I emptied the trash, which is my job, going around the apartment to gather up the contents of five different trash cans. While bending over to pick up the one in Dee's bathroom, something popped in the lower back and I screamed in agony. She came running, but it was too late. I could hardly move and was in great pain. This was frustrating because my back hadn't been hurting for days, and now it is far worse than before. I messaged the doctor, but she was in the US for a conference this week. She happened to be up early or late (jet lag?) and responded immediately with sympathy, giving me the name of a colleague, Dr. De Santis, whose office is nearby. He had an opening at 6:30pm, but that didn't work for me, so we agreed on 9:30am Thursday. I would be in significant pain the rest of the day, unable to bend or move much. My loving wife took the trash out for me!
We went to the Institute early. I tried re-imaging the computer using the downloaded image from the USB stick, but it was worse than before. First of all, the image was for an older model of the Dell desktop, so the network drivers didn't work, thus the configuration script wouldn't work at all. I talked with Virginio, the FamilySearch guy from Spain who has been very helpful, and he suggested just downloading and installing the correct network driver. After doing that, the script ran, but in the end the computer was even further away from working with FamilySearch than before, missing several key software components. I tried it a few times, all with the same result. Thursday Viriginio will call to see if he can figure out the problem.
Dee spent the afternoon working on desserts and on dances for the evening activity. She did a lot of YouTube searching for various country line dances. I did some lesson prep for Friday, with two lessons (Seminary is starting again). Almendra and Riccardo were both there much of the afternoon, each studying in a different room.
The dance activity was to have started at 7pm, but we only had three guys here then, no girls. Finally by 8pm we had three girls and five boys, which was critical mass. They had a blast! Dee led them in several line dances, a Virgina reel, an Israeli folk dance (Ma Navu, a slow circle dance with a beautiful melody) , and a few others. You can see some short videos of the dancing here, here, and here. They were having so much fun that she completely missed our usual 9pm departure time, but it was great to see the kids into it so much. I really didn't mind, except that my back was killing me and I had no comfortable place to sit or lie down.
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| Virginia Reel |
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| Ma Navu |
To make matters worse, as I pulled out of our parking space, Dee noticed that the rubber gasket under the front bumper of our Toyota had come loose again, dragging on the ground. Putting it back requires lying on the ground under the front of the car to reinsert a bunch of screws, something that simply was not going to happen that late in the dark, with my back killing me. All in all the ride home was not a happy one. I went to bed quickly, with Dee helping me get into bed and turning out my nightstand light, as I couldn't turn over to do it.
The dancing was so fun! Eight gans came and they were all up for learning for new stuff. They all love to dance, and were full of laughter and smiles. It was a bonus that we ended up with four guys and three girls at one point, so that's why we did the Virginia Reel. The tough part of the dancing was trying to explain moves in real time in Italian, but seeing the dance on screen compensated for that. At the time, I was thinking how we barely fit in that room, and thinking about future dances in the big room downstairs. Little did I know that it was not to be.