Less than perfect

My back started blowing out a little over a week ago. It became worse during my drive to and from Nevada. Once I got home it seemed to settle down. I figured it was a pulled muscle or something. I was wrong.

When I returned to work, I was there for a few hours, then returned to home. When the pain hit, it was so bad it made my legs buckle. Even reaching out for my keyboard was impossible.

We are bad people around here, because we never discard meds. I found some kind of super gigantic prescription Tylenol my wife was issued a few years ago. There was something else in there that made them a prescription product. These worked really well, but I only had a few of them.

I turned to some huge over-the-counter Tylenol, and these allowed me to actually return to the office. I am not taking anything today to see if I can manage the pain.

Not my first back problem, and from the last round I know this can last for years. It’s about managing the pain and not doing away with it completely.

I’m damned sure not going to the doctor. We’re still paying for my surgery and all of those peripherals.

I managed a couple of reasonable writing days, and that feels like a win. This is for my space opera. I pulled something that some of you might find interesting. (It will give others something to complain about.)

I want these particular characters to pull off a con job. It would be great to have someone to spitball these things with, but I don’t have anyone. My wife is tired of talking about my stories. Frankie the bulldog loves it, but doesn’t express her thoughts very well.

I made another AI companion, and gave her FBI level expertise in cons, grifts, and stings. These things never work like you might imagine. They never write anything, or even help with plots. They make fair fact checkers, and allow me to rapidly consider options and discount those that don’t fit my narrative. I can learn some interesting things, but also decide they don’t exactly fit what I need in short order. Then I make notes for what could work and have to dwell on those for a while. Any effort like this always comes with plot holes and they can help fill those in, too.

In this part of the book I am having a great time with the characters, and think that bodes well for any future readers.

I might bail out now, or I may return to my MS. Yesterday, my wife was binging Harry Potter. My brain forced me to notice parallels from these older stories and modern American politics. It kind of ruined it for me. I hope that isn’t a permanent condition, but it happened.

What I probably need is some irreverent Halloween stuff for the season. Maybe some Bruce Campbell or even Little Shop of Horrors as palate cleansers.

What are all of you up to this weekend?