All of a sudden I woke up one day with serious back pain and stiffness, I could barely move around for four days until it became bearable again. For the next two weeks it slowly got better, but was still really difficult to sit down for any period of time. Three visits to the chiropractor helped slightly, but just as that was starting to settle down the leg pain increased again! After a few weeks now I still have very little flexibility and can't even get close to touching my toes, as well as random jolts of sharp pain. Because of this I decided against taking any trips over Easter and tried to rest and recover instead for the five day break, but I don't think it really made much difference.
So obviously I haven't been doing any running again, but I had started to increase my intensity and duration on the exercise bike at home and at the gym, although it's possible that may have contributed to another relapse of the worst phase of the back pain as well. My only hope is I can get the leg problem to finally go away, get out running instead of cycling too much and hope for everything to settle down. This does however question my ability to do a triathlon one day.
My shares had been running quite stable for most of the month before another dip, at least I've had some dividends come through. The banks in particular have been terrible for an entire year now.
We had the annual AFL fantasy draft just in time for the start of the season. We only have six teams this year due to Amir's elected disappearance. It seems that about 80% of the good players are classified as centres and have similar stats, so it's hard to differentiate between teams. Like usual I drafted too many centres and ended up without any good backline players and no decent ruckman either!
Due to physical limitations (and sports betting) I've watched a bit more of the NBA than usual, as well as the early rounds of the NCAA tournament. The round of 64 and 32 were both excellent, I was only able to download highlights for most games due to the time difference, but there were lots of close and crazy finishes. The final 16 and 8 were quite disappointing by comparison, usually the 1 or 2 seed in each quarter progressed - and Kansas failed again. I also watched some of the races from Stawell Gift over Easter, but I don't understand the point of having a handicap system that doesn't reward the fastest person, just the most improved. The handicap system seems to be really bad for 400 metres and above too, the back markers never even come close to winning those.
My to do list only saw a little activity for the month:
- Asia holiday
- I almost completed the hardest part, coming up with a suitable set of connecting flights at a good price
- Now I have to commit to the dates, get leave approved and buy the tickets
- CD / DVD collection
- I had about five folders of 200 discs that had been sitting around since the day I moved in
- I finally opened them up, copied the ones I still wanted to keep (not many) and trashed the rest
- Gold Coast holiday
- I booked the hotel for the Gold Coast marathon in June or July
- I have no idea if I'll be fit enough by then
Work has been fairly quiet with the long Easter break. I missed a few days due to the back problems not allowing me to sit at a desk for an entire day.
That's it for another month:
- Books
- Rose Madder by Stephen King
- A strange surreal end to the book that didn't fit the rest
- Quite long at about 11 hours
- 7 out of 10
- Movies
- 10 Cloverfield Lane
- Interesting story about three people in a fallout bunker
- The perception of what is really true changes several times
- The ending was a little strange
- 9 out of 10
- Stephen King's It
- Similar to the book, which was quite surprising
- Only watched the first half of the 'mini series' so far
- 7 out of 10
- Music
- None
- TV
- Gonzaga: The March To Madness
- Reviewing the Gonzaga basketball end of season and finals
- Only five episodes
- Notre Dame NCAA football was a little better
- 7 out of 10
- Halt And Catch Fire Season 2
- Some good new story lines, but the episodes are very slow
- The outcomes are bad for more characters, good for a change
- 6 out of 10
- How To Get Away With Murder Season 2
- Not as good as the first season, just too unbelievable
- 6 out of 10
- Quantico Season 2
- Caught up to date with the first 15 episodes
- A nice mix of current time and flashbacks
- Fun training programs that the recruits go through each week
- 7 out of 10
- Video Games
- PC
- Stardew Valley
- Only started, just an open ended simulator with a bit of RPG
- PlayStation 3
- Gran Turismo 5
- Just started doing the licenses
- A couple were already difficult to get gold
- Retro
- SNES
- Final Fight 2 (co-op)
- Pretty easy to beat, only lost a few lives towards the end
- 6 out of 10
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles In Time (co-op)
- A bit repetitive
- Similar to previous arcade games
- 5 out of 10
- Xbox 360
- Bioshock Infinite
- Just started, nice graphics so far
- Forza Horizon 2
- Just finishing off some achievements
- Boring having to repeat the same races
- 6 out of 10