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Is there anything better than sacred vocal music from the early Renaissance? I’ve got the Tallis Scholars doing the Victoria Requiem, and next in the queue is the Trio Medieval doing a variety of stuff in the same style. There’s an absolute purity in the use of the primary intervals. Combined with the lack of overtrained and ostentatious vibrato…it’s like they’re painting with overtones.

It’s music like this that gives me the belief that beauty exists in the world, rather than simply in the eye of the beholder.

This is what happened: “The most common sports injury.”

5ux0rz.

Allright, to the internet for medical advice.

this is me. I felt the “pop.”

Yup. Second or third degree. I’m in “moderate to severe pain” and I can gimp around without falling to the floor screaming. I’m calling it a “severe second degree outer sprain.”

Unh hunh… we’re sending a theme here. “A sprained ankle can be very painful.” Thanks.

Looks like one to two days of “RICE” (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) with no load bearing, followed by a week or two of gradual rehab.

My abs and arms are already pleading with me not to do the obvious in terms of maintaining my general fitness regimen while staying of my legs. Oh yes, we have a pull-up bar. Oh yes…dammit.

I’ve been exercising a lot lately in pursuit of general fitness, and also in preparation for the great Alaska adventure to begin next week.

Now I’ve sprained my ankle, solidly.

I was at the karate school, doing jumping jacks. Jumping jacks, dammit. I must have done a hundred thousand jumping jacks in my life without injury. Landed on the outside edge of my right foot, which promptly folded under with a dismay inducing *pop* sound. I gimped home and proceeded to elevate, ice, and compress it (we’re on round two of that sequence now), but I am seriously boned. I’m hoping that this is one of those that feels a lot better in the morning, but I’m guessing that the reality is that I won’t know the real extent of the injury until morning.

It looks to me like it’s more in line with a sprain than a fracture: I can walk on it, with pain, and icing reduces the pain considerably.

Jen has generously let be borrow her foot support brace that she has recently moved out of, since her heel is all better now.

Grrrrrr.

I have installed the ceiling fan, and it is good.

I have painted the porch, and it is pretty close to good (though light failed before I was done). No telling what the dawn will reveal.

Jen and I took a 29.5 mile (round trip) bike ride down to the park. That was fun, but my butt is sore.

Got the grill working by way of an adaptor between the tank (screw adapter) and the stove (quick-release adapter). Grilled Marlin. It was very, very good. A light olive oil / garlic / salt n’ pepper rub. Mmmmmmmm.

And now, the sweet, sweet repose.

I squeezed a $1000 refund out of Ace Atlas, by pointing out that they didn’t even bother to find us a truck until after the promised delivery date of our stuff. We decided to apply that money directly to some home upgrades we’ve been meaning to make. Specifically: A garbage disposal ($135), a ceiling fan for the bedroom ($89 + $30 for a remote control), paint for the porch / windowsills (~$100), and a new refrigerator ($the rest). Spent a lot of yesterday powerwashing and then scraping the paint on the back porch. I suspect that after another hour or so of savage scraping, it’ll be ready to paint. The powerwasher still rocks.

The refrigerator is needed because ours keeps freaking out and allowing ice cream to melt and milk to go bad. I suspect that it needs a “recharge” of the “coolant,” or else that it’s “hosed” and needs “replacement.” Already tried vacuuming out the heat exchange coils, moving it away from the wall, adjusting the thermostat settings, etc. I figure that by the time we got a tech out here to evaluate the repairs, we would be in for $100, plus the cost of the repairs ($50 – $200). Given that the replacement fridge we want is either $400 or $500 (depending in whether we go for the brushed metal finish)…it just doesn’t make sense to do a fix that according to the web will hold for a year or two at best.

The garbage disposal will be fun. It claims that all you need to install it is plumbers putty and an adjustable wrench. Riiiiiiight. Still, I haven’t had a major home improvement train-wreck in a while. It’ll serve to keep me humble.

Also got a new shredder, after the old one burned out. Having recycled eight years of paper copies of Science I have turned my attention to the filing cabinet. I have bank statements from my freshman year of college. This is not cool. I’m keeping annual summaries forever, but monthly statements only for the current year. Ditto with phone / utility bills, etc. It’s really mentally refreshing to just shred a huge pile of paper and know that you’re fighting the obsessive compulsive demons.

Picked up a cat door which will go in the basement door. This will allow us (with a suitable training period) to move the litter boxes and food downstairs. Hadn’t done that before because we want to keep the musty basement odor in the basement, and the way to do this is to keep the door closed. This means that I get to saw a large hole in a door. I’m psyched.

Departing for the epic adventure in Alaska a week from today. Woot!

Our corporate partner, Orion Multisystems is getting a lot of press. This article is in LinuxWorld. We’re not mentioned until the bottom of the article, but we’re certainly bundled with every life science product that they ship.

In other news Evanescence rocks my world even harder, now that I’ve seen their low budget yet cool videos.

Animation. With sound. Sort of disturbing, really.