Beard

From Facebook ... 'Craig' is my buddy who asked the question, 'Beth' I've mentioned before ...

Craig asked 'What's the deal with the beard? What's the story>' There IS a story of sorts, but not room for it in a little comment box.So I'm putting it in this note ...

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away ....

OK, I'm being melodramatic. Not so long ago. The summer of '91 to be exact. And not so far away. Just northern Minnesota. Lake Itasca. I was studying at the U of M's Lake Itasca Field Biological Station.

So I'm in the woods. And I'm a guy. So I did what many guys do in the woods (no, not pee. Well, I did that too occasionally. But I'm talking about not shaving). So I let my beard grow. Of course I could have started shaving again when I returned to civilization. But ...

Something happened. I'd put some dramatic music here, but a typed up little story isn't really a place I can do that. It'll have to wait for the movie adaptation. For now, use you imagination.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, something happened. Ba-bum-dah! The Breakup.

Beth and I broke up. I capitalize it because it really was sort of a capital letter type event. I found myself doing a lot of the navel-gazing self involved self reflection moping around that ordinarily annoys the daylights out of me. Continuing to wear the beard was just part of that.

So I wasn't in the best of shape. I got better. But the beard stayed. The reason isn't as dramatic as the story so far. I just liked the way it looked. Plus, it was a lot more convenient not shaving. Just trim it every once and a while ...

At this point folks are probably thinking I must not be very good at trimming. For 16 years I kept my beard fairly short. Then, two years ago, it happened: possibly the most mundane event in this entire tale ...

No imaginary dramatic music here folks. When I say mundane I mean just that. I lost my scissors.

Buh-ba-ah stuff it. Silly. I should mention this is silly too. I stopped trimming my beard because I lost my scissors and was slow to replace them.

It's sort of a defining characteristic now, though. I'm the guy with the big stupid beard. When I think of the other ways people could define me ... I'm cool with that.

Repurpose

Kinda been neglecting BBODS lately. Been fairly active on other forums. Often simply run out of time.

Currently have a number of conversations going:

On a forum for vegetarians: a discussion of feminism and ethical vegetarianism that has sort of gotten away from me. Two factions are sniping at each other on the topic of ... poverty. Most of the conversations I'm involved in there are not quite so contentious, having more to do with the nitty-gritty of food: cooking,, recipes, ingredients, technique ....

On a forum about disability issues, conversations about, well, duh, disability issues!

On a forum about MS, currently no 'hot' topics, but I've been meaning to start a wheelchair topic ....

On Facebook, various and sundry 'hanging out with friends' things ...

In the interest of keeping up with this blo, I'll occasionally repost something I wrote for somewhere else ...

First one tomorrow. From Facebook, "The Beard".

Zero Day

Countdown day zero ... So 20 years = 240 months = 7305 days = how long I've been a vegetarian.

Ta-da!