Ouch

I did something to my back over New Year's eve/day. I don't know what -- but my lower back has been bothering me since then -- stiff, painful, especially when standing up.

I think I'll be booking a massage when I get back to Ottawa, hopefully that will help.

Oddly, it didn't bother me while actually climbing yesterday - though it seem worse today, post-climbing, than it did yesterday pre-climbing.

Also, the bed at the hotel isn't helping.

A very Texas evening

I went out for Tex-Mex at a local restaurant called Chuy's with Thomas Emberson. (He moved to Texas about 11 years ago, but used to work at QNX, helped me move into Cambridge St, etc. Damn, time flies. Anyway, he is still married to Stacy, and now has two kids a girl around 4.5 and a boy around 18 months.)

Tom has a couple of hand-guns, and he suggested we go to a local shooting range after dinner. I've never fired a gun before, but it sounded like an interesting thing to try. He showed me the basics of gun operation -- safety, loading, handling, and the safety rules. Then went into the actual firing range, and did some shooting. All in all, I fired about 150 rounds from the two guns, into 3 different paper targets. Some of my sets were pretty wild, but some of my groups were not too bad. In one set of 12, I managed to get them all into the circle I was shooting at at a range of 5 yards. The recoil was noticeable -- the gun would jump after each shot (the .40 more than the 9mm), but not uncomfortable. I think it helped that I had been given some idea of how to hold the gun.

The guns were:
Springfield Arms XD .40 Compact 3" barrel
Springfield Arms XDm 9mm 4.5" barrel

Supposedly the 9mm is the "better" gun, that is, the more accurate one -- but I was getting better clusters with the .40, and Tom finds the same thing.

Definitely an interesting experience, though not some I think I really ever need to do again. I am glad I did it, though.