Back to reality

My husband and I returned from our mini-vacation/anniversary trip yesterday afternoon. We stayed at Adobe Rose Bed & Breakfast in Artesia, NM for 2 nights. It was a really nice place and would never have known it was there if we hadn't already searched it out online. The room was very nice and quiet and the breakfast in the morning was good. It wasn't the typical B&B food (it wasn't home cooked comfort food), but it was still pretty good. On the way to Artesia, we stopped at the International UFO Museum & Research Center in Roswell, NM. We strolled through the museum and read a lot of information from eyewitnesses of the "crash" and military personnel accounts. It's pretty interesting and I'm still on the fence about whether or not "aliens" crashed in the southeast desert in New Mexico. I'd get in to all that, but I don't want to open a huge can of worms here. Anyway...on Friday, we went to Carlsbad Caverns. I had never been to the caverns and didn't know what to expect. If you've never been...this place is HUGE!! I had NO idea just how big this hole in the ground was. I can't even imagine what Jim White (the cowboy who discovered this at the age of 16) was thinking as he explored the cavern. What an amazing place. I'd post pics of what we saw, but our pictures don't do this justice. I recommend clicking the link and checking out the cavern's website. That evening we were hoping to go to a drive-in theater, but the timing just wasn't right because we decided to stay and watch the bat flight. Thousands of bats leave the natural entrance of the cavern at dusk and it's an amazing sight. We were there very early in the season so there weren't quite as many bats, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a sight to see. I'd really like to check it out again later in the summer where they've been known to have hundreds of thousands of bats fly out of the cave. The first "explorer" of the cave found it because he saw what he thought was plumes of smoke coming out of the cave - turns out it was all those bats!! Can you imagine?! On the way home yesterday we stopped in Lincoln, NM - home of Billy the Kid. We were kind of in a hurry, so we didn't get to stop and walk around like we had hoped, but we did get to check out the Lincoln County Courthouse where Billy the Kid escaped and cheated death (one of the many times). We're heading back in that direction in October with Makeup Zombie and her hubby, so we might just take a little bit and tour Lincoln a little more. Oh, and it'll definitely be cooler. I saw on the news yesterday that Carlsbad was a whopping 111*. UGH!!!


And now for the second-half of my post. Over my vacation, I've managed to break 2 nails on my right hand. I have a question for all you nail gurus. When that happens to you, do you chop them all off and start over? Do you cut the ones that have broken and leave the others? What do you do? I know it's a matter of time for the left hand to start breaking nails, too. Do you cut both hands or just the one affected? Also, the ring finger has weird ridging/thin spots. Is there anything that can be done about that? In these pictures, I have two coats of Hidden Treasure, no topcoat. I figured I'd give my nails a little breather.

Left hand - looks pretty good here

Left hand - you can see on the ring finger that there's some ridges and the pinkie has been bent so many times, it's about to tear. :(

Rare right hand pic. See: the index is super short, the middle finger is super short and has a tear below the quick, the ring finger is short, but not too bad and the pinkie and thumb are good. Oh, what to do with this poor hand?