my new year's eve photo set is up. there are captions, so click through on them!

I haven't made any resolutions for the new year. For one thing, I think I'm perfectly delightful as-is. For another, I haven't been doing too well at tackling the items on this list. My gym-going has fallen off. I haven't been to a single Wizards or Caps game. And Kriston and I have temporarily shelved our plan to take a martial arts class while we investigate the legalities that will arise when we (inevitably) accidentally kill dudes with our bare hands.

But on December 21*, I finally got started on one of my goals: I began growing a beard. It was the last day of work before days off and a week of telecommuting, and we were going to be spending it moving the office. I would have two solid weeks to cultivate a respectable beard before I'd be in front of anyone who I wasn't prepared to have laugh at me. "It's beard time," I thought. "Let's beard it up."

By the weekend, things had taken a turn for the worse. It itched like a motherfucker, and I couldn't find an unguent or ointment that'd fix the problem. Also, I was unclear about how high up my neck I was supposed to shave — the line kept creeping upward, but I was terrified of ending up looking like that dope from Limp Bizkit (any of them). I voiced my misgivings to Kriston and Matt, my personal beard advisors. It was around midnight on Christmas Eve. We were in the Red Room, helping ourselves to some cheap domestic holiday cheer.

"No, dude! You've gotta stick with it. You're doing great. It's coming in really well!"

I knew they were lying, but I appreciated the sentiment. They seemed to view beard-growing as an important voyage of personal discovery. And, not having been through that looking glass myself, who was I to argue? I tried to take heart.

"Well, I guess I'll stick with it. Catherine has been really supportive, after all."

They fell silent, refusing to meet my gaze, their faces lit only by their cigarettes and the pinball machine's grim effulgence.

"She'll turn on you," warned Matt, his eyes still locked on the beer in his hands. It was becoming clear that this beard business was more serious than I thought.

But the itching passed, and I began to enjoy my new pseudo-beard. Bike rides were less cold, for one thing. And I was saving a fortune on shaving cream, presumably. The possibilities seemed limitless.

But it's been almost two weeks, and it's time to face up to reality. Here's the current state of the beard:

By way of comparison, here's what I had in mind. I've bearded as hard as I can, but I am still orders of beard magnitude away from my goal. I feel confident that, with enough time, most of the weak spots could be hidden with a skilled facial hair combover. But the area directly under my nose — yeesh. Still perfectly hairless. It looks like it'd take an entire second adolescence to get that patch going, and frankly I'm not prepared to resume spending that much time in Jeff's parents' basement.

So that's it for me. Maybe I'll try again in a few years. But in a couple of hours the facial hair is coming off. Besides, according to my pre- and post-holiday weigh-ins, this damn thing weighs seven pounds. That's probably not good for my neck.

* I didn't know it at the time, but this ScaryGoRound comic ran the same day. Grim portents, my friends. I should have known better.

Susan amuses with tales of the personals section of the London Review of Books. It sounds pretty sad, alright, but there's just no competing with the personals section in 2600. Seven listings; seven requests from prison inmates for letters.

Computer crime: an even worse way to meet girls than you thought.