Roblog

I'm back from my long blogging hiatus. I had a really busy September and a pretty busy November, so it's been hard to get back into blogging. I'll try to catch up over the next few weeks.

I love it when my daughters show interest in their world. Donna and I imagine them being scientists, exploring and questioning what they see around them. A few weeks ago, Amanda pointed out the bump on her neck that went up and down when she swallowed. I explained that was part of her throat making sure the water went down into her tummy. I also told her that the water would go into her tummy even if she drank upside-down! She and Elena thought this idea was very funny. So, naturally, I offered to demonstrate this.

I got a pillow, handed Amanda a Dixie Cup of water, and went in search of a place to do a handstand. I found a place by closing my bedroom door. I put the pillow down in front of the door and did a headstand.

Now it should be noted at this point that Donna was not around. I was the primary parent for the evening and that left me with no spousal supervision.

Anyway, once I was upside down, I asked Amanda to hand me the cup. To do this, I had to remove my hand as a support, which left me supported solely by my head. I took the cup, drank a sip, and swallowed, all rather smoothly I thought. I then handed the cup back to Amanda and got down.

Once I got up off my head it hit me - my neck really hurt! I could barely move it from side to side. Amanda and Elena looked quite concerned as I put them to bed - Amanda even gave me a neck massage. As it was, I took some Advil, got the heating pad, and lay down on the bed.
I was a little worried myself as I wasn't confident I could get to sleep without moving my head at all, or what it would feel like in the morning. Even worse would have been having to explain why I would have to take a sick day from work.

As it was, I slept fine, and when I woke up my neck hurt no worse, although it was no better either. A warm shower seemed to help a little, and took took pain medicine throughout the day at work. Each day thereafter, it got a little better, and I gave Donna less frequent details about the status of my neck. After a week, I was pretty much back to normal.

I don't know exactly what I injured. It certainly wasn't bone, but it didn't feel like muscle, either. Can you injure cartilage? I don't think it had any nerves in it. Anyway, I'm very relieved that it got better and that I have no apparent serious damage.

My blog looks very different from what it used to be. That's because I wiped out all of my customizations while upgrading to Movable Type version 3.3. I had been on version 2.61 for a long time, because Six Apart (the company that makes Movable Type) started charging for their blogging software a few years ago. They still had a free version, but it only allowed one author, which was too restrictive for me.

But Donna has been veritably inundated with comment spam recently (100+ per day), so I went looking for remedies. When I checked the Six Apart website, it appeared the current free version (version 3.3) did allow for multiple authors and multiple blogs. It also is apparently better at combating spam.

So I downloaded it, installed it, and transferred my history to the new version. It was all surprisingly smooth, except for the quotation marks in the old entries being converted to some non-web-compatible characters. I just had to use a text editor to replace those quotes with their plain counterparts and it worked OK.

I converted my blog first to make sure I could do it cleanly. We'll see what spam comments I get with the standard 3.3 installation. I'll soon convert Donna's blogs, and implement whatever additional spam blocking techniques need to be used. The final result should be that we have a much cleaner and usable website.