Pretty much. Good practice, though.

Thank you for presenting your experience, benjammin. I’m now considering putting one of those back support braces in or near my emergency stuff because I could not imagine having to do all sorts of physical labor with a screwed-up back.

Agreed, I should quit the macho thing and go get one myself. It is impossible to look macho when you are stooped over and having to shuffle your feet.

Unless we get hit with a rogue tornado, I am not too worried now. Losing power would be a real nuisance, but I've got enough hilton points I could just run down the street and spend the night in air conditioned comfort anyways.

Amen to that!

Exhaust all your options with physical therapy, exercise, rest, Santeria, swinging cats, and applications of aromatic oils by naked virgins singing “The Ode to Joy” before letting them come anywhere near you with a knife.

I know quite a few people who have various back operations and better than half tell me they regret having it done. The success rate of back operations is abysmal if pain-fee functional mobility and ROM is included in the definition. A common theme is that after the chopping is done there is no guarantee it makes anything better and once done you can't have it undone or go back to a less drastic procedure. A couple had really major operations done and only some time later found out that smaller, less invasive and newer techniques were available.

One trick is to never have an CAT scan or MRI of your back done. Newer standards recommend avoiding them simply because most normal, relatively pain fee, backs have faults that show up on an MRI as as something a surgeon might be able to 'correct'. This is the 'foot in the door' for a sweet talking orthopedic surgeon to perfect his technique on you. And get paid for it. Success or failure he makes the same.

Yes. And individual people can still have individual emergencies.

I'm watching Brevard county very closely, I have family there. Looks like they won't get "the dirty side".

In my camp, people are surprised that it didn't downgrade to a tropical depression yet. Seems to have more legs than we thought.

Yeah, this was kinda weird. It didn't come together until after it made landfall, then it intensified, then it slowed down it's path and dumped all over Brevard County, and tossed 8 tornadoes. Meanwhile, we got a few good gusts and some rain squalls, but nothing to keep me up all night.

At around 6:00 pm last night I stood out on the front lawn and watched the clouds go zipping by. I could actually detect a slight curve in their path going NE to SW more or less at about 25 to 30 mph. Very unusual look for these parts.

Flooding was a problem out on the coast more. We have some big puddles, but nothing more than you'd see after a night of the usual thunderstorms.

I really didn't want to get up this morning. I guess staying up later than normal has it's price.

Izzy better watch out. That storm could track right up on his back porch when it returns off the Atlantic curl.

One tragedy of note, the storm is eroding the beaches pretty heavily, and volunteers are out this morning looking for turtle eggs to re-cover. That might be a concern for the sea turtle population a bit.

Man, this rain is getting old. Maybe my last memories from next week in Florida will be of something besides being wet??? Not likely...

Here in Tampa narry a drop, just some nice breezes to keep the humidity and temps down. Glad to see the other Florida ETS family members are doing alright.

-Bill Liptak

I'm planning on taking the kid on her first open water dive for her scuba cert this weekend, up at Alexander Springs. I guess it doesn't matter too much if it's raining out when you are diving, but the drive up might not be so great.

The instructor seems gung-ho about it. I suppose if he can get up for it, I can too.

One thing for sure, Junior's gonna have a mighty long Xmas list this year. Hope she sends it to more than just me this time.

benjammin, I know your time in central fla is coming to a close very soon, If you have time before you leave to go visit ichetucknee springs before you leave. I was born up in cave country where cave diving is what we did for a long time, but they have a river that is crystal clear near where my parents house is that you can float down on a tube for 3 hours or put tubes in a different points depending on how long you want to stay on the river. Gennie Springs which is a couple of miles from the mid point has excellent diving and tent camping in that area. When you head back up I-75 it's not that far off your route if you even stopped to check it out. It definably is a nice place. I know the rain will probably effect a lot of these sites but there are tons of springs in these areas and a lot are free. You can pick up maps of the area at the dive stores as well for free for the spring locations. Being in Orlando where I'm at takes me 2 hours to get home, but it will be on the way as you head back up to the cooler country.

http://www.ichetucknee.org/springs.html

http://www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com/

http://underwaterflorida.homestead.com/springs.html