The thing about beards...

... is that you can get used to it while it's growing. But when you shave, you have to get used to that all at once:



I predict I will regrow this week. Shaving short beard hairs is extremely difficult. I shaved mostly because I have found myself pulling out my hair (on my face, not my head). I really just needed to trim it a bit shorter. Nonetheless, the shave reminded me that I am befreckled.


This has been a fairly profitable week. It's hard to believe, but Thursday marked my one-year anniversary at work. The boss passed along a raise yesterday, and a fairly generous one, making me even more over-compensated than I was before. I also scored my first coup at work—a company evaluating our software was so pleased with my support of their bugs that they decided to purchase the enterprise edition, which is about nineteen grand. So I paid for my raise pretty handily. Getting a complimentary email usually makes my day, as I normally feel like a nitwit at work. And the boss seemed like he was pleased with the work I'd been doing during the past year; he doesn't often provide feedback, and so I'm not always sure if he's happy with the job I'm doing.

I finished the day teaching, training, and visiting with J, J, P, and T. We played a five player game of Carcassonne, and J and I were trounced (we're the black and blue; T is red):



It was a lot of fun. We stayed up afterward to watch about half of Army of Darkness, which is really pretty hilarious. Hard to believe that the man responsible for bringing us Spiderman is also responsible for this cult classic. In any case, many laughs were had

I taught Thursday, and at least one student was pleased with how it all went. But it was pretty crazy again. I need to learn better classroom management skills. We basically did some fighting drills and then fought all night. It was pretty exhilirating for them, but still hard to manage, and to keep tabs on everyone...and I know at least a couple people were disappointed. Next week it goes to drill, though, and I think it'll be okay.

Wednesday was a boring day, complete with picture taking and a trip to the back doctor.

Tuesday K and I trained outside. She'll test at the end of the month for orange belt. Working outside was pretty fun; it's been awhile since I've done it, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. I hate shoes and socks, as a rule (I wrote "sockets" there first; I think I've been doing too much network programming lately), and getting my feet dirty was awesome. We started some new material and put on a small show for the next door neighbors.

Monday was another boring day, thank goodness. It's strange not to train Mondays still, but I'm pleased at how much easier the new karate schedule makes the week. I'm grateful for the extra sleep, certainly; this week was not nearly as tiring as the previous weeks have been.


Today's plans mostly involve cleaning, as I have let almost everything go. Tomorrow is Mom's day, a bit of training possibly, and perhaps winding down the day with a round of video games. Awesome-tastic.