Well, I'm broken.

It started on Monday morning - my neck felt like I had slept on it funny. But that evening at the on-call room at the hospital, we started eating dinner and I began having sharp pains in my neck and shoulder. Sitting was very uncomfortable, so I lay on the floor. Gary thought it was probably just a muscle strain and brought me some Advil. The pain was so bad that I just slept on the floor all night.

I stayed home from work on Tuesday, and Gary prescribed some Vicodin and Flexirol. He called a colleague who is a neurologist - he felt it was probably just a severe muscle strain as well. I stayed fairly doped up all day.

I was able to sleep better on Tuesday night and everything seemed somewhat improved on Wednesday morning - except I couldn't lift my left arm above my shoulder. Hmmmm.

I've gone to work the rest of the week and the pain has been minimal during the day. It seems to be worse at night - I seem to wake up around 3:00 or so with sharp pains in the neck and shoulder.

We came down to the shore on Friday night and have had a quiet weekend. The weather has been pretty lousy, but we've gotten out for walks and Gary's has done some bike riding. My neck/shoulder/arm thing doesn't seem worse, and may perhaps be a bit improved, but Gary is going to make an appointment for me to see the neurologist tomorrow just to see if he can figure out what's going on. In the meantime: I'm still broken.

But while I'm on the mend, here's a story to remind one that things could be worse:

BHUBANESWAR, India (AFP) - A woman who fell in love with a snake has reportedly married the reptile at a traditional Hindu wedding celebrated by 2,000 guests in India's Orissa state.

Bimbala Das wore a silk saree for the ceremony Wednesday at Atala village near the Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar.

Priests chanted mantras to seal the union, but the snake failed to come out of a nearby ant hill where it lives, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said.

A brass replica snake stood in for the hesitant groom.

Villagers welcomed the wedding in the belief it would bring good fortune and laid on a feast for the big day. Snakes and particularly the King Cobra are venerated in India as religious symbols worn by Lord Shiva, the god of destruction.

Das, from a lower caste, converted to the animal-loving vegetarian Vaishnav sect whose local elders gave her permission to marry the cobra, the world's largest venomous snake that can grow up to five metres.

"I am happy," said her mother Dyuti Bhoi, who has two other daughters and two sons to marry off.

"Bimbala was ill," Bhoi told local OTV channel. "We had no money to treat her. Then she started offering milk to the snake ... she was cured. That made her fall in love."

Das has moved into a hut built close to the ant hill since the wedding.

Earlier this year, a tribal girl was married off to a dog on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar.

[Uh . . . right.]

SAVE YOUR CORKS!!

[Only 7,205 more needed for our wine cellar wall.]

Quote du jour:

"Pain with the thousand teeth."

William Watson (1858 - 1935) English poet

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