching TV, mostly with my eyes closed (a generic trait, I’m certain).
By Tuesday morning I barely felt a twinge. In the afternoon, during a meeting, I kind of twisted in my chair and suddenly realized that my back didn’t hurt at all. Keep this in mind the next time your back hurts: Fold the electric blanket and bake your whole back. I give it a 9.9.
In other news…
“Craig MacManis”, one of our computer people, is being moved to another application. CITC (“Company” Information Technology Co) does this a lot. It keeps people from stagnating on the job and helps to “develop the employee”. So we took “Craig” and some other CITC’s out to lunch on Tuesday before having a meeting with the new CITC person, “Tom Harrison”, to bring him up to speed on what “Craig’s” been working on for us. Poor “Craig” was supposed to go on vacation in about 3 weeks. Not that the change in application affects his vacation time. It’s just that he was supposed to spend his vacation in China. We suggested that he visit Hong Kong instead, while IT was still there.
So he told us a story that he heard in his economics/marketing class. It seems that someone decided to manufacture little plastic Liberty Bells to sell to tourists in Philadelphia. The manufacturing was done in Hong Kong. Only someone in Hong Kong noticed that there was a flaw in the bells. They were cracked! Well, even stupid tourists wouldn’t buy the bells if they noticed cracks in them; so they moved the cracks to the back of the bells where they wouldn’t be noticed.
Also in the news…
This week the Association of Image and Information Managers (AIIM) are holding their Annual Conference here at George Moscone Center. AIIM is really the people who make microfilm cameras and readers, but when Optical Disk Storage came onto the market, they changed their name to allow the new medium. It was a lot cheaper than starting a whole new association. Since many records are now kept on microfilm and many more will ultimately end up on optical disks, ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators) and AIIM are sort of cousins. We always have a booth at their conferences and they always have one at ours.
What this means is that I spent from 10:45 until 4:15 on my feet at the conference, either gathering information (and freebies) at the many booths or passing out information (and freebies) at the ARMA booth. Either way, by the end of the day, my little hoofies were murdering me. (Thank God my back recovered as quickly as it did!)
Today I have the place to myself because everyone else is either in class or back at the ARMA booth. I might actually get a little work done.
Hope everyone is hale and hardy. If not, try wrapping the electric blanket around whatever ails you.
Love, as always,
Pete
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