Being sore is a pretty lousy experience. I like to think that I have good control of my body. I can change my breathing, I can lower my heart rate. I can change the blood pressure readings on that machine at the grocery store. But I could not get the muscles in m back to unclench tonight.
It started in my left shoulder, my physical therapist tells me that has to do with muscles that wrap from the clavicle and through and around. It spread from my left shoulder into my right shoulder tonight. The Yankee said “You look like you’re about to cry.”
I told her I was trying not to move, because I had a sense that if I moved, at all, it would only get worse. Maybe, I’d thought, I can force these muscles to relax. That was the word selection in my head, and I found the contradiction delightful.
Instead I started coughing which was the opposite of not moving.
And so I’ve had upper back spasms for most of the evening and the night.
I’m ready to feel better, thanks.
More meetings today. I think I have already reached my quotient for the semester. And so I shifted to email. Well, let me just tell you, mister, I’m on the hook for a lot of email. And so I write a lot of them.
I’m due a new phone. The technology services staff passed them out over the summer and they installed mine … in a different office in a different building. I brought it to my office yesterday and discovered that someone will have to come and do something to the phone jacks to make this thing go. Gone are the days of simply plugging in a phone and hearing a dial tone. This one requires the Internet and some special pixie dust in the wall outlet.
Also it delivers voicemail directly to your email. That’s just strange.
I’m sure the innovations held therein are the biggest advancements since we abandoned party lines. This upgrade might be a step too far, too fast, though. I’m pretty sure my old office phone is at least 30 years old. Imagine giving Calbraith Perry Rodgers, the first man to fly across the country in 1911 (49 days! 70 stops!), a Messerschmitt Me 163A, which in 1941 set an unofficial speed record of 624 miles per hour. (That record was broken by Heini Dittmar, a German born just before Rodgers set on on his transcontinental feat.)
My new phone is exactly like that, only I can’t fly it.
Football season is upon us and I’m posting photographs we found last week while sifting through archives in Auburn University’s collection in honor of this most festive time of the year. This young lady is holding two tickets to the 1971 Iron Bowl. Not sure what she is standing behind and why, but this game featured third-ranked Alabama, fifth-ranked Auburn. These tickets were like cash.
Too bad Alabama won 31-7 and gave them a conference championship. I bet she was inconsolable after the game.
