Week Forty-One: June 27th to July 3rd

In the waning weeks of The Beard it is probably fortuitous that I work at ZooCamp, where the odd is acceptable, if not expected.

What you see here, the second consecutive week in which I tested the flexibility of my chin hair and facial skin by stringing things onto my beard, is my Camp version of Jack Sparrow.

People were actually surprised that this was the first time I had put on guy-liner. It shouldn't be all that surprising...after all, everything else I have done up to this point has been completely normal, right? And if you are wondering, yes, that is a mop atop my dome. The sanity of wearing this for what followed (an hour-long singing and dancing marathon to get the kids fired up for our Camp overnight, and give parents a glimpse of the Camp craziness) is debatable. I do know I had to take the entire thing home to wash it. That yellow shirt was transparent enough with my sweat that you could see chest hair. How exciting! (Though maybe not for everyone involved in the areas outside my shirt.)

These are the waning weeks of The Beard, which is why you will see a photo of it in its nine-month form at the bottom of this post. It has been quite a journey, much like giving birth to a growth on my face, though that was not my intention. As the Summer turns toward July, I would never be able to endure the sweat-mopping aspects of the massive beard any longer. Next week, there will be some cuts.

As it winds down, and grows larger, people have less fear about asking me strange questions. At Sports Authority this week to buy new running shoes, one of the cashiers asked me "how long it took to grow my face." Good one, as it was one I had not yet heard. The folks in the Education Department at the Zoo apparently know me as "The Fierce Beard," which is exciting in its own way. Maybe I will send them the beard in a bag, atop the hair I shaved off my head earlier this Summer.

One of the men working at the Library in town yesterday told me I looked like Tolstoy. That was a new one. The good folks at blogspot will not allow me to copy pictures I do not own into their pages, so the intriguing images I discovered of Tolstoy himself will not appear here. However, if you seek a diversion one day, check out any Tolstoy images and see for yourself...

...separated at birth?