After shaving off my beard for the Homecoming ’96 photos, I went for about a week clean-shaven. During that week, I was carded more than I had been over the rest of the last two years. Which, together with interested looks from middle school girls, convinced me that, in an effort to look old and wise and vaguely capable of running a company, perhaps it was time to regrow.

So, last Sunday, I put away the razor and let my facial follicles follow their course. As I hadn’t grown a beard in from scratch for quite some time, I was surprised to rediscover that – likely due to my fast metabolism – I can go from zero to past seriously scruffy in well under a week. Normally, at the one week point, I’ll then start whipping out the beard trimmer every few days, evening things out and keeping purposefully at the at-least-sort-of-indie-hip short length. This time through, however, my beard trimmer is boxed away amidst plates and CDs and spring sweaters, stored somewhere out in the far reaches of Brooklyn by the crazy Israeli moving company that won’t be delivering my things back to me until I move into the new apartment on the fifteenth.

Which, basically, leaves me with two solid weeks of unchecked growing ahead. By which point, I’m fairly certain, I’ll have passed well past ‘scruffy’, through ‘full’, and into the early reaches of ‘polar expedition’. Santa Claus, look out.