Zombie Toe

Illness and computer problems...and grad school...got in the way of my posting. But since no one really READS this blog but me, that's okay!

About two months ago now, I wore an adorable pair of shoes to work. I bought these shoes for the play, and had no trouble with them.



Cute, right?! Now, I have feet which are not properly shaped. My second toe is very long, and the first toe curves in and under the second to the point that over the years, the inner part of my big toe has been flattened. A couple of doctors spoke to me about breaking the foot and resetting the toes, but I said no thanks. Additionally, the nails on my big toes and next-to-pinky toes grow upward at an angle rather than lying flat. This makes finding shoes very difficult. I was excited I'd been able to wear these.

Then I wore them to work.

And this happened.



It turns out this is a condition called "Black Toenail." A bruise forms underneath the toenail. Like so.



I took these pictures to gross out my friend Cassandra, because that's the kind of awesome friend I am.

So I read up on this condition, and it turns out that sometimes the trapped blood and bruising can cause the toenail to lose its connection to the toe. I kept an eye on mine, and began to notice last month that my right toenail was getting...loose.



I've been very nice to it, but it kept getting worse. This actually surprised me for two reasons. First, I would have thought my monkey-like second toe would suffer the most from pressure, but it's the big toes. Second, because my left foot is almost half a size bigger than my right. I'd've thought that one would get the worst of the deal. Lefty, however, looks a bit funky but is still solidly connected.

Here is Righty a week ago. It was wiggling a bit like a loose tooth.



And then this afternoon, I took off my shoe, and this greeted me.



Nice.

I went to get some gauze to wrap it up, but in the process the darn thing fell off. So now I have the perfect toe for Halloween!



Please ignore the dirtiness of my feet. The black is actually from the shoes I was wearing.

Zombie Toe eats the nails of healthy toes. "Naaaails! Must have naaails!"

Alternately, I could compare this to Tom Sawyer's "mortified toe."

At the very bottom there is new nail growth, which is what caused the old nail to finally give in and fall off. There's bits of old nail stuck on here and there, but it's not at all sore. I'm still going to wrap it, though. Research indicates it'll be 6 months - a year before I have a normal looking toenail growing there.

So there is my totally gross nail story. Saved on the internet for posterity.

*Shaking my fist in frustration!*

The net has been a nightmare all week, so I haven't been able to post (NO, I can't post at work; like most schools, blogging sites are blocked. Even if they weren't, I doubt I'd post, I'd feel guilty. Alas!). So now I'm all behind in my 182 and I find that personally insulting.

Really internet! What did I ever do to you?!

*insert copious moaning and generally nerdy gnashing of teeth here*

I think, since my blog is pretty much unread by anyone save myself :) I'll just back-post my book recommendations, but not add any random geekery. I was working on a TMNT rec to go with my random post, so that'll be up sometime tomorrow! Phew!

Also, could fall come now? I'm totally ready for it. It should not be 100 degrees while I'm watching college football. Just sayin'.

Childhood Geekery

My students are always surprised when I cheerfully accept my nerdiness. This is because they're at an age when labels are extremely important to a lot of them. Even those who are more individualistic are at the mercy of having labels used against them as taunts, so having an adult embrace being a dreaded "nerd," "geek," or even "goody two shoes" (someone invariably asks me in the first few weeks if I was a kid who got into trouble, and I answer quite honestly, "Nope!"). But really, I think I came out of the womb a nerd.

As a huge fan of cartoons, comics, and Star Trek, the great loves of my childhood were



Donatello
I had a lot of love for Michelangelo as well, but I recall as I reached the ripe old age of 8 or 9 realizing the magnificence that is Donatello. A dude who could build a sweet sewer-themed computer one second and beat somebody with a bo the next? SWEET! (...Is it just me, or does his shell look like it is in no way connected to his body in this picture? Additionally, I still sometimes ind myself humming the theme song to the ooold original series. Ah. Memories!)


Egon Spangler
Oh, my 10-year-old heart was yours, Egon. Your ridiculous hair. Your deep, awesome voice. Your pink suspenders. Only for you would I get up before 7 on a Saturday. It's a shame I thought the movie was meant to be scary instead of funny until a few years later; then I loved your real life incarnation as well.<3 (If you can stand the incredible pathos, one of Egon's best cartoon eps is right here on YouTube: "Egon's Ghost.")


Brainiac 5
I met Brainy in the grade where being smart stopped being cool and started being something to be tortured over. And by "met" I mean, of course, read. He was a character who was brilliant, and a bit weird, but still awesome and had incredible friends. My mother proved her love for me by taking me all over the southern US on my quest for his comics, and one of my fondest birthday memories is when my brother spent something in the ballpark of 10 bucks on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes back issues for me at $0.25 a piece. We may have our differences, but there are times we definitely get each other. Awwww. Poor Querl has been through several incarnations since then in which he was a stereotypical brilliant jerk, but he's hovering on being his old self these days (I think Johns wrote him better than Levitz is, but that's just life).

And the man to whom my little heart belonged (and a bit always will *girlish sigh*):


Dr. Leonard McCoy
I grew up on Star Trek. Is it really necessary to explain why Bones is the most awesome fictional character in the history of pop culture? No? I didn't think so. If for some strange reason you DO need to know: he's cranky, he's Southern, he's gentle, he's kind, he's stubborn, he's basically fantastic.

(....It doesn't hurt my feelings to think of Bones as looking like Karl Urban, but I adore De Kelley. He was such an incredible gentleman.)

This isn't to say that I didn't embrace traditionally "girly" things. While nerdy, I also had affection for My Little Ponies (mine knew all the songs from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack), Barbies (they were trapped in kidnapping plots on a regular basis), and the New Kids on the Block (Joey was my favorite). But growing up nerd was still basic to my psyche!

I realize that embracing the label of "nerd" doesn't exactly teach them to stop trying to categorize themselves, but maybe it takes away some of the sting when labels are used against them.

It's also fun confusing them because they're so trapped in their little boxes that they have a VERY difficult time wrapping their minds around a nerd who likes big, girly earrings and doing her nails.

Poor little brains, going into meltdown. *patpat*

My first YouTube video!

My mother tells people that her round chihuahua, A's Miz Chaucer, doesn't scratch at doors, she knocks at them. People tend not to believe her, so Mom said in frustration, "I wish I could get a video of it!"

So I did. :)



This was my first time ever using Windows Movie Maker, so not too bad. For the whole SEVEN SECONDS of the vid, I used my Canon Powershot digital camera.

Back to School!

Teachers started back to school today, and I'm sooo tiiired. It takes no time at all for my sleep patterns to get all switched around in the summer, and now I have to get up early again! @_@ Tomorrow will be something of an insane day, since I'll be working half the day, then driving four hours for an interview for switching graduate school programs (fingers crossed!!), then four hours home because I can't really afford a hotel at the moment. Then Saturday is the cast party for the play I sang in. @_@ Busy times!

Right now, I'd best try and sleep so I don't get a chance to wake up! I shall follow Bronte's advice and hit the hay.

Shopping Extravaganza!

I'm not usually a big shopper (unless I'm on vacation), but I needed an outfit for an interview, which meant driving to the Big City (TM). I went to Cato, my home away from home, and hit the clearance racks pretty hard. I love the fact that they make plus sized clothes that just look like clothes.


I ended up getting all this for just a smidge over $100. Pretty sweet, right? Including the jacket, shirt, and necklace for my upcoming grad school interview. :)

But then, you see, I got this 30% off my entire order coupon at Books-a-Million (I actually have two *happy sigh!* and will be going back this weekend when it's also tax-free) and brought in this haul for $30, $12 of which was the headphones, which are actually for my mother.


I'm reading Leviathan at the moment - steampunk for teens! SWEET! I'm impressed thus far. I saw the sequel as a clearance book as well, so I'll be picking up the second one.

Then I needed a make up mirror and the prices at Ulta, thanks to my coupon, were comparable to other places, so I picked one up. I also got my first Urban Decay palette (so we'll see if they're reeeally all that), and then I TRIED to get $17.50 worth of ULTA products to get a free gift, but it turned out what I bought was on sale and didn't say so. Heh. So I didn't make it. But I still get to try out the products - I'm really liking the lip gloss.


Okay, these are just silly 0_~ I had to run by CVS and use some extrabuckness to pick up a back-up of Sally Henson's Raisin the Bar, which is a go-to lazy color of mine, and my mother (who has me doing her nails now) adores it, so I decided to get a back up, just in case. The Wet n' Wild is green with gold glitter, and was cheap; I picked it up because green and gold are the colors of the school I work at.




T.J. Maxx is my favorite place for photo albums! Bronte likes them too, apparently.

Theater! ...And Packing

I wish I could post some shots of rehearsals for the local production I'm helping with, but I neglected to ask for permission, so instead I will blather about how FANTASTIC it is that all the flooring is being replaced in the house next week!

When my mother built this house, she apparently smoked something recreational - I mean, took temporary leave of her senses - because she installed off white carpeting in the entire house (a nice addition to the bright white walls). When I moved back to my hometown and she asked me to be her roomie and share expenses, I was all for it (vacations, anyone?!) but this carpet...

No.

No carpet.

BAD.

So after 12 years in the house, all the evil carpeting is about to be replaced by non-carpeting. In preparation for this, all photos and knicknacks are now piled precariously on the dining room table (my brother replaced the flooring in there a couple of Christmases ago).


Gomez approves of boxes he can be nosy in.

In the bedroom-I-turned-into-an-office, there are both built in bookshelves and some I finished and used in my own places. The non-built-ins have been emptied for easier moving, and it's a sad sight. :( Poor empty shelves.


Check out my mad staining skillz!

But I get to reorganize my books when I put them up again, and I always love that!