If you suffer from lower back pain, I don’t have to tell you how debilitating it can be. I’ve suffered with it for years — I bulged or ruptured a lower disk during my reckless younger days — and so I’m usually very careful not to do anything that might aggravate it lest I find myself on my back for days. To me, there are few things worse than having to lay in bed and remain still for more than required sleep.

Well, oops, I’ve done it again. I’m not sure how, but yesterday morning as I was getting ready for work, it hit me. I don’t remember doing anything I would consider strenuous — it could, I suppose, have been something I did a day or two before — but I recognized the old familiar pain immediately. Yet I went to work anyway, I think because I was afraid I would be unable to get up by myself if I went back to bed. So I sat all day at my office computer, probably not my best course of action. Once home last night, I did lay down and, sure enough, I needed help getting back up to answer nature’s call.

So today I vowed to stay in bed and use a heating pad. But I soon became bored and uncomfortable, took an Ibuprofen and have been putzing around the house most of the day doing little things I probably shouldn’t be doing, like trying to resuscitate my inoperative external hard drive. It died a couple weeks ago and, since I use it not only for backup but as primary storage for all my photo and data files, I’m afraid I’m pretty well dead in the water. The thing won’t boot — it just clicks and clacks for a moment, then shuts off. I can’t get to either partition.

So I’m in need of a disk recovery outfit in the Sacramento area to try and salvage the data and transfer it to a new external drive. Damn! This is my second external that’s died! I replaced the first one just before it breathed its last breath with a new WD drive about a year ago! What up with that?

So here I am with, not one, but two disk problems, one in my lower back and the other on my computer desk. And that’s why I didn’t post much else today and, unless I suddenly feel a whole lot better, why I doubt I’ll be up to posting much tomorrow, either.

I’m not complaining, mind you. Well, maybe I am.