Ass That Back Up!

Ohh....wittiest of titles, why do you fail me now? There is so much I can do with the word "back", but my creativity is lacking right now. Maybe that's because I haven't written anything for a few weeks :^o

In any case, Roland promised to write more, and he blasted us all with his warrior diet advertisement (or maybe, like my Twitter account, his blogger account was hacked?), so I will do likewise and put something out there for my minions.

First, I need to gripe about this back of mine. Or this bed of mine. I've got enough health problems, so let's go ahead and blame it on the bed. What do you do with a one-year-old mattress in perfect condition that has left my back in tatters every night for the past week? Should I put this thing on Craigslist, suck up the loss, and order a bed from Vas's Slovakian mattress company? I have no idea what to do with this thing. I literally have problems walking in the morning, my mid-back muscles around my lower ribs (not my spine, so this isn't an issue a
snap, crackle, and pop can fix) are hurting me so bad - thus requiring me to take a hot shower in order to have it loosen up, which subsequently leaves me sweating in my apartment, just in time to go outside to the swampy weather and wait for my bus. Something's gotta give!

Speaking of my back, and completely unrelated to the bed issue, it has been observed by various people (such as the wife) that I have bad posture. Obviously, I could have told me that, which is why I used to sit on the exercise ball at work (it deflated a while back). But that wasn't the solution, and I couldn't figure out the solution until recently, in my salsa class, the teacher told me to stop slouching and pull my shoulders back to straighten my neck. Wait, what? He nailed it
on the head, and now I know how to correct my posture. So I'm working on maintaining this shoulder-back position, which is pretty difficult for me to do without thinking about it.

Aaaaand....a perfect segway to salsa dancing. We've been taking two lessons a week for the past month, with mixed results. The good thing is that nobody else knows about this dance studio, so it's been almost private lessons every week, which is great. Fact: I am the only man
who goes to class every week, so I always get great personal instructions, mostly "constructive" criticism about my posture, bending my knees, learning to lead a partner, and rolling my shoulders and hips, which I clearly not genetically built for. But it's still a lot of fun! Being the only "couple" in the class, and much like my three year old niece, the teachers would like Erika and me to have a "dance recital" (my words, not theirs) in front of a group at their grand opening party in October. I was thinking that this sounded like fun, except that I can only imagine how embarrassing it will be when I forget the steps mid-routine. I think I'll pass...

J. Riley, glory glory hallelujah, football starts this weekend! And Summer is visiting!