The wife and I recently went on a cruise aboard the Carnival Imagination. It was our third cruise on a Carnival ship, and was definitely the least enjoyable of them all. Don’t take that the wrong way, it was still an amazing vacation and we still had a great time, but on this particular ship, on this particular route, at this particular time, there just wasn’t a lot of ‘oomph’ to it. The meals were a bit more bland than our last trip (aboard the much lareger Carnival Triumph last year), the entertainment was somewhat lackluster compared to the same previous cruise, and there just didn’t seem to be the same attention to detail as the previous cruises.
I’ve had terrible pain in my upper back on the left side for about three weeks now. I went to a chiropractor to try to determine the cause and he said I had a small tear in a muscle in that location. That, combined with a general tightness in the muscles which were overcompensating to make up for it, was all there was to it. Good enough for me. I hate doctors and only grudgingly go to a chiropractor (who aren’t really doctors)* to keep my spine in line or else I am in constant pain from nerves being pinched -a condition dating back twenty-five years.
In this case, after three weeks there has been no improvement. Any motion of my head to the left or right hurts like hell. Turning it hurts pretty bad, but if I try to tilt it to one side or the other it’s unbearable. It’s actually kind of a fun game to play. It hurts worse the more I tilt it, so I can tilt it further and further to see where my pain threshold is -trying to beat my record each time. I wish I had the tolerance to actually get my head all the way to my shoulder, but I simply can’t do it. I don’t know if it’s me actively being a pussy or if my brain is hard-wired to keep me from knowingly causing myself enough pain to render me unconscious. Seems like something that shady bastard would do; he’s always scheming against me. It’s one thing if I grab a hammer and smack myself in the head with it -I can totally sneak up on my brain and he’ll never see it coming- but it’s different if I have to try to get my brain to be complicit in causing aforementioned pain. That bastard just doesn’t care about science!
In the Shadow of Angels has been added to the Kindle Online Lending Library. It will remain there until June. So if you have the service and want to check it out for free, now’s your chance. Here is the link.
