There was so much sneezing, coughing and dedicated nose-blowing during my most recent bout of illness that I popped a vessel in my right eye. This isn’t particularly dangerous but it looks frightening, especially since the Halloween is long gone. The really obnoxious part is that the blood-shot eye will take up to 3 weeks to go back to looking normal, and I have to be at work on Monday. This means I will have to wear sunglasses.
In the popular imagination, sunglasses at 9 am on a December Monday are associated with two things: alcoholism and domestic abuse. So I’m resigning myself to the narrative of “these Russians kept boozing all the way through the long weekend and then beat each other black and blue” being attached to me. Especially since something possessed me to post a picture of Stoli (of which each of us only had a single celebratory shot) on my blog. This is precisely the image of myself I wanted to cultivate as my tenure case was making the rounds.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have permanent reaised vessels in my left eye. I think it is because I was once hitted really hardly in the eye whilst boxing. Or something.
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Don’t wear sunglasses. I’ve had popped vessels a couple of times and just tell people I have to interact with “it looks terrible but it’s nothing serious, it doesn’t even hurt” and go on normally.
If you act like it’s a a big enough deal to cover up with sunglasses then people will also treat it like a big deal if you act normally about it then others will too.
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I have oral exams on Monday. And I’m not sure that terrifying the students even more will be conducive to fluent speaking. Although I might try this out as a new teaching method. 🙂
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It would be a good way of testing their abilities under stress…..
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Why not have fun with this?
Wear sunglasses and dress up as Natasha from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” — naturally, N would have to dress up as Boris.
If you can’t drive during this, have “Boris” drop you off for your exam so you can administer it as “Natasha”.
“Bonus points to anyone who can translate ‘nogoodnik’ accurately while using it correctly in a sentence …” 🙂
Here are some details for your amusement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Fatale
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I’m very glad that people in my region are not worldly enough to know about “Russian Natashas”.
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