Week 10 and I am feeling great. My energy level is high,  I am back in the gym, my low carb weight loss plan seems to be working and I am going to social events, plays, movies and restaurants. In fact the one thing everyone keeps reminding me about is that "you have had major surgery, don't overdo it."

It sounds trite and a bit Pollyanna-ish to say that there are some positive aspects to this whole back pain nightmare - but in truth there are.

Ok probably not a good joke to make right now when I am 5 days post spine surgery - but I am a little sad at having missed Blackbird Theatre's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: My guest reviewer saw it in my place. And I can never resist a little word play.

When is sympathy the wrong approach? When you are talking to a perfectionistic procrastinator with ongoing leg pain in winter. When it hurts to sit and stand, and its cold and wet outside, it's so comforting to curl up under a cosy blanket and escape into a well-told tale, whether a novel or a television series. And when your own words emerge in jerky clumps, as if your thoughts are crashing against successive barriers erected by electric flashes of pain - well it's too easy to say "I'll write better when I feel better", and open a new novel on my E-Reader.

For those of you who been asking whether I have stopped "Sipping and Supping" or enthusiastically checking out the Vancouver "Theatre Seen", and those others who have asked why my saga of the Autumn East Coast Dance Cruise  seemed to drop anchor temporarily in Bar Harbor, Maine - here is the explanation and a cautionary tale.