i am in the middle of a personal experiment that started a few weeks ago (3 or 4):  i have stopped shaving just to see what happens.  i have gone a week or two without shaving before, always out of laziness (as in i was too busy/stressed to think about shaving), and i have never gotten past the unbearably itchy phase before.  this time i powered right through without really realizing it, and now here i am with facial hair, the longest i’ve ever had.  some observations:

1. thankfully i can grow pretty even facial hair- unlike ron howard and keanu reeves, i do not look like i have mange.  this is a good thing to learn about oneself; can you grow facial hair if you want to?  yes.
2. i was calling it laziness for a while, but this weekend i trimmed the hair, which now means that i am officially "growing a beard", whatever that really means.  so far i do not like the facial hair, and do not plan on keeping it, but i would like to let it go a while longer and see what else happens.
3. i have been told by quite a few people to keep growing it, that it suits me, that i should keep it, etc., so i do want to see what life with facial hair is like for a little while longer.
4. i have not decided on, and am in fact terrified of, trimming the hair into a particular style (beard, goatee, mustache, etc).  it scares me because i don’t want to mess it up, and i do not know what would look good.  i know that knowing me, i’d mess it up a tiny bit, get mad, and shave it all off.  so instead i’m just letting it grow, and i’m going to give it the occasional overall trim to keep it looking tidy.

so far that’s it- nothing really revolutionary, but for someone who has never even tried to have facial hair, its a fascinating journey of self-exploration.  i need to take a pic or two with the beard just to have them, in case i decide that i don’t like it and don’t feel like growing it again.

If you are keeping track, about a month ago I got a Roomba robot vacuum, Johnny 6. Our house has been so much cleaner due to the awesomeness that is a robot vacuum. He cleans under beds, he sweeps up all the dog hair and sand that our house is rife with, and he entertains all. Now, Roombas have a few fun party tricks; they can detect walls and drops (i.e. they don’t fall down stairs), when they get stuck they chirp for help, and when they are done cleaning they drive back to their charging base and recharge themselves. The best part of the self-charging is that when they get to their base, they play a “ta-da!!!!” song to let you know how smart and cool they are. Overall, the things are smart and make you laugh at all the weird stuff they have been programmed to do. In the past week however, Johnny 6′s programming has gone horribly awry.

When you tell Johnny 6 to clean, he spends the entire time avoiding invisible obstacles. He’ll drive forwards an inch, jerk to a stop, reverse, turn, repeat. Basically he just stays in one place, freaking out. I called customer support, went through all the possible problems, and was finally told to send Johnny 6 back to his maker (iRobot in massachusetts). It turns out that his cliff sensors are malfunctioning- he thinks he is always just about to fall off a cliff. poor Johnny 6- all he wants to do is clean my house, and I keep putting him on some kind of invisible pedestal just to taunt him. Hopefully he’ll get fixed and be sent to a kinder owner, who knows what the future holds for him… goodbye Johnny 6, we loved ye.

Two awesome things went down this weekend:

1) We played cricket on the beach (what a confusing and almost pointless game!).  Thank you so much for the cricket set Team Australia!!!  It was really fun and made almost everyone on the beach stare at us and had us all laughing, so we will definitely be playing more of that this summer…

2) I bought a velour track suit from puma.  It is the softest, most comfortable thing I have ever owned. I love it dearly, and the sweatbands I bought with it are actually helping my r.s.i. (pre-carpal tunnel for you non-computer nerds), so I might start wearing them on a more regular basis.  Swiggity.

Oh man, last night was just what I needed. I took the day off sick because the sickness I have been fighting all week finally overcame me and I just felt miserable. I slept from 11:30pm wed night until 9am thursday, then for almost all of the day thursday until around 7pm. it was great- by the time I woke up I felt a ton better. I still have a cough and stuffed-up nose, but overall I beat that s#!t in one day. So I decided to go to improv rehearsal.

The first rehearsal on Thursday night (yes, there are 2) is DHT. We didn’t have a coach so we just played, and it was really fun and funny and enjoyable and made me glad I had dragged myself out of bed. Nothing makes you feel better than doing good improv, seriously, it’s heroin.

The second rehearsal was for Emoticon Prime, the second AV Club group. We have been struggling to find a format for months now, and have definitely come close to something great several times (we are inventing new forms, so it takes a while to really refine it into something that truly works), but it has always been lacking. And then last night Nick Clark came up with the perfect tweak, with Bury on the assist, and we suddenly have a format that I’m finally excited about. I am not going to go into detail, but we are going to have a really fun show. I am really happy this morning, because like I said, nothing feels better than good improv.