Things Going Out On Me

Two awful things happened this weekend. First, I threw out my back. Not terribly, not collapse-to-the-floor-muscle-won't-relax misery like has recently happened to a few of my friends, but still pretty bad. That first night most movements caused a painful spasm. John had to lower me into bed. By the next morning the spasms were less and John set up dining room chairs with high backs in key spots so I could pull myself up. Ann, our landlady, used to be a nurse, so she came over and massaged in some tiger balm. Things started to look up. Needless to say, I spent most of the weekend reading in bed (luckily we recently stocked up on books during a trip to Perugia). Today I'm almost human.

The second thing is that we ran out of internet time for the month. We have this flash drive from a local phone company (Tim). You plug it into your computer and you get 3G. Yes, it's doing all of your internet over a cell phone connection, which is painfully slow and requires walking around with your computer trying to find a good spot, but it means we have internet at home. The only alternative is to pack up your computer and walk 10 minutes to the train-station bar which has wireless for 1 euro/hour. Their internet is much faster, but the bar draws a weird crowd from the surrounding apartment buildings. The music is always too loud inside the bar but there are too many smokers sitting outside the bar. Usually after 15 minutes we can't take it anymore and we head back home. Luckily, our month should restart tomorrow!