entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I started growing a beard right after Hmas.  After 3 months, i feel i've given it a good time to fill in, but it's just a bit too sparse, so it'll be shaven down sometime soon back to a circle beard.

( personality test results - turns out i have one )

Who wants to see me holding onto a very large phallic object?  Also, note new almost-circle beard.  I have been told i look "dangerous" and "like a badass".

Kim hit the road to Eugene, OR, this morning, to interview a professor at UofO, as well as visit her friend Judy.  I will be all by my lonesome self until Friday night.

Little Miss Sunshine is a very funny movie.  At its core, the movie is ( a spoiler )

There hasn't been a world-class soccer player with a beard since Sócrates.  I like to see pro athletes in the US grow beards for the playoffs.  Bring back the beard!

My chin is cold.

There was definitely a "whoa who the hell is that" moment in the mirror once i got out of the shower, even though i trimmed everything down as closely as possible with scissors in front of a mirror.  My face sure isn't as thin as it used to be.  I take crappy photographs.  And my posed smiles are bone-chillingly fake-looking.

As ever, i'm not a trendsetter but a follower, as The Boy shaved his facial hair about a couple of weeks ago.

Now nobody will know i'm sambushell's evil twin.

I've returned from a week of camping in Fowlers, just south of Mt. Shasta (the actual mountain, not the similarly named town). I dreamed almost every morning, which is unusual. One dream involved me losing control of someone's BMW (driving too fast is a bit of a recurring theme), another had me in a white tie tuxedo at someone's wedding (no clue who, not even if it was the bride or groom or both), hooking up with old high school friends. Today's dream involved a typing accuracy test which somehow morphed into me carrying a gun trying to kill Mr. Feeny (the character, not William Daniels), who was running around school also carrying a gun (school? what's this arrested development shit going on in my brain? and i fucking hate "Turd Meets World"!) After the cops finally track him down and take him away because he's clearly out of his mind, i drop my gun into the garbage.

I read G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, very aptly subtitled A Nightmare, but in a good way, and Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God, which, despite some major holes near the end, was still an entertaining and immersive read.

Irony: escaping the Bay Area and its air pollution to go to the clean air of the outdoors... forest fires, huh? Mmm, smoky.

I didn't shave all week, which is the longest i've ever gone since i started shaving. I asked Kim to take a picture of each side of my face, so you can share the ignominy that is my facial hair.