I had my first physical therapy session today (and already I'm crosslegged and slouching at my desk). They said I'd be sore, but I know it won't hit me until I try to roll out of bed tomorrow. (Roll and push. I'm learning new ways to do everything: how to sit up, how to stand up from sitting, how to stretch. Everything.) Today is just a minor muscle soreness, interesting only by its location across my lower back. "We're developing muscles you didn't know you had," Beth told me. Word.

I didn't know what to expect. My only prior experience in physical therapy was a couple of visits to a big, impersonal sports medicine clinic where they made me work my sprained ankle in evil mutant Nautilus machines. But the first thing they (or she, actually; her name is Laurie) did was put me facedown on a padded table and place a big flat hot pack wrapped in a towel on my lower back. We're talking bliss, here. I wiggled my toes in pleasure and dozed off a bit.

After that, I did a couple of exercises -- pullbacks with a stretch band to work the upper back, using the StairMaster backward, resistance stuff -- and felt pretty good. They hadn't put anything weird on me yet.

But of course they did, eventually. Laurie hooked me up to a FOCUS machine which buzzed my back muscles with electricity and made them contract more. I spent ages hooked up to the FOCUS and doing odd little backward leg kicks. My hip flexors are short and my hip joints loose, so I kept kicking to the side by accident and correcting myself. In any case, my back started to hurt. So you could say that part kind of sucked.

Later, though, I got ultrasound, then some other acronym involving electrodes on my back with an ice pack. I would have preferred to finish with that heavenly hot pack, but they must have their reasons.

I took home a handful of photocopies, like a student, telling me how to stretch. One of the stretches made me yelp, so Laurie said to skip that one. Fine with me.

I want my old stretches back. I'm starting to realize that this whole thing with my back is going to require me to change my life. Even my usual morning stretch, putting one heel at a time on my dresser, is off limits. It's hard; I'm tempted to do my usual stretches. But then I'd be in my usual pain.

It reminds me of quitting smoking. If you want the benefits, you have to give it up for good; you have to change your behavior and your thinking to that of a person who doesn't smoke, and then you eventually become that person. You can't become a person who doesn't smoke if you're busy being an ex-smoker.

So I have to become a person with good posture. That means giving up the stretches which have always made me feel better in the short run, though apparently worse in the long run. There goes my party-trick flexibility. Maybe I'll get sports in exchange.

Apropos of nothing: Russell Crowe's next film is called The Far Side of the World and will be directed by Peter Weir(!). I love Peter Weir (Witness, Fearless, Gallipoli, Mosquito Coast, Picnic at Hanging Rock and more). And Crowe is an asshole, but he's still an astonishing actor. I can't wait to see what results from this match. I hope it's not fistfights.

Unfortunately, the screenplay is based on a book called Master and Commander (no comment; it's too easy) and is about pirate adventures at sea. Yawn. But Weir says it's really about the friendship between two men (Crowe and someone else) on one of the boats. We'll see. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but Weir is a genius with a good track record.

Speaking of sports, the Red Sox pitcher Derek Lowe threw a no-hitter the other night against Tampa Bay. Of course, the whole city has its hopes up again: this will be the year we beat the Curse of the Bambino; this will be the year we win it all. They get our hopes up at the start and break our hearts every time. But even if we lose every game from here on out, Derek Lowe still pitched a no-hitter, and that's worth a smile.