I broke a nail!

So I broke a nail the other day. Big deal? Well, this break involved pealing away a healthy portion of skin, and resulted in no small amount of blood. How did this happen? That's a bit of a story.

For many years now I've been casually playing a sport called Ultimate. I haven't really had time since college to play at a tournament level, but I love my lunch time game. Lately, however, I've been taking a hiatus from it. This arose due to a couple changes in my circumstances. For one thing, I moved significantly farther away from my office, resulting in a much longer commute. I found that I had much less motivation to get back in my car at lunch and drive to the game. Plus, work has been getting busier lately, and I don't like to prolong my hours by playing games in the middle of the day. (3 kids at home, y'know.)

Anyway, the last game of Ultimate that I played happend at the end of Summer, and ended badly with one player attempting to make up his own rules, and another picking up the cones and coldly stalking away from the game.

It has never ceased to amaze me that a game such as Ultimate, which embodies a spirit of sportsmanship in its most basic rules, still attracts a select few that behave in a fashion I would expect of my 5 year old at home. Fortunately, such behavior is generally limited to specific individuals, it really tends to through a pall on the lunchtime games when some personalities get out of hand. For god's sake, its a lunch game. I don't go out at lunch to train for tournaments, I go to play, have fun, and get some exercise. But I digress.

Because of the additional effort it takes for me to get to the game, and the less than stellar behavior that was appearing on the field, I stopped going to the games. However, a recent period of really good weather called me back to the field.

Unfortunately, playing Ultimate conflicts with another, more recent passion of playing classical guitar. When playing classical, one must use the fingernails and not a pick. So I carefully grew my nails out, and I fuss over them all the time.

Most ultimate players keep their nails very short, as the frisbee has a tendency, if improperly caught, to rip ones nail off. I've been playing for a while, so this generally doesn't happen. After just two games back, the disc managed to rip the nail off my thumb.

So now I can't play Ultimate. I also can't play guitar. (At least for another week.)

So now I'm left contemplating which is more important to me. I don't know how I'll answer that one.