August 10, 2004

• Deterioration

  I went back to the X-ray place today. They had a much smaller job to do, just three shots of my middle back -- and I still came out of it hurting. There was nowhere as much twisting and maneuvering involved as on my previous visit, but my back still hurt like hell when it was done.

  Okay, I was still moving and being manipulated on a long, narrow metal table. There was one shot flat on my back and two on my left side. None of that should have been enough to strain anything. My problem is simply getting worse.

  I notice it when getting dressed, too. It gets harder and harder to bend my right knee, the one that also has signs of arthritis. As a result, it gets harder to put on my right sock and tie my right shoe. I work up a sweat, now, doing it.

  I probably qualify for a handicapped tag now. The criteria are that I have difficulty or pain when walking 200 feet due to a physical condition, one qualifying condition being arthritis. If I walk slowly enough, or just stand still, it will start to hurt within their definition distance. If I walk faster, though, I can beat their range -- unless I lean forward and start my back spasming.

  I had to take a pill to quell the pain when I got home. It did its job. I may not have to take another in order to get to sleep.
  

  Am's rAMbles

  If you found this Weblog entry through my Am0 Web site, you may have ignored a list of links at the left side of the page. The last link in the list leads to another of my Weblogs, one that almost nobody ever visits.

  rAMbles is based on the Blogger Weblog engine. It is one of the older free engines around but it's still undergoing active development and has recently been upgraded with some new improvements. One that I particularly appreciate is that the engine now sends me email copies of each entry I post.

  Unlike a Weblog service, Blogger produces a package that can be installed into any computer capable of providing hosting services. Entries can be posted by entering them through the Blogger system's editor or by submitting them as email messages. Posting can be done as one page per topic or as one continuous scroll from newest to oldest. In this respect, in is more like CityNews, which I tested and gave up on a long time ago.

  LiveJournal offers an option to allow access to their Weblog from your Web site if you pay their fee. I tried it and it didn't work too well. Blogger, on the other hand, worked perfectly in this respect. They will also host your scriblings for you, free, if you have no Web site from which to display it. If you want to liven your Web site with its own Weblog, Blogger is a reasonable way to do so.

  • 02:17
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