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