The Last Casualty of the 2008 Washington DC Breast Cancer 3-Day

Warning: squick factor below

When I took part in the 2008 Washington DC Breast Cancer 3-Day I came home from the event with a huge dark red blood blister (or band of dried blood, I dunno) under the toenail of my right big toe. Bit by bit, as the nail grew out over the following months, the width of the band decreased. Then, we took a dive trip to the Florida Keys and I was startled and sort of pleased when, after our first dive out in the salt water off Key Largo, I looked at my foot as I took my neoprene boots off and saw that the band of dried blood was ... gone. Evidently the salt water had gotten under the nail by means unknown and washed it out.

Well, last night the other shoe dropped. I took a bath around bedtime and as I was drying myself I found that the entire toenail was loose, attached only at the base. No wonder the salt water had been able to get under there and wash the dried blood out.

I've been assured by le wife that this is not a big deal, that it'll probably re-grow, but it's sort of squickful to have one's big toenail flapping like an open cabinet door in the breeze.

Realizing that the part flapping loose was done for, I sort of gritted my teeth (there was no pain, but it was disturbing to look at) and cut the nail in half, leaving the bottom part still attached since I didn't want to yank the whole thing out by the roots and screw the regrowth prospects up even worse.

Then I put a big Band-Aid around the whole thing and went to bed and tried not to think about it.

Ick.

Writer's Block: Shops Gone By

[Error: unknown template qotd]

Ray's Kingburger.

It was a very small fast food chain in North Carolina and western Virginia when I was a kid in the early 1970s. There was a location in Blacksburg right next to the Radford Brothers supermarket (this was before we had chain supermarkets in town), back when there was no Burger King or McDonald's or Baskin Robbins downtown. Despite the size of Virginia Tech, we just didn't have chains or malls in those days. Everything was local.

So my idea of the ur-fast-food-restaurant was Ray's Kingburger. It had a blue logo with a big swooping lower-case 'y' in the word 'Ray' (if I recall correctly, and this was decades ago so I may be completely misremembering) and it had some sort of tie-in with Richard Petty. Petty, who after all, was nicknamed "The King" on the NASCAR circuit, especially back in those days.

We rarely went there to eat but since we shopped at the grocery next door it was always there serving as a reminder of what a fast-food restaurant looked like. It did things like char-grilled burgers, hot dogs, etcetera. Pretty standard food, but to a six-year-old, it was all So Exciting(tm).

They closed sometime in the 1970s and the chain itself was gone by the early 1980s. The only Google link I can find about them whatsoever is this page:

http://www.agilitynut.com/eateries/nc.html

Ah, Ray's. We hardly knew ye.

How To Look Like A Complete Idot In One Easy Lesson

Weight vest: 20 pounds. Wrist weights: 10 pounds each. Ankle weights: 10 pounds each. Net effect: I look like a complete idiot. But hey.