I shaved this morning. My new job has a very casual dress code, and since starting, I’ve found myself shaving less and less. My facial hair didn’t start growing until I was unnaturally older. While in college, I could go months without shaving and nobody would be the wiser. Even in graduate school, weeks would pass without a razor touching my face. In high school, where I shaved a few times because I wanted to know what it felt to shave not because I had anything resembling facial hair, I was jealous of those who shaved. Those high-school shavers were mature men, where I was still a boy. What I didn’t realize until I left graduate school and “they” forced me to shave about once a week was that shaving sucks. The act of shaving, while annoying, isn’t the bad part. What is the bad part is the terrible razor burn I end up with after shaving. I have tried lotions, advanced shaving creams, the best razors known to mankind, voodoo, and ointments of all colors, smells, and shapes, and none of it stops the itchy bumps that break out on my neck.

This morning, facing the prospect of my facial hair growing itchy enough to drive me mad, I put razor to face in the dark shower. While I shave slow (I learned that from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and while it hasn’t helped the razor burn, it does make a lot of sense not to be ripping your face off at high speeds), I’m not a good shaver. I usually miss many areas, especially around my neck where I try to shave with the grain and not take too many strokes. Because Doolies was sleeping in the next room and we have Tatami doors, which allow light to pass through the shaded parts, I kept the light in the bathroom off. When I felt I did an adequate job after peeling my sleepy eyes far enough open to examine my face in the mirror, I finished my morning routine, grabbed a banana and a pair of toast, and headed to work.

While preparing for my first meeting, I was in the bathroom (okay, I wasn’t preparing for the meeting in the bathroom—it was more that I had to pee before the meeting), when I saw myself in the mirror. What I saw, and I’ll share this with you because you, my reader, are some of my most trusted confidants, was truly horrifying. I had tiny patches of hair all over my face: the cleft of my chin, both sides of my neck, the two areas around my jawbone. It was by far the worst shaving job ever done. I spent the rest of the day walking around, talking to people, and generally trying to get the day over with, keeping my hand near my face to cover the area around my chin. Sure, I looked like a fool with something to hide. But looks, in this case, were not deceiving.

As you can tell, I’ve decided not to work on my story today. Actually, I did start rewriting a few paragraphs, but since they’re very similar to the paragraphs I’ve floated around the last three days, I’ve decided not to post them. I felt like I was posting things just to say I posted something, when I really wanted to continue working on it and not bore my reader with the same three paragraphs.

I’m heading to NYC tonight for a family extravaganza. Well, it would have been a family extravaganza, except my younger sister’s monsters got sick, and her family isn’t going to make it. Seeing how I already paid for our flight, Doolies and I are heading to the city anyway. There were quite a number of phone calls over the last two days as we tried to figure out if the snowstorm (or Nor’easter, as my older sister calls it—I’ve heard nobody else call it that, including the professional weather people) is going to dump enough snow on NY and NJ to ruin our return flight on Sunday. After much debate and soul searching, Doolies and I decided that we’re going to take the chance and fly to NYC. There were two main reasons: (1) Doolies’s been stuck in the Castle for the past week with David visiting only after work, causing Doolies to go slightly (and don’t tell her I told you this) stir crazy; and (2) I couldn’t get the hotel to refund my money. So, there you have it. I’m hoping the storm finishes early enough on Sunday to get us on our way back to our respective cities for work.

I’m expecting to find time to write this weekend, but I’m not sure if I’ll find an outlet to post what I write. I’m sure our lovely hotel has internet access—the question will be whether they charge me $15/day to use it. If so, I might have to hold off or find a bucks of stars somewhere (which isn’t difficult in the city). What might derail me, however, is the sub-freezing weather that they predict in NYC. I’m leaving balmy sixty-degree weather for NY. What was I thinking?