Is it a sign of the Apocalypse...?

...when Kevin Federline is the one who looks sane and reasonable?

In the pink

Okay, yeah. I tend to run ruddy.

It needs to do some more growing, of course, but it's starting to actually look like I'm intentionally allowing hair to sprout from my face.



And not TOO much grey!

The Fuzz

So I'm growing a beard. I didn't really plan it, or even make a conscious decision about it. It just sorta happened.

I use an electric shaver due to the fact when when I touch my face with a blade razor, even a glancing blow, I emit great gouts of blood from multiple wounds. Doesn't matter how careful I am, or how expensive and new the razor is, or what shaving glop I use. Great gouts of blood. When I'm through shaving, the bathroom looks like a scene from one of the ninety-seven Hannibal Lector novels and/or movies.

So I have an electric shaver which, lemme tell ya, does NOT shave as close as a blade no matter what they tell you on tee-vee, but it has the advantage of not making me a murder victim. Which is, as it happens, a good thing.

I took the shaver to LCC, and I even took the cord to charge it up, but then I forgot to plug it in and by the last morning it was no longer the little shaver that could.

Then I got home and forgot to plug it in again. By Tuesday I was looking very Miami Vice, and my lovely wife says to me, "Oh, are you growing a beard?"

Now, what she could have said is, "You better not be growing a beard, buster!" But since she put it the way she did, I said, "Well, not really. I just need to charge the shaver, I guess." I said, "...need to charge the shaver..." with the same enthusiasm one might say, "...need to meet with the IRS..." hoping she'd take the hint.

So she says, "You should grow it out. I want to see how much grey you have."

Which was not what I wanted to see at all.

Still.

Now it's been almost two weeks and I have an actual beardish-looking thing on my face. I did charge the shaver so I could keep my neck clean -- I want a tidy beard after all. But cheeks and chin are all hairy now.

And it's cool. It's not a finished length yet, but it's passed that stage where it's basically stabbing bristles. I reach up and touch my face and it's soft. At least as soft as a beard ever is.

I don't know if I'll keep it. I had a goatee and mustache going back waaaaay before goatees got suddenly ubiquitous in the late 90s, but I shaved it all off about five years ago. Now I'm feeling like I've found a favorite old pair of sneakers in the back of the closet. I may end up shaving again in a week or a month, but for now, I'm liking it.

At least until my lovely wife says, "You better not think you're keeping that beard, buster."

Man Twisted by Paradox

Thanks to Sandra, I now know I can't make up my mind.

You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat

You are a nice blend of cat and dog. You're playful but not too needy. And you're friendly but careful. And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.

Are You More Cat or Dog?

An interrogatory intended to elicit a humorous reaction

Q: How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a specified task?

A: A finite number: one to perform the task and an additional number to act in a manner stereotypical of the group in question.

Happy Holidays with Beef!

Fulfillment of the Beef Promise on Vimeo

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

Lost Man

This is how out of it I am. I had to get an email from a friend in Chicago (hi, Julia!) to learn that a major national news story right now is the man missing in the mountains of Southern Oregon -- practically my own back yard. How did I miss that? The good news is though his family was missing with him, the mother and their two daughters have been found. Now the search is down to the father, James Kim of San Francisco. I hope he is found soon, and found well. Conditions are not friendly to a man on foot in that area.

I'm distracted by things like working through the edits of lost dog, which are wonderfully thorough and often humbling -- but thank goodness for editors! Day job work has picked up in December, which is exactly upside-down of what usually happens this time of year. I like that, actually, because summer was dead as a doornail and nothing wrong with making up some lost ground in the billable hours department.

And yet, book two, which was once called Death With Dignity and then became Skin and now might be The Five Dead Men, or perhaps just The Dead Men, fills my thoughts. And after writing a sentence like that last one, clearly my thoughts are dangerously discombulated. The shower is especially dangerous. Did I lather, or forget to lather because I was so busy ruminating on whether or not to pull the trigger in chapter twenty-five. Hmmm.

And there's this whole holiday thing. I like pretty lights, and egg nog, and fruit cake, but I'm not real hip on the burdens of expectation that come with the season. I guess if I don't get my ass in gear the cards won't go out. Oy. But the lights did go up on the house this weekend, and they're purty. I like 'em. So does my son, who on Saturday and Sunday night both wanted to go out every ten minutes into the frigid night to look at them. Not that I can blame him.

With all this stuff to do, I admit I cheated a bit last week. I had the chance to read an ARC of Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues by Robert Fate, and I took it! And let me tell you Beaumont Blues kicks some serious ass. Robert Fate has raised the bar and then leaped right over it. If you liked Baby Shark (and if you haven't picked it up, oh it's a must) you will love Beaumont Blues!

So now I'm back to work. On. Um. Whatever it was. Can someone remind me?