Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

This is a small green apple, and it tastes about the way I'd expect from that: mildly tart, a little sweet, some juice. It's edible, but I don't think I'm going to bother again, even given that this is another early season apple (I bought it Saturday, meaning it was picked no later than July 29, I think in the Lower Hudson Valley). The skin is a little thinner than on a Granny Smith, and has little flavor.

I have results back from my bloodwork, and everything is normal, i.e. no signs of diabetes. The doctor at the walk-in clinic thought I should get checked because the infection took longer than he expected to heal. My GP thought it was unlikely, but that there was no harm in checking; I can spare 10 mL of blood.)

I got my slightly belated annual review at work (no more delay than one expects in American business generally), and I'm getting a nice raise. There were no major surprises in the evaluation, because my boss believes in giving us feedback at the time. One minor surprise: I was praised as "organized" despite a cluttered desk.

I have tried a new vegetable: burdock. At least, I don't think I'd had it before. This was in a sushi roll, along with mackerel, ginger, and cucumber. The main thing the burdock supplied was texture; I can take or leave it. I mention this because I don't taste many new ingredients these days, a combination of some adventurous eating in previous years and having limits on what I will try. That was in Cambridge with adrian_turtle; we had a quiet weekend in, partly because of rainy weather, but I'd been promising myself sushi for weeks.

I skipped going to the gym today because my knees were sore, but I have rolled out the IT band and other leg fascia, and did a bit of balance and hamstring stuff here at home.

I've remarked before that sometimes my company pays me to solve quadratics. Today I was asked to check/fix the distance labels in a diagram, which meant applying the Pythagorean theorem (automatically, in my head, we turned out not to need that value), measuring the actual sides as distinct from what the labels said, and then playing with ratios. And I realize most people don't find the idea of getting paid to do this fun, which is part of why this landed on my desk.