MIAMI TRIP CONTINUED


I think I mentioned in yesterday's post that the genius had worked hard getting several jobs completed before we left. On the way down to Miami, he said that his lower back was a little sore from the yard work. (Later I discovered that moving out of his office had entailed lifting several heavy boxes of books and hefting them up to the top shelves in a closet.) Plus, what plane seat, on Southwest anyway, is ever comfortable? By the time we walked forever to catch our ride to the hotel, he was moving more slowly than usual.

I'll interject here that I didn't really think anything about his pains -- we both have bouts with pain throughout our old bodies, especially hips, knees, and backs. But with a little rest or Advil we go right on, and they get "well."

The first night we settled into our luxurious apartment and finally turned out the lights at a later than usual hour for us. As we sank down into the king-sized bed, I noticed that the mattress was quite soft and thought to myself< "That's not going to help a bad back!" But as I was really tired, I drifted off pretty quickly.

You guessed it -- when we woke up the next morning, the genius was in much more pain. He was still able to maneuver pretty well, though, and made a trip to the conference to register, etc. When he came back about lunch time, we walked (slowly) around the huge complex looking at the menus of the various restaurants until deciding upon a place to eat. Afterwards, we looked at the nine pools and interesting places within the hotel, again at a slow pace. We eventually ended up at a very quiet pool located on the 5th floor of our building overlooking the water, where we remained until time to get ready for dinner.

We took a cab to a seafood place named A Fish Called Avalon, and I must say the food was excellent. When we had finished our leisurely dinner, we had a taxi drop us at a Walgreen's about 6 blocks from the hotel so we could stock up on drinks, etc. for the refrigerator we hadn't expected to have. All this time, the genius was getting worse as we plodded on; the pain now extended down his leg to his bad knee. When we got back to our suite, he made the decision to sleep on the sofa in the living room rather than take a chance on the soft mattress again.

All of our actions, from the time we left Nashville until this second night, were contributing to a very bad situation, indeed!!

to be cont'd