For the first time in years, I filed and painted my fingernails. This was a sort of pleasant, mindless activity. At first I was also pleased by the results. My father used to say, if you want to know something about a person, you observe how they take care of their nails and their shoes. His nails were always neatly trimmed and shoes highly polished (which probably became automatic after being a cop for a while – they have to polish their boots/shoes). If you looked beyond my dashing American Apparel outfit or Coupe Bizarre coif and checked my nails and shoes recently, you might think I really don’t give a damn about my outward appearance. So yesterday I bought new shoes and some nail polish.
I’m good with most kinds of technology: web technology (I installed my own blog, OK!), Apple technology (that’s an easy one), circuit board technology (to an extent), cooking technology (cooking is mostly chemistry), and other sorts of blah-blah everyday technology. But nail polish technology turned me into a bit of a bumbler. Base coat, polish, top coat – I got the sequence right. But I suppose I don’t know enough about the chemical composition of nail products (perhaps all I need is a chart with curing times) to know how long I’m supposed to wait in between, when it’s acceptable to use my hands normally again, etc. As a result, this morning my lovely pink nails have a bunch of little bubbles on them, probably due to not waiting long enough between polish and top coat.
Sigh. If there’s one technology I thought I’d surely be able to master, it would be one that I picked up at Jean Coutu (Quebec chain of drugstores, for you non-Quebec residents).