Hi All! Just a quick post on this holiday weekend to announce the results of the CSN Stores contest. Thanks to everyone who entered. I wish I could give you each a gift certificate, but as you know there can be only one winner! I used a random number generator, which pulled this out of its metaphorical hat:

That means congratulations are in order for The Slow Learner, who can now never complain again about not winning drawings. Way to go, dude! Enjoy your shopping! (I have emailed you the gift code, so check your inbox.)

Back to your regular programming soon. Until then, I hope everyone is making the most of the weekend.

I have a bunch of quick updates for you guys so I thought I’d just do a little round-up over here. First of all, I am kind of excited because I have been asked to review a retail site. CSN Stores (home of cheap bedroom furniture, among countless other sites) has asked me to check them out. In addition to doing a review, if I like what I learn I might also be  doing a giveaway here at some point, so I will definitely keep you guys posted because I suspect you will be interested!

In health and fitness blogging news, I have been busy at the Bodies in Motivation site. You can read about my upcoming half marathon or about my trip to the doctor in a quest to get a discount on my health insurance. Have you ever wondered how many pounds of me is made up of water or fat? The answers await you.

If you are sick of hearing about me, though, may I recommend checking out the healthy living blogs site? You can even search a huge list of blogs by location to find bloggers near you. Awesome.

And speaking of other bloggers! I desperately need to update my links list to reflect the blogs I am reading now. I have found a lot of new ones recently and (sadly) several of the old favorites on that list are now defunct. If I don’t already link to you, let me know if you have a blog and I can add you to my list!

Was that all? I feel like I am forgetting something. Don’t you hate that feeling? Like standing in my office asking myself “What did I come in here for?” Do you know what I came in here for?

Good morning, people of the Internet. This post comes to you via my iPhone, as my netbook is temporarily kaputt, leaving me without a computer in my office. Lame.

So anyway, if you follow me on Twitter you already know that I mysteriously hurt my back sometime on Monday and I have been on muscle relaxers since Tuesday. It’s fun times around here for both me and my students, let me tell you. I’m in the office right now for student meetings in which I am supposed to be helping them revise their essays but I mainly just mutter at them confusedly/confusingly.

Currently I am just waiting for this bullshit problem to go away because until it does there is no running no biking and no swimming for me. In more immediate terms, I am also waiting for this dose of muscle relaxer to kick in so that I can perhaps sit more comfortably for the next four hours of student meetings I have before I can go home.

How did I get hurt, you ask? Some kind of overzealous sporting activity? No. Apparently, the injury is due to the fact that I am “not 20 anymore.” Yes indeed, as you get older you too may find yourself unable to sit comfortably or get into or out of your car. Old age is fun!

The doc also told me not to sleep on my stomach as this hyperextends the back and is very bad for you. No problem, I thought, I don’t sleep on my stomach. Of course, the next night I realized that I do in fact sleep on my stomach. I think I start out on my side but then roll over at some point, because I kept waking up and finding myself on my stomach despite my best intentions and then having to wrestle myself over onto my side again in an ungainly and painful manner.

Sleeping on my back? Not an option. It feels like I going to die of suffocation under the weight of my own boobs.

You know what else, though? In addition to sleeping, I’ve also been spending hours in bed every night reading. On my stomach, kind of propped up on my elbows, back completely hyperextended. Reading. Effing READING. Also known as MY JOB AND MY LIFE. It looks like I have Stieg Larsson to blame for this as it’s been his lousy, addictive novels keeping me up for the past couple of weeks. Never trust a Swede, as any Dane can tell you.

Let this be a warning to you: reading can be hazardous to your health! Especially if you are not 20 anymore.

I have been feeling a little silly coming over here and blathering away about my insignificant personal life lately, what with the current situation in Haiti (which today, after a massive aftershock quake, seems to be getting worse, if that were even possible).  At any rate, I’m sure you’ve all been inundated with information, images, stories, and links about Haiti, but I do feel the need to throw in a few of my own, so bear with me here:

Pictures from Haiti
Donate through the Red Cross from your cell phone
Donate through the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
Donate through Médecins sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders

Hopefully if you are interested in making a small donation you can find an appropriate way to do so.

And now that I have gotten that out there (I really couldn’t not), we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming of silliness and insignificance around here, which will resume shortly, after I take a nap and rid myself of this headache that has been hanging around since yesterday and I haven’t even been drinking. (See? Plenty of nonsense to be had.)