I caught my reflection in a spoon.

"I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking: 'Wow, you're ridiculously good looking.  Maybe you could do that for a career.'"

I think that it's safe to say that if you know what movie that quote comes from, we can be friends.  Really.  Honestly.  I wouldn't lead you on like that.

I guess it would be misleading to say that it was a spoon, though.  I'm not anal enough to polish my spoons, OK?  That would just be weird.  Besides, when I'm eating cereal, I'm eating cereal.  I'm not staring at my spoon...no matter how ridiculously good looking I am.

Honest.

I do feel better this week, though.  I actually have facial hair again!  Once you read that sentence, imagine a chorus of angels singing "Alleluia" and you'll understand how I said it in my head.  Well, it made sense in there, too.  In the immortal words of Mitch Hedberg: "Go into my head, come back out, and tell me I'm wrong."

Where were we?

Oh yes - the facial hair.  My apologies.

I'll be honest.  I didn't really notice it until I snapped an unrelated picture with my webcam.  (Side note: is it still unrelated now that I'm using it here?  I don't think so.  I think that makes it related.)

I also noticed a few other things:

• I need to shave the sides of my head again.
• I need to trim parts of my mohawk.
• It was 10:28 in the morning when I took that picture.
• The picture makes me look like I read the Twilight series.

I need to make it clear that I do not.  I think I'd rather put my testicles into a food processor before I would read that series.  That might seem a bit extreme...until you realize that we're talking about the Twilight series.  Vampires that sparkle when they're in the sunlight?  Really?  But I digress.

After noticing all of that, I noticed that I could actually see my facial hair again.  This was a glorious discovery.  I would rank it among such great discoveries as the polio vaccine and the atom smasher.

I immediately felt outclassed, however, after seeing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.  What happened to awesome facial hair being the norm?  We need to bring that shit back, stat.  Handlebar mustaches especially.  You know a guy is serious when he has a full beard, a 3-piece suit, and a fedora.  Add a cane and it's an unbeatable combo.  We must revitalize it.  Give me a few weeks, though, so I'll at least fit in.

S'pose I ought to post a picture, yeah?

I'm hoping for a mini-Gandalf beard by the end of the year.  Am I shooting too high?  Probably.  But it would be awesome.

Nick

Week one report: beardless, listless, lost in the world.

My beard was like a security blanket...for my face.

Having been without it for a week now has been interesting to say the least.

I keep touching my face and being shocked that there is not a ton of hair there.  It used to be that I could stroke my beard like one of those pretentious assholes who was pondering some "deep" philosophy (but Kierkegaard simply couldn't have meant *that*!)...only I did it while reading the funny pages or testing software.  Now I don't have that.  It's just instinctive - I reach for the face.  Now my face is stubbly and rough. 

Folks seem to have noticed, too.  I went to the local gun shop to pick up a gun I took in on a trade and was asked where my beard was.  Hell, my ID has my beard *and* my mohawk.  They told me I was one for two.  50%.  Suppose that's acceptable. 

I'm reminded, however, of the last time that I completely shaved my face.  I was still working at Target.  I don't remember what the impetus to shave was, but I was completely hairless on the face.  I walked in to start my shift and one of the front lane managers, Miranda, shot me a double take.  I think it went something like this:
"Oh, hey Miranda."
*double take*
"Nick?!"
"....yeah...."
"Oh my God!  I thought it was cute that we brought on a little 13 year old AP worker until I heard you talk!"

I can laugh about it now.  It's hilarious.  But I feel like a little 13 year old again.  A listless little 23 year old stuck in a 13 year old's body.

Making such a drastic change did awaken the desire to make more changes in my life as well.  So that's a nice side effect.  I have started the one hundred pushup challenge.  I've somewhat neglected my body recently.  Working a desk job all day really wears on you after a while.  Man was not meant to be sedentary for 8+ hours.  I feel that it's important to note here that dressing like a lumberjack, while awesome, will not help you stay in shape simply by the act of dressing like an active person.  Damn.  There went that idea.  Well, I'm still wearing my flannel and anyone who has a problem with it can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

Oh, I should probably post a picture, shouldn't I?  Here's a week later:

I suppose I can't bitch too much - I have some growth.  Hopefully next week brings more.

-Nick

It's so cold in the D.

I have absolutely forgotten - well, had absolutely forgotten - how cold one's face becomes in the winter when one has no facial hair.

Let's be honest: it's not really that cold outside this morning.  It was about 35°F on my way to work this morning.  That's a nice temperature, especially for a January morning.  My face normally wouldn't be cold.  But early this morning, all of that changed.

With a new year upon us, I decided to change a few things.  One of these things is that I am embarking on what is known as the "Year of the Beard".  It meant that, much like a new year, I needed to start with a clean (-shaven) slate.  The premise is that one goes an entire year without shaving or trimming one's facial hair.

I suppose that I've picked a bad year for such an endeavor.  After all, isn't the world supposed to end in less than a year?  Oh well.  I'll have a sweet beard for the apocalypse.  That should count for something, right?  Beards always give some advantage during the apocalypse.  It's been written about and put in movies so you know it's true.

Maybe it's a bit presumptuous to compare myself to Samson, but I've always been a presumptuous fellow.  I feel strangely...weaker today.  I am confident that this has nothing to do with the consumption of alcohol last night and it assuredly was not brought on by eating nearly a ton and a half of delicious cheesecake bars (thanks again, Sara!).  I can only logically conclude that this weakness has been brought on by my new lack of facial hair.  Shucks.  Oh well, what's done is done.

Seriously though, it is weird.  Going back through old pictures, I can surmise that this is the first time I have been without some form of facial hair for at least the last five years.  I can safely say that this is not for me.  I am a hairy dude.  This spills over onto my face.  Thankfully I'm of Hungarian descent, so if nothing else I'm good at drinking beer and growing facial hair, so I've got that going for me.

Enough rambling, though.  I should probably, at this point, outline my plans here.  I'm going to be one of those cheesy fucks you read about on the internet who takes a picture of himself once a day for a whole year and then edits it into a really stupid video montage showing my facial hair growth for a year.  Without further ado, how about some pictures?


Before:

After:

Damn.  What a difference.  Not a fan.  Oh well.  I'll have a sweet beard in a year.

More later.

-Nick