Hair Today …

Fully vaccinated I decided to give myself a haircut. After a full year hiding out in my rooms I had gone full-Santa but I noticed a difference from earlier hirsute adventures: my hair was drastically thinning with age and rather than looking jolly, I spent most of my time trying to keep my hair out of my mouth. Not only that, but my face mask was severely compromised by my nascent Billy Gibbons beard. But back to the do-it-yourself aspect of the quest to overcome rogue hair.

First, I watched several YouTube videos showing how easy it is to give yourself a very professional haircut. I ordered a clipper set with all the attachments but when I went to buzz my way to handsome, I quickly realized that my hair and beard were far too long. Digging around in the bathroom drawer I found a stubby pair of scissors and reaching around grabbed two big handfuls of hair and sawed through each batch.

I was overcome by unbounded amazement and even seriously contemplated buzzing off all my hair.

But I maintained some degree of rationality and whacked the deep fuzz off my face. I probably only learned one thing from the video—start with the big cutting guides and gradually cut closer and closer—but then I popped off the last guide and went in commando, hot steel against old man’s wrinkles. A little shaping and my old friend Van Dyke smiled back at me in the mirror.

I finished up on top with the really big guides and clipped enough hair off to look at least presentable. After cleaning the tools and putting them away under the sink I realized I had quite a few extra long hairs running from front to back. I suspect this is where the professional barber does all that measure and snip stuff but as long as I combed my hair back, they looked fine.

Now I can sit at my desk and read without having to wear a stocking cap to keep the hair out of my eyes.

If you missed the daily reading suggestions last month, here is a handy list. Incidentally, I’ve been picking up on my actually reading several of the suggested titles each month and have been generally pleased with my own meagre attempts at pointing out some pretty good reading. Try a few.

03-01-21 – Cult X — Fuminori Nakamura
03-02-21 – Homeland Elegies: A Novel — Ayad Akhtar
03-03-21 – The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values — Sam Harris
03-04-21 – The Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones
03-05-21 – Must I Go — Yiyun Li
03-06-21 – The Heptameron — Marguerite de Navarre
03-07-21 – Something Fresh — P. G. Wodehouse
03-08-21 – Twilight of Democracy — Anne Applebaum
03-09-21 – Luster — Raven Leilani
03-10-21 – Boy Toy — Barry Lyga
03-11-21 – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents — Isabel Wilkerson
03-12-21 – 150 Glimpses of the Beatles — Craig Brown
03-13-21 – The Drunken Spelunker’s Guide to Plato — Kathy Giuffre
03-14-21 – Searching for Robert Johnson — Peter Guralnick
03-15-21 – Margery Kempe — Robert Glück
03-16-21 – Transcendent Kingdom — Yaa Gyasi
03-17-21 – The Monestary — Sir Walter Scott
03-18-21 – The Kindness of Strangers — Salka Viertel
03-19-21 – The Heart Is a Wild Beast and Maketh Many Wild Leaps: New and Selected Stories — John L’Heureux
03-20-21 – Ordinary Girls: A Memoir — Jaquira Diaz
03-21-21 – Boccacio Says Goodbye — Ariel Dorfman
03-22-21 – The Informers — Brett Easton Ellis
03-23-21 – Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics — Robert Gilmore
03-24-21 – Avoid the Day: A New Nonfiction in Two Movements — Jay Kirk
03-25-21 – Across the Land and the Water — W. G. Sebald
03-26-21 – Don’t Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language — David Shariatmadari
03-27-21 – The Prelude — William Wordsworth
03-28-21 – Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin: A Novel — Mary Clearman Blew
03-29-21 – Machines In the Head: Selected Stories — Anna Kavan
03-30-21 – Boys of Alabama — Genevieve Hudson
03-31-21 – Ripped From the Headlines! The Shocking True Stories Behind Movies’ Most Memorable Crimes — Harold Schechter