Two "don't's" for piano players

So, it's Friday night, and I've drunk more than the recommended daily allowance of red wine, and I notice a chip on the fingernail of my right index finger. A smart and unlazy person goes to the bedroom dresser, finds the nail clippers and trims the affected nail. A tired, lazy person with slightly impaired judgment (okay, vastly impaired judgment) just pulls it off... and rips off half his cuticle in the process.

First: DON'T trim your fingernails by pulling off broken pieces of them.

So, it's Saturday night and Mrs. S and I decide to make tacos. You have to slice and dice tomatoes and you know that knives have a bad tendency to slip off of tomato skins, going every which way, usually straight to fingers. You also know that sharp knives are able to cut through the skin with less resistance, greatly reducing the chance of a knife slipping off a tomato skin and into something more tender and personal. So, before attempting to slice the tomatoes, I sharpened - really sharpened - the chef's knife. And I got within a hair's breadth of successfully completing the job when the knife slipped and found the tip of my bird-flipping finger on my left hand. Thank God for fingernails, because mine stopped the knife from slicing off the top of my finger entirely.

Second: DON'T slice anything with a finger close to it.

Five days on, I'm thinking about this because I haven't been able to put in any serious practice time (blood and piano key's do not mix) and because I'm still dealing with the injuries. Five days on, here's what they look like today:





Note: The pictures aren't very good, because it's really hard to take a picture of your hand. Note also that both pictures were taken after several days of healing.

Here's another "don't": DON'T tell me I'm an idiot.

I'm well aware of that fact.