Well today is starting off better than yesterday
Wind Chill: 16°F
So Far Today
High: 17°F
Low: 11°F
but they say a winter storm in on the way for this evening with 3-6" of snow. I used the snow blower yesterday to clear out the whole driveway - first time since I hurt my back. Seems like it all went okay.
Wind Chill: -18°F
So Far Today
High: -0°F
Low: -2°F
Just pasted this out of a weather page. It was 43 and rainy yesterday. Was only down to 32 by 6 PM. Now we have snow on the ground again and the temperature is below zero. This cold snap isn't supposed to last.
Went to the doctor yesterday for follow-up on my sciatica. I told him the leg pain is gone. He said I'm pretty lucky; only 20% of patients get the relief I've gotten from the injection. Said it's important to keep doing the exercises. Went to physical therapy in the afternoon. The therapist said I have responded much better to treatment than most; it usually takes much longer to recover. She also said she has patients that have had multiple shots and no relief. So, almost all good news. I've got some "new" pain in my back and hip now. Probably unrelated and hopefully will go away in a couple of days.
Yesterday the temperature reached freezing. That's a big improvement over sub-zero temperatures. We went to Oak Brook and ran a few other errands. I picked up a nice new winter jacket at Macy's. It was just what I was looking for and there was only one. Jill said it was just waiting there for me.
We noticed as we drove around that there were a lot of geese at several places just sitting in the snow. Can't imagine how they can do that.
On the spur of the moment we asked Keir and Lori if they wanted to meet us for dinner at Papadeaux for dinner. They came and of course brought the girls. We got there at 5:30 and there was already a wait. The kids were both great though. Even little Scarlett managed to hang in there for the wait and through dinner. There were strolling musicians. They came to the table and played an Elmo song and Itsy Bitsy Spider. The girls thought it was great fun. We all had a wonderful meal and a great time.
Came home and watched the movie "Lucky You"; it was pretty good.
I had to attend a four day management training class. It was held at the Doubletree hotel and conference center in Downers Grove. I could actually have stayed at home but they urged everyone to stay at the hotel since the activities would last until fairly late at night. It was good advice since we didn't finish until late every night and had to be in class at 8:00 AM.
The first day they asked everyone to line up in order of how long ago they got their first management job. I was at the head of the line with 37 years. The guy next to me had 26 and it fell off pretty rapidly from there. The first day was mostly typical classroom style training with a few exercises thrown in. That night we were divided up into project teams. Most of the projects involved dealing with abstract management concepts. On project though was called "Big Art" and involved coming up with an art project to illustrate some of the concepts we were learning about. Thankfully I got on that team. After we kicked around some ideas I suggested that we doing something with blowups of digital photographs. The team jumped right on it so I was the "main man" with my digital camera and thousands of existing pictures to choose from.
I had a blast. We created a piece of art using 6 16X20 photos. Of course I provided most of the pictures and did all of the digital image manipulation. The final product looked like this.
All week we had snow and bitter cold. I started my car a couple of times and cleared off all the snow. Our wonderful neighbor across the street cleared out the driveway again for Jill. She baked him a cake and took it over there. Got home Thursday afternoon and back to work on Friday. All in all it was a pretty good week.
This weekend we're getting quite a warmup. The high Monday will be 42; I think the high Thursday was 8.
Just too cold. -2 yesterday morning and -5 this morning. Windchills -15 to -25. The high today will be 10, yesterday when we went out in the afternoon the car thermometer read 2 degrees. We drove out to Elmhurst and had lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and saw the movie, The Bucket List. It was pretty good.
Kyle stayed overnight Thursday and Friday nights so that was a real treat. Saw Lindsey Thursday morning and saw Scarlett and Lindsey on Friday.
I was planning to stay in today but now have to go over to church to take pictures of the choir for our directory. Will probably watch most of the two football games today and stay inside.
Not much happening this past week. Work, physical therapy on Tuesday and Thursday. Leg is much better although it still hurts some first thing in the morning.
Booked a trip to Disneyworld early May. Keir and Lori are taking the kids down there so we'll get to see Lindsey's reaction to the Magic Kingdom. (We went to Disneyland with Kyle and Braden in November). Rates are incredibly cheap at a nearby place called Windsor Hills. Keir and Lori got a three bedroom house; we got a two bedroom condo for less than we ever pay for a hotel room.
Met Jill and the kids for lunch on Thursday at a new Moondance Diner out on County Line Road south of I-55.
Found out that one of the guys I got to know on Flickr had passed away suddenly. He was only 70 - such a shame. Real nice guy who always had a nice comment and loved flowers.
Met Keir and Lori at the La Grange Park District yesterday just for a few minutes to book a room for Scarlett's birthday party. The kids played for a while in the playground.
Watched the Packers destroy Seattle in the snow yesterday. Played bridge last night at the Hursh's. We had the worst cards I can ever remember having. Today Jill goes to my niece Christy's baby shower. She's picking up Lori so they can ride together.
Kind of a gray day.
It hit 64 or 65 here today breaking a record set in 1907. A dreary day but hey, we went out to lunch without jackets. For January it doesn't get any better than that. Lots of rain now and not so warm but not very cold either. I'll take it.
All the snow has melted and it's in the 50's. Took down all the Christmas decorations yesterday. Going out to my brother's house in a few minutes.
Thursday at 10:00 I went to the doctors office for a follow up visit on my acute sciatica. My leg had not improved so I was just getting along with pain pills every six hours. He told me that the MRI showed two damaged disks. The next thing I know I am on my way next door to a pain clinic to have an injection of steroids into the spine. I met with a nice doctor over there who told me that it was impossible to tell which disk was giving me trouble. He said he would treat the one that looked worse but if that did not work he would have to treat the other one in a month. Before noon I was on my way to the the room where they do the procedure using "live" x-rays. It was not painful and only took a few minutes. They said not to expect instant relief but perhaps it would be better by Monday. The nurse told me not to be disappointed if it took as long as a week or ten days. So I left with the expectation that I would still be taking pain pills for at least a few days.
To my great surprise I have hardly needed any. I took one Friday morning early and never needed another. This is pretty amazing after two weeks of constant pain. When I went to bed last night I had no leg pain. This morning I have a little but it's not very bad. I may wait a while to see if it works it way out.
Anyway - very encouraging progress in a short time.
We're in for a big warmup this weekend. 41 today and fifty something by tomorrow and even warmer on Monday.
Well, not quite yet. Last night we stayed home because of my back. Around dinner time we both started feeling bad. Lori had called and said that Lindsey got the stomach flu. Lori and Scarlett had already been throwing up. As the evening wore on Jill kept feeling worse until she started throwing up after midnight. I felt lousy but by morning I was feeling okay. So, we had to cancel going down to Amy's. We certainly don't want to give them the flu.
We got snow and didn't know how we would deal with that. Our neighbor across the street came over with his snowblower and cleaned out our whole driveway. I went out to get Jill some ginger ale and soup. Otherwise it's a pretty quite day.
