This Guy!

Maybe it's best that the month is almost over (Though don't tell the folks over at NaNoWriMo that. I'm still 20,000 words behind completing!) because I'm obviously running out of ideas for pictures.

Even though I'm skipping days on occasion.

And the ideas I had nearer the beginning of the month weren't all that great either.

But this one is, at least, true.

I feel pretty.

Look- sometimes the most innovative is the way to go. We think outside the beard, we go places, people.

I HAVE a beard. It's just not on my face. But it's long enough to hang IN my face.

I still think I'm doing the worst job at growing a beard. I'm ALSO doing the worst job of updating, so I should just get ALLLLL the donations.

Sigh.

Do you have your bird?

No itching to the point of becoming sane or anything serious like that. Just a little bit now and again.

The internet didn't have enough power to reach us for most of the weekend. Why else would it not work. Right?

We're fast approaching the end of the month(way too fast by my calculations), and that means that that ever glorious feast is soon upon us. That and we haven't quite reached the goal that was set(not by me) for the raising of funds for the preservation of boobs everywhere(I'm talking globally here).

Seriously, hair cuts are not that expensive

That's the adjective Mrs. Bob found most appropriate for my pose today. I was going for bemused, but I think she may be right.

I've got nothing really to add today, so I'll just let ol' Willy Shakes to the Peare take us out, through the character of Beatrice in one of my favorite plays, Much Ado About Nothing:

Deep thoughts... think deep thoughts...

One thing I just don't get is why certain people just don't take me seriously. Here I am, trying to do a good thing, raise some money for the good of (wo)mankind, and they just have to mock me.

Sometimes it's just not worth trying. Really. I tell you.

Beard status: doin' fine.

Sponsor status: running a little thin. Time to work on my Max Bialystock technique.

Looking at the fire...ahh, heat.

Okay, bed time and I just remembered to post. I've been thinking on it for the whole day and didn't want to get ahead of myself...well, I'm paying for that now.

Meanwhile, what I did accomplish today is organizing the bonus room in preparation for getting new furniture and turning that into the entertainment/game room.

Did some work on my new website greinonia.com, it's for my students so nothing too exciting there for you yet.

And created a cool encounter wherein there are elemental things in a desert lurking around the ruins of a century old crashed airship. And a few surprises. This is in preparation of recording Tome 120 wherein Chatty DM and I will build an encounter instead of building a PC this time around.

Lastly, I got our fire place up and running. I can feel the heat difference having it going. Take that wife who likes to keep the house cold...of course who knows how much gas it will use and if I'll be allowed to keep using it. But it's nice in the meantime.

In my ears: V Cast

Beard level: General disappointment, as usual

Sponsor: That guy!

My con-winding-down photo courtesy of J.R. Blackwell, proving the reason my iPhone pics suck isn't the equipment, but the operator.

Philcon this year was actually in Cherry Hill, NJ, which is where GPS's go to die, if the spastic poor directions that ours provided within the city limits were any indication. Despite this, and the con's less than accurate name, the weekend was a great time.

Here, I attempt some Day 22 repose after the final panel of the weekend, and J.R. Blackwell intercepts my feeble self-portrait attempts with a vastly superior one of her own.

Sensation: the left side of my face is numb

Palpation: soft, matted intercalation on the right, and a weird, insensate hole contralaterally

Personal satisfaction rating: 5 (out of 5 facially bifurcated Norsemen)

You keep using that word...

One of my co-workers commented that my beard was "comin' in full", which is another way of saying "I'd really like a dictionary for Christmas, as I have no real understanding of the word 'full'". Or maybe it was Opposite Day at work and nobody bothered to tell me.

Today is Sunday, a day of rest. So much rest that it's after 2:00 and I haven't bothered to get out of my pajamas yet. My beard is resting, too, I think. Or perhaps it just decided to take the weekend off and go somewhere nice. It's sure not on my face.

Sponsors of the Day: Terri, Mica and Ray, all of whom were very generous and gave me cash donations that aren't reflected in my PayPal total. As of right now, it looks as though our grand total is just shy of $1,700, but we're actually around $1,740 thanks to these folks.

At least *one* of us is happy...

Here I am in all my bearded glory, with the fine artwork of one Angi Shearstone. If you've heard the War segment of Mur Lafferty's Heaven series, you may recognize the individual pictured: this is Prosper, God of the Harvest. Hm, hope he shows up around here next year -- our hops could use the help.

Anyway, as far as Angi, we'll be going to the Durham Artwalk tomorrow to see more of her artwork. Hope to you see you local folks there, and you can see the some other examples of her work here.

And of course, donations are still needed at this site. Please contribute if you can. Multi and various pectoral regions thank you.

Mwha ha ha ha ha...

Tonight was game night. The players just left the house and I'm getting my post in with 13 minutes to spare.

Game was good (for a one-shot dungeon delve). Finding published encounters to be less than satisfying in design, however. I should publish an adventure where the encounters don't turn into a grind on a regular basis.

Of three encounters all of them turned into a bit of a grind and that's not what I like in my games.

In my ear: Silence...it's rare, but it happens.

Beard level: Itchy...odd, it's not usually this itchy at this point. Hmmm.

Sponsor: You're mom!

Here's lookin' at you, kid

A wise man once said that, "Growing a beard is like growing hair on your face." He... Wow, he's terrible at metaphors. He also said, "Cheese does some horrendous things to my bowels."

I clearly should have done more research before I decided to base this post on him. Alright, forget that dude.

What I find most interesting about the HoNoToGroABeMo experience is the reaction of others. Most people assume that I am growing the beard for some concrete reason. When, of course, the default state is beard growth. Shaving is the result of having made a decision to take a course of action, not the other way around.

In this case, unfortunately, I actually do have a reason. Most folks, when I tell them why, react positively and many want to see the website. So, that's nice.

However, my interaction with people in the real world all but ceases today. I'm on vacation through the end of the month for the purpose of actually completing a NaNoWriMo novel. This is my sixth, and likely, final attempt. It would be good to finish on a high note after my five previous failures.

Also:

Happy Birthday, little brother!

Set to explore scientific mysteries, chin-first.

I am currently enjoying this Day 21 at Philcon. This image was taken shortly before my participation on a panel entitled "Great Mysteries of Science", in which questions both great and abysmal were asked, and no answers were given... because they are mysteries.

Most mysterious of these were from the person in the audience who referenced his evidence of "celestial bipeds" and "angelic implants." The panel almost derailed at that point, but we stayed our course of actual SCIENCE.

I can only ponder these mysteries with the wisdom that comes from concerted, intense facial mane growth.

Sensation: pleasingly insensate

Palpation: softly expanding submandibular thicket

Personal satisfaction rating : 3 (out of 5 Norsemen)

draeB

I call this "Beard In A Mirror"

See, it's a picture of my beard. In a mirror.

The hand that is about to grab me and pull me off camera is my girlfriend's hand. She has totally failed to remark on how much she hates my beard and will leave me if I allow it to grow further.

Well and thoroughly beered

I just got back from the Winking Lizard, a fine Northeast Ohio establishment with an excellent beer list. We were celebrating my brother's girlfriend's 30th birthday, which was actually last week, but also somewhat my younger brother's birthday (a number larger than 30), which is actually tomorrow.

We did so with beer, laughter, and inappropriate photography. In short, it was good times.

For the record, I had a Hobgoblin, a very fine brown ale. Unfortunately, I had just missed the last of the collector's glasses (the very last went to the birthday girl), which were some very spiffy ceramic mugs. From there, I went with the waitress's suggestions, which were spot on; we apparently have similar taste in beers. Next up was a collaborative effort, Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head Limb & Life. I found this to be very intensely hoppy, though their promotional material indicates a more balanced flavor. This is not to be in any way construed a complaint, it was a delicious and perfect mid-session beer. I finished up with Founder's Breakfast Stout, which was so rich and dark and creamy, it was almost like dessert, a perfect finish, and at 9% ABV, it darn well should be.

Out, out, damn beard

One flaw with the trimming the neck thang is that it leads to constant itching as the hair keeps growing back in. This is a huge mark against keeping the damn thing. Quite frankly, I'm sick of it.

Still, it does look good. Ah well. Sometimes you have to suffer for your art.

Breast self-exams with creepy Mona Lisa paperholders are, oddly, not recommended.

Day 20 sees us two-thirds of the way into this enterprise, which makes it a good time to step back (somewhat) from the silliness and check up on the components of Beards4Boobs:

Beards? Present, accounted for, and slowly growing in various patchy, man-like ways.

Beards4Boobs? We're at a mind-blowing $1,676.25, creeping ever closer to our goal of $2,500. We still have 10 days left, and these crackling virility hedges need more green fertilizer to intercalate! Please consider donating if you haven't had a chance to yet.

Boobs? The medical news of the week is that the US Preventative Services Task Force (part of the US Department of Health) issued new breast cancer screening guidelines to physicians that have many people a-buzz. The upshot is that they now recommend screening mammograms starting in asymptomatic women at age 50 and happening every two years, as opposed to age 40 and occurring annually. Their reasoning is that in the 40-50 year old age group, the benefits of detecting breast cancers are counterbalanced by the costs of false positive results and unneeded surgical procedures in the average, healthy woman.

While many are having strong negative reactions to this, it's important to keep a few things in mind. Guidelines such as these are intended to guide physicians in approaching the average, healthy person, not any one particular patient, especially those with family history of breast cancer or other risk factors. Other professional societies are in disagreement with these, and I doubt many physicians will substantially change the way they practice due to these new recommendations alone. Finally, these new guidelines themselves make a big point of saying that physicians and patients should have discussions of how to individually plan such an important medical screening task, which is both common sense, and the entire point of the matter.

Enough SCIENCE... on to the beard!

Sensation: no abnormal sensory input

Palpation: soft intercalation continues

Personal satisfaction rating: 3 (out of 5 Norsemen)

Forcing my eyes open for this pic...sleep don't take me now.

It's past my bed time...but then I remembered I needed to post my beard pic. So here it is. Sans pithy text.

In my ears: Know Direction (Pathfinder RPG podcast)

Beard level: The same as yesterday only a tiny bit more.

Sponsor of the Day: Sleep

Accomplished!

We got it done. Through no small effort we got the truck(1/2 a truck to be exact)from the out of doors to where it was dry. Not before getting a bit wet of course.

Long story short: Transmission and Transfer case out, truck(less than 1/2 now)moved back outside, and garage cleaned up.

Then there was the hour drive back(I drove slow in the rain and fog), sauna, shave and after this.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Bummed Bob

Um, oops?