Looks like I missed one.

So uh, yeah. It's been a while. This is me, nearly a year later, fresh-ish from the shower. As you can see, I have a beard. I also still have that horrible cat.

A little earlier, I was thinking about putting this here and thought "Oh man, I've got a whole bunch of stuff to say! I could, like, write it all out!" Then I played with my cat, brushed my beard for a while, brushed the cat for a while, read some stuff about post-structuralism, post-modernism, Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes' Death of the Author.

Now it's later than that and I don't feel much like writing. Okay, not true. I feel like writing, but the computer is doing this horrible thing where the mouse pointer jitters around all on it's own and the everything constantly resizes. So... I feel like writing, but more than that, I want to go drop the computer into the bathtub and just run some damn water over it until it stops working altogether. In my head, little bubbles come out, almost as if it was gasping for air. When they stop, I feel a mixture of relief and pants-shitting terror at the monster I've become, but strangely enough, not a whit of guilt.

Man. I really fell away here, didn't I? The past few days have been rife with work, worry and stress and procrastination in an attempt to avoid stress, and then more stress brought on by procrastination. Grad school is serious business and whatnot. It's unfortunate that it kept me from doing something so basic as taking a picture and posting a blog, but life is what it is and that's that. You can take that as maturity and an acceptance of life uncommon to youths today (do I still count as a youth? I think I do in some circles, at least. Many, perhaps!) or you can call it a wishy-washy, noncommittal no-stance attempt at washing my hands of any and all responsibility. I'm shooting for somewhere in the middle, I think.

Anyway, on to hair and beards.

This was taken at, like, 11:30... so it's technically what I looked like yesterday. You get the idea.

I'm surprised by how quickly the hair on my scalp is coming in, and somewhat saddenedby the relative slow growth of the beard. I've grown various facial hair styles numerous times (mostly beards and muttonchops, but there was the mustache + muttonchops period, too. That was fun) so I should have a pretty good grasp of how this works. Somehow though, I still thought that I'd have something resembling a beard by the time school started back up. Alas, school starts next week and I'm still in that "Beard? What beard? I just can't find my razor!" stage.

See, part of the problem here lies in my own pogonotrophic insecurities. At these early stages of the game, I don't actually think I have that great a beard, nor do I think it looks like I have great beard potential. While all the primary beard parts grow in okay, the bits that connect those parts together are another story. These "beard tendons" as I've been known to call them, leave the spots between muttonchops, mustache, goatee, and yes, even neckbeard, sparsely populated. Now, once this all grows in and I get some good length going, the fullness of the beard does its job and picks up the slack a good deal. Once everything gets going, I'm quite content -elated, really!- with my beard... it's just this, the awkward teenage stage of bearddom that poses a problem.

No picture for Friday, I'm afraid. We're staying with Rhiannon's mom tonight since she's about three hours closer to my GRE test site than we were in Carbondale. We remembered our camera, but managed to forget the memory card reader. I'll be back on track after tomorrow though.

Tonight was a mixed bag of me trying to look over my study manual and watching movies with Rhiannon and her mom to try and remain unwound. We watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Blues Brothers, neither of which I've ever seen. I know it's a special kind of blasphemy not to have seen the latter film and I have to say, I'm really glad to have finally atoned for that particular grievance.

I should probably attempt to sleep before the big test. There'll be more tomorrow, when I enter the recovery phase.

Another slow, scary day as I await the horrors of the Graduate Record Examination. My heart is dark and weary with fear and trepidation. Or something. Anyway, here's the me for today, strange lighting and all:

 

I've gone from being stubbly to full-on fuzzy up top, but the beard is still in that prickly stage. You know the part, the one where it doesn't look intentional yet, so much as lazy. 

Urgh. So, yesterday was the first missed update. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it won't matter, but I am a little disappointed. I mean, it's not like I had a great reason or anything. I spent part of the day in St. Louis, and then Rhiannon and I settled back in at home and watched a bunch of episodes of Pushing Daisies courtesy of Netflix streaming. It was a nice enough day, certainly, but it wasn't the kind of day that provides a convenient excuse, either. Oh well.

Here's me today, at any rate:

There I am, all sleepy and lopsided.

Updates might be a little sparse over the next few days, but I do still intend to make them. I'm just also preparing to take my GRE on Saturday. I hate standardized tests. I think everyone does, probably. I hope everyone does.

The sirens are screaming and the fires are howling way down in the valley tonight

Yeah. You can't blame me for that title. We were cleaning, and when one cleans, there must be music, and wherever there is music, there is a chance of Meatloaf. It's just the way the world works.

Ahem.

Slow day around here. I didn't really go anywhere or do anything, other than poke at the internet and fret a little over the impending GRE. Either way, there's a picture update before midnight, so the date posted actually matches up! That's exciting, right?

That question was rhetorical, folks. No need to lie to me.

So yeah. That's that, really. No new deep ponderings about the nature of hair growth. I'll have to make up for that later, I suppose.

Calendars are hard.

I'm not so great at posting on time, but at least I'm posting consistently.There's nothing new to report today. We had some company over for steaks and gaming, which while it makes for a great evening, it doesn't tend to be all that newsworthy.

Anyway, here's the picture for Sunday, January 2nd:

I still need to figure out some kind of system. Maybe setting up a chair against a specific wall, with a TV tray+tripod and some kind of remote trigger or timer? It doesn't need to be complicated, it just needs to be nice and consistent.