Canto XL

I think if this were a real blog, the title would be "In which I shave my head", only now I've ruined the punchline for everyone reading this. Well, you'll just have to scroll down to the bottom and read all about it. First, in other news.

Frisbee playoffs were last week, and we played pretty well. We made our way into the semis where we lost to Mech-E. But overall a very good season, and I had a great time. I already miss frisbee. So in a 16-team tourney in which we were seeded #2, we played 3 games. The first was won by forfeit (apparently, 11 am is too early for undergrads). The second, we won, but it was close. The person running the whole thing came over and basically called the game at the end of the point, when the score was 9-7. We 'won' 9-8. But it turns out Discus, the God of Frisbee, has been seeing both Irony & Justice on the side, and in our next game, the same thing happened to us. We were given 5 minutes to play when we were down 3, and only managed to score 2. Another 9-8 game, this time not in our favor. There's always next year.

And last week, school is finally over. Sure, I handed in the last few assignments late and I just barely scraped through it this term, but it's all over now. I'm calling it senioritis. This was probably my last year taking classes, doing homework and all that garbage. Today I have to help grade the final for the class I'm TAing, and then my school duties are done! It feels great. I've been doing classes and homework and junk for more than 20 years. Wow. And now it's over. I'll be enjoying a cigar this weekend to commemorate it.

Okay, the only other news is the hair. First, a retrospective. I last had my hair cut in October, to my usual short length. Steph and I were going to take pictures once a week and keep track of how the hair and beard grow as a function of time (it's monotonically increasing!), but didn't stick to that too well. And since we didn't label the pictures, I don't know when they were taken; I can only roughly guess their chronological order based on hair size. But here's one I can accurately pin point, and comes roughly 1 week after Thanksgiving. Always gracious in victory.

Well, that's a little more than 1 month after the trim & shave. Here's a current photo to let you know how big it had gotten.

Well, I had just combed it out to make it seem bigger, but still, that's a lot of hair in just 7 months. First up is the bleaching. That's right, I bleached my hair. Actually, I have to admit it was fun, and I might try that again.


I liked the surfer look. But I certainly couldn't just stop there! I wanted to go over the top, and was going to dye it bright purple/pink. This, I must say, was a bit of a failure, and the picture makes it seem much more pronounced than it was. But it still looks kinda cool.

And now for the shaving. Well, this was an event for everyone to enjoy, and everyone got in on the act. On a personal note, let me just say you shouldn't really trust a bunch of theorists with scissors.

Finally, here's the aftermath of the initial shearing. Yes, that's my desk in the background. The umbrella was used to catch all the hair. Also, I'm modeling a new Oregon t-shirt which is kinda weird. It's a Skull-and-Bones, only with a Duck, and says Oregon. It's funny. Man, the alumni association should be paying me for all the advertising I do out here. I love to wear my Oregon shirts out here.

But why stop there? You can see that the hair is slightly mottled from the bleach/dye job and it's very uneven. So sunday morning I shaved it for reals. All gone.

My head feels very cold all of the time now and it just doesn't feel right. I shake my head and my beautiful locks no longer bounce with it. So I've been wearing my old hat.

And that's how it is. What a tale, huh? Hope you enjoyed it!

Ed. Note: I'm going to try and figure out how to get the pictures rotated correctly later. Just tilt your head or screen to the proper angle for now.