I don't have a major back injury. This is good. I have a couple of minorly herniated discs, which is something that tons of people apparently walk around with and are pain-free. I am not pain-free, but the good news is that I see a light at the end of my tunnel. I think.

Doctors, surgeons, chiropractors... all of 'em suggest lots of exercise, stretching, and physical therapy. I'm using the directive as an excuse to get somewhat in shape before the twins arrive. I can't run or play basketball or do anything jarring or jumpy or stupid. But I can sweat on an elliptical, ride a bike, and swim if it causes no pain. I've done some light weights, too. Lots of crunches and ab work (strong front = strong back). The elliptical is usually pain-free. The bike? I rode 12 easy/flat miles a couple weeks ago and was pretty damn stiff for a couple days afterwards.

Swimming? It's awesome.

I haven't swam laps in over 10 years. I used to be a really strong swimmer, lifeguard, swim instructor... couldn't stay out of the water. Now I'm re-learning how to breathe, tread water, breast-stroke... the whole lot. It's harder than I remember and not as natural as I recall. This last weekend (session #3) I had my strongest swim yet, going about 45 minutes (with plenty of stopping) with multiple 100 yard lengths mixed with lots of 50s and 75s. Michael Phelps I am not.

The best part is remembering how you feel after a swim. Loose. Tired. Heady. Euphoric. Kind of like a good surf, only with more intensity. It's a full-body workout and a good one at that. Also clears the mind.

The orthopedic doc wants me to be able to swim for 40-45 minutes straight with no stopping before I see a physical therapist. That's a lofty goal. My stages/goals are coming in lengths of 100 yards, so I hope to be able to swim a straight 200 yard length, working my way up to a straight 500 which is pretty respectable and something I used to be able to do fairly routinely.

My goals were put in check last weekend during my "strong" swim, as the guy in the lane next to me did a crawl stroke with one arm, breathing only every-other stroke, while doing an intermittent dolphin kick. That is kick-ass. I'm just trying to get back to 200.

Baby steps. 

Like all great debates of our time -- Republican vs. Democrat, Global Warming vs. Global Cooling, Giants vs. Dodgers, the decision to consider potentially purchasing a mini-van is not to be taken lightly. The decision to test drive one was intensely painful. Actually buying one is unfathomable.

We drove a Routan, the van that Brooke Shields pitches in what's really quite a funny ad. We also have driven a Mazda5, which is about as un-mini-van a mini-van can be. Still, it's in the vehicle class. It's actually in its own class: MicroVan! As if that makes it any better.

The pros: Mini-vans are roomy, spacious, roomy, they haul lots of crap and people, provide easy access to rear seats and around baby carriers, the doors practically open by themselves, etc. They're roomy and convenient and contain features that other cars can't provide because they're not as big or dorky enough. That's about it.

The cons: They suck every bit of manliness out of a guy, sap every bit of cool out of anyone, they're boxes on wheels, the gas mileage is worse than a lot of big SUVs, and... did I mention the destruction of manhood?

Mini-vans are anti-everything we've been told is cool, they represent everything un-manly. As someone said to me recently: You might as well chop your balls off and hand them over. To whom, I'm not sure, but I get the picture of the ball-chopping. Ouch. Mini-vans = pain and no fun. Chop off your balls.

A book we're reading, "Juggling Twins," has a short, two-page chapter entitled: To Mini-Van or Not to Mini-Van? That is indeed the question, and the author (a woman) sides with the men saying that no matter how convenient, mini-vans are the antichrist.

So WTF was I doing looking at vans? They're open to consideration. We're about to become a family of five, for chrissakes, and you know having one would be convenient. Most SUVs and crossovers don't have pilot seats in the middle row (some do), and we have a nearly four-year-old who is going to need to be buckled in and two infants who we'll need easy access to.

In Iraq, however, I'm pretty sure most families of five or more don't have a Routan. Somehow, they survive. I think we could live without one, too.

We also looked at a Chevy Traverse (a CHEVY!) which is actually a really nice, large crossover with AWD and lots of bells and whistles and captain's chairs, and... holy crap it's expensive. And I thought GM was going bankrupt!? This is a pricy automobile.

I'm against mini-vans 100 percent. No desire. Zilch. Would I drive it much? Probably more than I'd like, which would be all but once. I'm pulling for the Mazda, actually, because it's super cheap, just big enough, gets decent mileage, and we've had good success with our current Mazda3 (great little car). I'd like to get the bare minimum for a couple of years, then re-assess when kids are bigger and surely the car companies will release awesome vehicles for families like mine with manly hybrid/biodiesel engines that get 50 MPG. Right?

We'll see where this goes, though I'm afraid I'm sitting in the passenger seat on this one.

So I have a problem I'm trying to work out in my head. It's a little confusing, but goes something like this. Please bear with me as I work through this...

• Despite liberal use of hair styling products, I am totally hetero and am totally married to a woman. Together, we have a son (and two girls on the way). We're your classic American family, really, just trying to make our way in the world.
  
• We actually (really!) do have gay friends. Good ones, who are married and who have been in relationships with each other for far longer than I have been with my wife. We love and support them, friend to friend and one family to another.
  
• My wife and I were married almost nine years ago on a grassy hill overlooking the Monterey Bay. We didn't get married in a church. On purpose. Our officiant was non-denominational, as was our ceremony.
  
• I hear that lots of people get married in similar fashion, without any religious oversight. I've even been to such a wedding or two. I don't think these are anomalies.
  
• However, there are lots of very religious gay folks around. That's all good but kind of beside the point. 
  
• I wonder if the pro-Prop. 8 folks actually, really honor my marriage, which is about hetero-love, and that's about it.
  
• Yet for some reason, it's legal for me to be married -- I have a document saying the state approves of my marriage. I don't have any religious paperwork saying that I'm married. God certainly wasn't involved and didn't sign a piece of paper like then-Gov. Gray Davis did. OK, it was a rubber stamp but you get the picture.
• I ask the pro-Prop. 8 people: Are you really trying to protect my family from gay marriage, or do you think that since God wouldn't sanction two men to marry, therefore neither should the state? Shouldn't the two be completely divorced (oh don't get me started on traditional marriages ending in divorce!)?
  
• I know, lots of Prop. 8 support came from various churches -- Christian, Mormon, whatever. However, I think that the religious angle of Prop. 8 is being largely ignored, due to my next point and the crux of all my confusion...
  
• If God didn't sanction my marriage (and I didn't ask him/her to), why should my marriage be sanctioned by anyone or anything? Why should the state recognize my marriage? Is this a stretch in logic? I don't think so, really.
  
• Since I don't buy into the whole religious aspect of marriage, how is it that I'm married? If our hetero-only marriage isn't really valid due to lack of religious oversight, well, then I think you'd probably have quite a few invalid weddings and thus a lot of angry heteros in California, and boy would that be a pickle.
• I would prefer the pro-Prop. 8 people to cease trying to "defend (my) marriage." My marriage is not under attack. I'm very comfortable with my marriage, but thanks for trying to keep me safe. Really, my traditional marriage is not in need of your protective services.

You might say: Well, why did you bother to get married? Pretty simple: Because that's what people do (and we are a classic family after all) who love each other and want to be with each other for the rest of their lives. And, it just so happens that the state (the guys who gave me a document affirming my marriage) provides certain legal benefits to folks like me who are married.

So, sorry -- it's not logical that two people who love each other, like my gay friends, can't get the same piece of paper I have, and be "married," and get the same protection and benefits under the law. I doubt my logic would hold up in court, but it's one that I don't really hear being discussed in the court of public opinion.

Maybe it's something us hetero married folks who don't believe in discrimination can rally around.

The good news now is that we're about 23 weeks along, and we have confirmed two very healthy and normal twin girls on the way. They're fraternal. Due date is likely to be mid-to-late August. They're totally unexpected, and we're in for one helluva ride. Minivans are now suddenly on our radar (nooooooo!).

I'd write more about this now but I've got a website redesign to work on, a room to fill, diapers to buy, etc.

But there, cat's out of the bag! More to come...

The chiropractor has been an interesting experience -- kind of a mix between physical therapy and what I expected with all the back cracking and such. They're stretching me out real good, and I think the last appointment where they put me in this crazy pretzel position on my side and gave my back a good crack did something positive. I haven't been in severe pain since then.

On Friday I went to the acupuncturist, and it changed my life. 

The first 15 minutes or so was all consultation. The doctor was very kind and easy to talk to. We primarily talked about what I think is the real reason I'm in such pain: stress. Life at a startup is nuts. And if that wasn't enough, we're about 20 weeks pregnant with twin girls. Yes, you heard it here first. The due date is probably late July/August. Suddenly we're thinking about diapers and minivans, how to work with two babies, etc. It's all enough to make a guy's back hurt.

So after chit-chatting about life and my back, she took me into a room where she tested my meridians on a computer. The thing about acupuncture is that despite the fact that it's a little hocus pocus, thousands of years of success and friends I've had who swear by it can't be wrong. So she's poking my finger with an electronic probe that's connected to a MacBook via a USB cable, and there's a digital graph that's going up and down, beeping, and she's looking at it, poking me in the finger and making "yes" and "hmmm" sounds. She discovers because of the stress and that I'm vegetarian, that I'm deficient in B vitamins and in Magnesium. She'll give me some supplements after the acupuncture session, which will also focus on curing the stress and pain. She says they'll probably help me. She's probably right.

Then we go into the acupuncture room and she lies me down on a massage table, face first. She shows me the needles, which look as I expect, and begins inserting them into my left leg, mainly along the "T-band" tendon as I ask lots of nervous questions. She puts one near my knee, a couple more along the side of my calf, and a couple around my achilles tendon. She puts electronic stimulation pads on my lower back, and another needle in the top of my head, "for the stress." I felt a slight sting as she inserted a couple of needles in my leg, but nothing severe. More like a pinch.

Immediately I broke out in a sweat. I got hot, and she said I was reacting normally. My palms were practically dripping. I started breathing quickly and while trying to relax with deep breaths, felt a twinge in my left side near my stomach -- there was no needle there. She said it was normal, likely my gall bladder.

OK. Weird.

She gave me an emergency escape button to push if I needed it, and left the room for a couple minutes as some relaxing eastern/meditative music played in the background. Mexican guys next door were working on a house and blasting their music. It was distracting. I wanted to push the button out of panic, but also wanted to see where this ride was going. I could feel my body doing strange things. A twitch here, a twinge there. I felt vibrations moving down my legs and out my toes. I felt a little scared, but also very relaxed.

She came back in after a couple minutes to check on me, and told me to "gel."

Over the next 15 minutes, I felt more of what I described above, laughed to myself a few times and nearly cried once. I slipped into a complete state of relaxation and deep breathing. I tried to doze off but I didn't really need to. I was asleep, but aware.

When time was up she came back in and extracted the needles. I felt a few sharp zings as she removed the ones from my leg. I felt really spacey -- like I was stoned but also similar to the way you feel after an hour-long massage. I took my time getting up and walked out of the office feeling incredibly different, if not slightly healed. The pain was still there, but I didn't care about it. There was a weight lifted from my shoulders. Cars whizzed by as I walked back to work and I didn't pay attention to a single one. I got back to the office and felt happy, trying to describe the experience to my co-workers who probably thought I was a bit nuts. Or stoned.

It's tough to describe. Am I better? Yeah. Was it because of the acupuncture? Maybe. It definitely helped de-stress me. I've been taking the supplements for a couple days now and feel good. My back is still really tight and my sciatica a little painful, but it hasn't woken me up during sleep since Wednesday. That's a good thing.

How much of all this is mental? How much is attributable to the chiropractor? My stretching and icing? I'll probably never know but I do feel like I'm on the other side of the hump now. I hope. I'm a changed person because of the acupuncture. It's powerful stuff, and I'd encourage anyone to try it.

Heck, anything is better than Prednizone. That shit is wicked.     

It hurts, a lot. There have been a few times where I thought I wouldn't make it out of bed. A few other times I practically flew out of bed because it hurt so bad (at 5am). Other times I thought I couldn't get out of the car. Last week after waking up particularly sore, and trying to loosen up and stretch out, I even sobbed a bit out of pain and frustration. I've never lived with any pain before. I'm healthy, young, in shape, and have never dealt with steady, ongoing pain of any kind. It messes with your head.

After being diagnosed, the doctor gave me strong Naproxen, an anti-inflammatory. I took that for a week, with no results. Then he gave me Prednizone, a steroid to take over nine days. On day two, I found myself shouting at my son for no reason, felt my blood boiling, and was ready to punch a hole in the wall. I quit it that night, and vowed to find another way to cure my pain. Drugs suck.

I've been stretching twice a day, ever since the first sign of pain showed up after a trip to the gym. I made things worse after demolishing my backyard, but still was stretching a lot and incorporating some yoga into my routine, and icing.

The pain worsened over time, so I finally last week went to a chiropractor for the first time ever. The first session was interesting. Lots of stretching in different/intense ways, plus some deep-tissue work with various machines, and a light adjustment. I felt better the next day, but two days later I was markedly worse. I went back Thursday and he really adjusted (cracked) me, and tried a couple other machines. He said he was "throwing everything" at me, and today I felt quite a bit better. Must have been the cracking yesterday.

On the other hand, he's been encouraging me to get an MRI, which I'm trying to set up now, so they can get a clear view on any potential internal problems with discs and whatnot.

Meantime, I was referred to an acupuncturist. I went today, and it was really incredible, weird, amazing, odd, calming and uncomfortable, all at the same time. I felt things in my body that I've never felt before, and I felt different afterwards. It's tough to describe, but I felt waves of pain exiting the areas of my back and leg that have been hurting. When it was over, I felt like a space cadet -- a little high and definitely changed. I felt better overall, and glad to have gone through the experience.

I still have pain in my back. I stretched out again tonight and am on to trying a few different things now. I'll write more about those later as well as the acupuncture experience, but suffice to say it's been an interesting -- if not painful -- week. 

With any luck, a little more cracking and acupuncture, and a positive outlook, I'll be better soon.

I hadn't seen Jenna since we graduated from high school. We found each other on facebook a while back, and finally arranged for a visit. Way overdue!

I actually did the damage a couple weeks prior to the yard work, probably at the gym or maybe even in Tahoe on that sled run. Thought it was a pulled muscle and not a big deal. Boy was I wrong. And boy do I feel old!

I just stopped taking the meds the doctor gave me. I started on Naproxen, which wasn't a big deal but wasn't helping, either. Now I am on Prednisone, which yesterday I noticed a huge mood swing and was getting really irritable. So I won't take it anymore. Not worth it.

I already have an appointment with a natural medicine/accupuncture clinic, and I have a recommendation for a chiropractor. Going to see if I can get in there sooner than the accupuncturist and nip this thing in the bud. I've been stretching and doing some yoga, none of it is helping.

It's literally a pain in the ass. And the backyard sits, halfway torn apart. I can barely get out of the car, and I can't really sit on the couch or do anything normal. Awesome.

This weekend:

• Hauled over 60 cubic feet of rocks out of the yard
• Cleared the entire area around the lawn of rocks (this impacts next weekend's project)
• Smashed and removed the concrete border around the lawn
• Weeded the yard
• Weeded, tilled and prepped the garden for planting
• Jo bought a bunch of sprouted veggies. We set those in the raised bed, pots and planters today. We've got all the makings of a summer of salad, plus bell peppers and more. Transplanted existing strawberries... we'll see if that works. They're sensitive.
• Started adjusting drip irrigation for the garden and prepped it with weed-blocker fabric. Eventually I'll move some of the yard rocks around the garden.

I have a sunburn, my body aches, and I'm wondering what the hell I've gotten myself into. The backyard went from passable to thrashed in two days. Now I'm in deep.

This week and next weekend: finish the garden and prepare for moving/expanding the lawn, and figure out what to do with the existing sprinkler system in the lawn. I bought a book today about how to do sprinklers, so I'm relying on it. More to come....

Today, we finally kicked it off.

We're just going to wing it, do it on the cheap (and that means cheap labor, aka Me).

Here's the general plan:

1. Demo the existing stuff. That entails rock removal (there are so many rocks!), pulling up concrete, yanking plants out, grading soil, cleaning up the garden, etc.

Today, day one, I weeded just about the entire yard, prepped the garden, and started shoveling rocks. They're like river rocks, and there are more than I expected -- the rocks extend about six inches deep into the soil and are compacted into it as well. Pain. I reached my goal though today, clearing them away all around the lawn.

2. Make the lawn bigger, filling in the rock area around the lawn with new grass. This may be anti-green, but we're eventually going to yank out our front lawn, and we're not adding much real-estate to the back one. 

3. Rip out the existing patio and put in a new/bigger one. This also will require removing more rocks.

4. Rip up and re-do the existing pathways. This will be about the only thing we'll need to hire someone for.

5. Re-landscape and add fruit trees. With the new landscaping, we'll go with low-water and natural grasses and plants. 

6. Install a pergola over the back of the new patio. In the summer our yard gets full sun, all day. It'd be nice to have some shade out there.

Easy, right? Stay tuned. I'll post progress here and add pics on flickr as we go.

Admittedly, launch was not bug-free, but we got it out the door and it's starting to pay off. Our celebrity iPod auction is hitting the wires and getting picked up by lots of newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, and more. That's driving some traffic. Our push to showcase great content continues and will hopefully draw in more visitors. And, hopefully the ethos of the company and the site will resonate.

Last week on 60 Minutes, Capt. Sully (of US Airways jet-in-the-Hudson River fame) said of his incredible and celebrated heroism: "Something about this episode has captured people's imagination. I think they want good news. I think they want to feel hopeful again. And if I can help in that way, I will."

I'm no Sully, but am happy to be a part of a company whose mission is to deliver good news and hope.

So, I'll say something about Monday -- the day before -- instead. During Obama's volunteer-a-thon, photo-op and call for national service during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Obama was asked about race. It's a topic he mostly avoided during the campaign, but suddenly opened up yesterday. Here's what he said to the Washington Post:

"There is an entire generation that will grow up taking for granted that the highest office in the land is filled by an African American...

"I mean, that's a radical thing. It changes how black children look at themselves. It also changes how white children look at black children. And I wouldn't underestimate the force of that."

I've been trying to explain what Obama means to my three-year-old. Of course that's mostly impossible. I hope he's excited about current events, politics and civics like I was when I was young (not that young). While we replayed the inauguration ceremony tonight after dinner, he was doing jumps off the couch into a pile of pillows and occasionally glancing at the TV. He does know that the president is Obama, and that he lives in the White House in Washington, DC. He liked Aretha Franklin. Hey, it's a start!

What matters to me are Obama's words above. His words and the fact that he's the one he's talking about will have a greater impact on my son than anything I can tell him now or in the future. Obama as president will affect and impact the rest of his life and his attitudes toward peers, colleagues, friends, neighbors and everyone else he meets.

As he grows up and when we can have a conversation about history, he'll get it. Before Obama, no black man could be president. He repeated the oath on a Capitol building that was built by slaves. The symbolism is just so immense. The future is so different after today. 

My son will remember for the rest of his life growing up during a time when Obama was president. His first president will have been a black man.  

All this hit me today as I shed a few tears during the inauguration (and again during the replay). The magnitude of what it all means can't be stressed enough. Yet, hopefully someday it won't be a big deal at all -- just a feel-good memory since we now have a new normal.