My back has been pretty sore for the last couple of days for some reason. When I went to the gym last night, I told the trainer that we needed to take it easy because of how I was feeling. He told me to let him know if I started feeling any pain at all and that we would stop right then.

I was doing okay for the first couple of sets of assisted squats, but that last set started to feel kinda painful. I told the trainer, so we moved on to other stuff: Shoulders. He handed me 2 15 pound dumbells and had me do a standing shoulder press with them. After the first set of those, I had to stop. I had started to feel really light-headed in a quick hurry, so he had me catch my breath and take a walk around the gym.

By the time I got back to the weights area, he had me do the press from a seated position. I was able to finish out the 2 other sets of 15 reps, but I was really hurting afterwards. When I told the trainer this, he made the call that we should stop and that I should pick up the cardio. On to the elliptical.

My goal was to do 20 minutes of cardio, but after about 8 minutes I was really having a hard time even standing, so I quit for the night. I came home and took a hot shower, then the girlfriend came over for dinner and a movie. Laying on the couch through the movie, I didn't feel too awfully bad. However, when it was time to head to bed I was really hurting.

Granted, we were up late watching the movie and talking, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night. I found myself talking in my sleep at one point, which (for me) is a sign that I wasn't sleeping too well. I do recall tossing and turning a fair bit in the night, and when my alarm went off at 7:00 this morning I had a very tough time climbing out of bed.

Another hot shower to start the day and hopefully loosen the stiffness, and I was off to the office. The drive from my apartment to the parking area at work was mildly uncomfortable, but the walk up the steps to my desk was even more painful.

I did find that the pain gave me some sort of odd motivation to work harder and more effectively. I'm thinking it was probably my mind saying, "If we get a bunch done early in the day, maybe the day can end sooner." After a couple of hours, sitting at my desk, I was ready to call it a day. I did stick it out, though.

Luckily at around 3:00, my boss came to my desk to talk about a couple of things. He made a comment about how he was tired and was probably going home soon, and I echoed his comments about being tired. He said, "Well, it's after 3:00 already, so go home." I told him I wasn't going to argue, and I got to a stopping point and left the office.

I'm sitting at the computer now and it feels like my back is swollen, which isn't a very good thing. With that, I think I'm going to go figure out some sort of fulcrum to lay on at the couch and see about catching some sleep. In the meantime though, my spine is for sale. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.