Day 4: Symbolic physical change (or how I lost my nails)

I can't find the reference for this offhand, but somewhere in my library of books on mythology and story structure is a description of how characters often undergo physical changes as part of their quest or psychological journey.

My goal to transform myself from an education researcher into the ultimate waitress is a kind of quest, certainly, and so it's no surprise to me that some physical changes should and will happen.

Starting today I'm getting serious again about the weights that have been recently gathering dust next to my exercise bike. Those trays are going to be heavy.

Also, the "Perfect Server" video on "Food Safety and Sanitation" describes the personal hygiene requirements for fine-dining servers. Now, I really didn't anticipate having to improve on my current level of personal hygiene for this career change, but it turns out there is one change needed. When I heard "All employees of the restaurant should maintain trimmed clean nails," I thought, "No problem. Check."

Then I saw the picture example.











Uh-oh. My concept of "trimmed" was not their concept of "trimmed." They mean no white at all.

So OK. I can do this.

I got out the clippers and file. Here is the "before" picture from my iPhone camera:




















And here is the "after" picture:



















In case you are wondering why I included a picture of only one finger instead of my whole hand, it's because there was something about the phone angle that made the whole-hand picture look like an old-lady hand.

At least I hope it was the phone angle.