My latest pet

About a month ago I went out on my porch to water my tomato and pepper plants and my flowers. On my way back into the house to fill my watering can, something caught my eye creeping across my house. At first I thought it was a tarantula (thank goodness it wasn't) and then I realized that it was a salamander! There were a bunch of them in the pond at the entrance of my complex earlier this summer but when I've gone back to show them to people they weren't there.
I caught this one and took it to the high school. We put it in an aquarium in one of the other biology teacher's classroom. It is fun to watch it swim because it's so fast but it also likes to sit there and do nothing. Now he/she just needs a name!

Personal Injury...The dangers of football games!

It was inevitable that it would occur sometime.
After 12 years at AF I finally suffered my first personal injury at a football game. I was walking down the back of the sidelines to the south endzone at the quarter change. One of my players pushed another one, he knocked into another player, who stepped back onto my foot as I was walking by. His cleat went right off the inside of my big toe.

Wow! Talk about pain! It was killing me! My whole foot ached for an entire quarter. I could feel blood in my shoe and kept waiting for it to come through the top of my shoe but it didn't. After the game was over I was finally able to check it and the photos show the result.

My toenail on my big toe was completely ripped off, root and all! No wonder it hurt so bad! I couldn't believe it. It had hurt, but I thought that my toe and foot might be scraped and have some cleat bruises on it. Boy was I wrong. So now the waiting begins for my toenail to grow back. To save everyone else from the continued ugliness, I will be buying stock in bandaids since I'll be wearing them every day to cover it up. I also walk the sidelines now with my hands out to create a bubble around myself. I suggest any of you who work with football do the same.