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Thursday, February 17, 2011

Spinal Muscle Guarding!


My good friend billy got off to Philly on Wednesday. We had a great time, and I think those 5 days in the gym have helped him immensely. I,on the other hand,have had a difficult week. After my long run on Sunday, my back went into spasm, and has remained on muscle guarding lockdown. Muscle guarding is where your brain senses bony instability or tissue damage around your spine and locks down movement in your spine with muscle contractions. Your brain says, when in doubt, lock it out. I have had it before in the course of my many many back problem periods, but this one seems a bit different in that it feels like it includes more of the muscles connected to my facets a few inches to the right of my spine. I have been trying every stretch, massage, and exercise I can think of to try and get them to let go, but so far to no avail. I still have no clue as to what I did to bring it on. As I have said before, it began about when the first cold weather hit here for the holidays. Needless to say, I have only jogged twice on the treadmill in the last four days. Hitting the exercycle, and lifting weights that do not involve any torque on my spine, are fine. Sitting any length of time is excruciating, so driving to and from the airport in el paso was no joy ride. Oh well, I got no choice but to live with it.
Spent this afternoon with my neighbors Ronnie and Dan teaching them about the wonderful world of ETF's, so now that they are retiring they can move their money to ameritrade and manage it directly themselves. I warned them that I think we have a good solid correction coming due to the anticipation of the ending of QE2, so to keep a good bit of powder dry to buy up those bargains when it happens. Also talked to my boy Terrible. He is struggling with where his life should go after the divorce and sale of the house. He, like me, is becoming a "doomer", and can't decide if he should buy a farm and try to survive the coming collapse of the US of A, or party like it's 1999. In any event, he believes we are paralleling Russia and will collapse hard, and that peak oil is over, and the worldwide depression will continue. Plus, like me, he believes that when the 7 year drought hits the breadbasket in the US shortly, and we force full starvation and induce plagues to these dying third world populations, we will finally start REDUCING the worlds population and create interesting new wars over resources. You know those people who keep extra peanut butter and tuna under their beds.....maybe not such a bad idea after all!

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