nailbiters

The weather outside is grey and gloomy, and my attitude lately has been following suit. In short, it stinks.

Every team that I have been even half-heartedly rooting for this week has lost. The first and worst was, naturally, Syracuse’s tragically epic upset to Boston College. Following suit, we have USA women’s hockey falling to Canada in the gold medal match. Not super sad because I don’t follow hockey, but I do have some Team USA spirit.

Well, you know, except for that time last winter Olympics when I was pulling for Plushenko. Dude owns his ego and it’s sort of inspiring.

Then, last night, I made pasta sauce and had decided to root for Duke in the rivalry matchup of Duke vs. UNC last night. And Duke tossed it away in the second half. I did feel slightly conflicted. I still want to win on Saturday. My temporary allegiance doomed the Blue Devils.

And today, the USA men’s hockey team lost the semifinals to Canada. Twice to Canada. I suppose it’s unsurprising.

To be honest I’m even a little bit scared to cheer for Syracuse tomorrow. Maybe I should have a change of heart, you know, for my team and root for Duke, thereby dooming them to failure at home and assuring a win for my soon-to-be-team-again.

You know what the Duke game made me think of? Another silver lining to our loss to BC at home. You see, when you lose at home, no one storms the court. I thought of this as I watched the students at UNC storm the court, swamping their own exuberant team and Duke’s utterly defeated team, and I was glad that whatever else had happened on Wednesday, at least we hadn’t had the court stormed by screaming students clad in red.

Not a big fan of court-storming.

I think that maybe I will go out and purchase myself some Chipotle before the game tomorrow night. At least then if we lose, I will have a delicious Tex-Mex style salad in which to drown my sorrows. I suppose as it stands, my tentative plan will be to head to work in the late morning, get some reading and hopefully a little brainstorming done for a few hours, and then leave around 5:00 or so to ready myself for another nailbiter of a game.

Let me tell you about my nails.

I have been so good about not biting them until sports showed up in my life, and suddenly I have only two of the ten left. I exercised enough self-control to not bite them down to the quick, so their length is actually fairly optimal for daily operations (they were pretty long). It helps that I bought a little box of disposable nail files and have stashed them in convenient locations. I’m finally getting better at this now.

I like to paint them sometimes, but nail polish is almost preternaturally transient in my work environment, and I’m so bad about picking at it that my life is simpler when I leave them bare. On the other hand, I’m better at leaving my fingernails alone in general when they’re painted UNTIL they start to chip so I have maybe 36 hours of relief before the cycle begins anew.

So maybe I’ll paint them before the game tomorrow night. Then, on Monday, I’ll soak a little cotton in acetone and strip it all right back off. Protecting groups for your fingernails.

Goodness. I think I’m done for today.