Limping In

Oooooof! Well, I managed to completely mess up my lower back today. It had been bothering me all day long (maybe from doing crunches first thing this morning), but was livable. So I decide to keep my normal routine and hit the gime. Everything's going fine, just minor aching really. But then, while starting a set of shoulder exercises to end the day, I picked up the 25lbs dumbells a bit quickly and out it goes. And now I'm in alot of pain! I'm like a 85 year-old WW2 vet. I have to shuffle around like I've got a broomstick up my ass. Everything I do involves alot of grunting and groaning. And no movement can be started without preparing for it well. But hopefully it's just back spasms or a pulled muscle and I'll be good as new in a few days. While I am concerned about it being a 3rd stress fracture, that would appear to be unlikely.
But like a trooper, I'm still here to do my duty to my loyal fan base of no one.

Birthing Babies - QB Style
Some people are probably aware that my beautiful and smart girlfriend is a med student. Who is interested in possibly becoming an OB-Gyn. Which means she'd get to birth lots of lots of babies. Now me, with my never-ending creativity in turning normal situations into fun situations with a sports theme, came up with a great idea. Some time when she's in there getting ready to deliver one, pop her head above the sheet and start barking out audibles just like a QB. "Green 59 Flex Wiggle!!" "Baker 18 Flex!!" It'd be the single greatest delivery-room moment ever. A memory some lucky couple would be able to laugh about for their entire lives. Sure, the GF wasn't too keen on this idea, but she's never been one to really support most of my great ideas. She's a hater, pure and simple.

Airing of Grievences
Tomorrow I get to take part in another "Employee Exchange Meeting" with the head of our group. Me and my buddy Tom, as a matter of fact. So we get to sit in a room and air out all the beefs we have with the company, management, and the stupid things they do. Pretty much the same list of beefs we had 6 months ago when we first got to do this, with a few new ones added in there for good measure. Seems the company just keeps doing more and more stupid things. We have a theory that they really are trying to get people to quit instead of having lay-offs. You have to give people severance and unemployment when you lay them off. When they quit, they get nothing. So in order to trim pay-roll cheaply, just keep cutting benefits and screwing the employees over.
Case in point...there is an item on the ballot for shareholders to stop the discounted Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Right now, we can have 10% of our paycheck taken out and put towards company stock. The year in broken into 2 periods, January 1 - June 30 and July 1 - December 31. At the end of each period, they take the lower of the price at the beginning and end of those periods, subtract 15% from that, and all our money we've put away is used to buy stock at that discounted price. It's really the only perk we have left right now. So we get to grill him on that tomorrow morning (wednesday).
So far they've stopped giving any real raises, stopped giving out stock options to regular employees, cut the tuition benefit to only $5300/year (from no limit), and moved us up to N.Reading from downtown. But we had the ESPP to make up at least a small piece of that pie.

Okay, I need to go lay down. Sitting here just makes my back slowly get worse. Time to lay on my make-shift heating pad and watch some more baseball and play-off hockey.
PEACE!!!