Hurt my back / Portugal! in Adventures in paradise

I think this is my first entry from the Hotel Bartley (my home’s nickname) bathtub!

I hurt my back at work today :( I’m not exactly sure what I was doing, but I felt fine going to work, but whilst at work, I was hobbling around like a decrepit old man. I literally needed a walker it was that bad. Lower back pain. Not good. All I can think of is I must’ve hurt it moving milk crates. Normally they are on the floor of the milk fridge, but there’s a pallet in there at the moment so I had to physically lift them rather than shimmy them over like I normally do. Normally I’m careful, but obviously today, my back decided it had other ideas.
So much pain!

I managed to make it to 1:30pm, which was when my shift ended. My store manager noticed me hobbling and i told him it was my back. He said he’d put it in some program that I can’t recall the name of right now. I’m not sure what that means or entails. I was just glad my shift was over and that I could go home. Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow.
But even the 10 minute walk home took me closer to 20. I was hobbling the whole way, holding my lower back like I’d just had hip surgery. The support was the only way I could move forward more comfortably.
If I wake up like this tomorrow, I doubt I’ll be going into work. I’m certainly not very productive. I got home and popped a few Nurofen Zavance and am currently laying in a hot bath. Dunno if it’s helping. Fuck, lower back Ain is the worst!

I’ve pinpointed it to one spot on my right side of my lower back. That is very sore. So at least I think like it’s oh just muscular. I didn’t fall over and break a bone or anything, thankfully.

Ok so the bath got too hot, so I’m sitting on the edge of the bath now. Much nicer.

Well that didn’t last long either, I hobbled back to my bedroom. Thankfully no housemate saw me naked.

It’s probably a variety of reasons my back fucked up - ie. Sleeping on a mattress I’m not used to for 5 nights in a tent (as comfy as it was), wearing uncomfortable shoes and a new pair of thongs (flip-flops) that literally cut into my feet as I walked along. It was the only pair in my size that the store had so I had to get them, since my good pair got destroyed just walking around the showground, and I couldn’t find any in stock at the store I originally bought them from :( So this shitty pair I got and they cut me, so I was constantly bending over to rub my feet as it had cut them and I was bleeding. The shoes I’d brought weren’t much better, cutting into my heel. They were like work-boots. I didn’t want to wear my comfy work shoes as I needed them for work and they would have got covered in mud.
And also gym. With Christmas and the New Year trip away, I haven’t been gymming, which is perfect at preventing back injuries because my muscles are usually strengthened. My back gets targeted when I warm up with rowing, and when I do the lat pulldown. But almost two weeks without doing so, and obviously unaware of my poor lifting technique at work today, my back was like ‘Nup! Fuck ya!’ and now I’m paying for it :(

In other news, Nick has been officially kicked out. I probably already wrote about this, but Andrew told me over dinner down in Lismore. And since I’ve been back, I’ve hard Nick on the phone and he had a friend over last night (I was eavesdropping from downstairs) and he was talking about his new apartment which has a ‘pretty nice view’, so he’s obviously already found somewhere.
Everyone in this house agrees that Nick should be living by himself. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone BUT himself, so we were baffled as to why he was even living with us. Literally, the only thing he ever says to me is a ‘Hi’ when he sees I’m in a common room. There’s no, ‘How’s your day?’ or ‘What did you get up to today?’ or ‘You got a haircut’ or anything from him. Ever. And it’s gotten depressing. Really depressing. The fact he’s been here 4 years stuns me. He’s probably the housemate I’ve lived with here the longest. He was obviously only living here for the cheaper rent in a share-house, but he sucks as a share-houser, if that’s a word. Anyway, finally Andrew sent him his notice (he told me he was gonna do that two years ago!) that it wasn’t working out with him. When the landlord lives in the house for a few months at a time, you should at least acknowledge him, you know? But nup. Yes, in a normal situation, you pay your rent to the landlord and he leaves you be. But this isn’t a normal situation. We get the house probably 9 months of the year, landlord-free, and probably for 2 of the months of the year, he is home. The other month he’s usually travelling elsewhere whilst he’s home, like he is now. He’s still down in northern NSW, whilst I came back this week.

Anyway, Kurt is great, and has been living here for probably 5/6 months now? He’ll sit in the lounge and chat and have a drink and socialize. Although he’s just started seeing someone, so Andrew thinks he might end up moving out with this guy haha.
Then there’s me, who is a fossil in the house. I’ll be haunting the walls after I go.
So point is, Nick has about a month to get out of here, and the ad is up for yet another housemate, who Andrew will make sure is social.

There was some happy news today, before the back-stuff happened. I woke up to a few emails from RocketTicket. Ooooo!
And one of them was my ticket to Eurovision. It looks all official and everything, with the logo of the official site who were selling the tickets (fucking useless btw) on it, barcodes and everything. If it is a complete scam, they’ve done it incredible well and I give my hat to them for scamming me LOL. There’s instructions and everything to just give them the ticket at the door and I’ll be let in.
I sure as fuck hope so. I’ll be pissed if I fly all the way to Portugal to be turned away at the door haha.
Oh well, it’ll be an experience won’t it? And I’ll still be in Portugal.

So now that it’s official and I’m actually GOING TO FUCKING EUROVISION IN MAY, I’m suddenly all excited about the planning and the looking up of flight prices etc. It looks like I can get there return for around $1350ish on Emirites and/or Qantas. I definitely need to do some more research.
My hotel is already booked, and I originally booked for 4 people as I thought my friend Julian and some of his friends were coming. Sure, it’s easy enough to change back to a 1-bedroom, but when I looked at the prices, it’s $150 MORE for me to downgrade the bedroom in the hotel. So I’m just going to keep it. Sure it might put some family out or something, but why the hell should I pay more for a 1-bedder when I can keep the 2-bedder?
I have the hotel, and I have the (hopefully legit) ticket! I just need to get there and back.
Matt and his boyfriend suggested that I should visit Spain whilst I’m there, so I’m thinking of going for two weeks. I’ll be in Portugal for six days, so maybe I can spend the rest in Spain?
I think I’ll only have about two weeks leave anyway, given that I need a week for Mardi Gras (Cher’s coming!!!) and another week later in June for Perth. I think with both personal and annual leave, I should have enough.
Unless I can’t do in to work on account of my damn back being a bitch. That’ll eat into it a bit, but hopefully it should accumulate up again by May.

Has anyone been to Portugal or Spain and can recommend things to do? I don’t know a word of Portuguese or Spanish, but I figure if I got by in France, Germany and The Netherlands okay, I should be able to there as well.