As I've mentioned to some of you, I happen to know an olympian on the men's K4 1000m.

He's an elementary school friend who I haven't seen in years, although I saw his grandmother last Wednesday (she came to my concert!) and I see his dad pretty regularly around campus. I suppose if you want to be really correct, I was mostly friends with his older sister, but I've got many fond memories of paddling the rubber dinghy around their flooded backyard, playing pirates with our neighbourhood gang. ;)

I sadly forgot to set my alarm and watch his heat last night. It doesn't look like it went so well for them. Even so, I'll be getting up bright and early Wednesday morning to watch him in the semi-finals!

If you're looking for someone to cheer for, more good vibes can't hurt. :) Go Canadian K4 team! And if anyone has a way to record the semi finals for me (or happened to record the heat this morning), I'd love to have a copy!

PS - To highlight Angus' coolness: he's ranked second in Canada on the K1 500 and 1000, right behind Adam Van Koeverden, who just made the k1 final!

A single photo from today. More in the queue, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll try to do photos tomorrow.

This guy (whose name I'll have to look up) was a riot to watch play his mandolin like he was a total rock god. Didn't hurt that on top of having quite the unusual stage presence, he also really *did* rock that mandolin. It was a really fun show!

Here's a photo that's a bit more folky than the last, since I grabbed the stuff off the camera anyhow.

Doesn't she have a great smile?

I'm at the Ottawa Folk Festival the past couple of days. I've been liveblogging some of it, and I've been taking lots of pictures, but it's pretty late and I still need a shower, so the summary will likely have to wait 'till the festival's done.

The picture really doesn't say folk fest, does it? This is from Spiral Beach's set in the dance tent. And oh, there was dancing. I wasn't sure I'd like 'em, but I had a blast yesterday when this was taken, and again today seeing them at one of the workshops. It's so often the stuff I don't expect that I enjoy the most at these festivals. :)

Edit: Link for the band in the photo: http://www.spiralbeach.com/

Last concert was tonight. Pretty day, after all that gloomy gray earlier on!

One of my labmates got slashdotted. Pretty cool!

As usual, most of the commenters didn't actually *read* the articles, but it's still kinda fun, and extra press is still exciting. :)

My knee is getting better in... well, maybe "leaps and bounds" isn't appropriate in this case. But it is noticeably better, and that took a lot less time than I'd have thought, given how much it hurt on Tuesday.

I've been wearing a tensor bandage as a knee brace, which has been drawing a lot of stares when people see it. Mostly I try to wear a skirt that's long enough to cover it, as you can see in the picture of me in the backyard (where I worked yesterday, despite needing to apply a patch to improve the security of working environment ;) ). I don't need the brace to walk or anything, but having it on my knee reminds me not to do stupid things -- run up stairs, sit with it tucked underneath me, etc. It's actually more helpful now that it hurts less, because I'm more liable to forget and do things that will make it worse.

That said, I'm going to try to make it over to the mall because I've invited people over for an 8/8/8 party and am lacking in refreshments for the evening. Hopefully this doesn't count as a stupid thing. Wish me luck!

Tuesday, I was out at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival to see my friend Rebecca perform.

Trivia: the clarinet I play now, I actually bought used from Rebecca many years ago. She's upgraded many times since, but I just play with a community concert band, so it'll do. :)

The concert was "music of our time" -- part of a series at the festival showcasing contemporary composers. Now, when I tell people I'm going to a contemporary chamber music concert, people generally find excuses not to go with me, but I've actually had a lot of success at this series in previous years. Contrary to popular belief, contemporary composers do more than produce earache-inducing atonal stuff. ;)

This was a particularly interesting concert because it showcased a couple of pieces Rebecca herself had commissioned as part of her research. She's been commissioning shorter pieces from Canadian composers to showcase extended clarinet techniques. The idea is that these pieces will be more accessible to undergraduate or advanced high school students, who currently have little repertoire that uses these techniques. It's a pretty neat project!

The second of her commissions was really quite haunting -- the composer got up to talk about it, and how he'd used the technique of buzzing into the clarinet (sans mouthpiece) as a way to musically represent the progress of Alzheimer's. A lot of the frustration and degradation of the disease really came through in the piece. The buzzing through the clarinet produces a horn-like sound, surprisingly clear, and saddening as she echoed what had been played on the full instrument moments before.

More photos from the concert here

One of the benefits to having an online journal and a decent email archive is that I can quickly search the entries to figure out how long my knee has hurt.

Looks like it started hurting around the beginning of July, I think around the first VA fight practice I went to. It probably hurt for a little over a week then got better, and it started hurting noticeably again around OLS.

Interesting: Apparently it hurt during OLS in 2006 too. It's the same knee (the left one), and it seems like it's the same kind of pain. It aches around the knee, getting much worse when doing weight bearing exercise, and stairs and driving (the clutch -- I don't do automatics) are particularly bad. So whatever I'm doing to hurt it, it's happening in the summer, and it's something I do semi-frequently.

Quick web search just tells me what I already knew, though: if I go to a doctor, they'll tell me to take anti-inflammatories and don't do things that hurt. Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Thank goodness for being able to recline with the laptop, eh? The page for chondromalacia (basically, hurting the kneecap) mentions that low impact stuff like swimming and maybe even light biking (they say stationary bike, but probably flat stuff is ok too) might be helpful in strengthening, and since biking hurts way less than walking I guess I'll continue to commute that way for the nice flat ride to school. (No taking the stairs up to the lab, though, I guess.)

Ah well. Took an anti-inflammatory, maybe will see about some ice if the pain doesn't go down soon.