HOW WAS YOUR DAY

[mharr]

Might as well buy a really old car?

[Friday]

You might not be aware of nosimpleway's history with cars. Back when he went by "R^2" (which I still mentally identify him as) he had...

uh, well. Problems.

[Mongrel]

[nosimpleway]

"R^2" (which I still mentally identify him as)

Everyone does except possibly Lady, to whom I remain the inexplicable R^2 derivative "Rupples"

[Büge]

I went on the Trans March.

[Mongrel]

Starr and I went out to a local BBQ festival this afternoon. Turned out to be something of a bust.

Normally, when they do that sort of thing around here, everyone puts out their shingle and you go and buy whatever you want from the stalls. But this was one of those "Buy a ticket and you get one of everything" deals, which we didn't find out about until we got to the end since (for some inexplicable reason), they had a large ticket booth at one end and nothing at the other (this was about 4-5 city blocks of a local main road - maybe a 10-20 min walk).

There was also a vast empty stretch, so it seemed like a bunch of vendors must have bailed (and we saw posters promising several place for which we never saw stalls). The portions at each stall were tiny, which makes sense if you want folks to sample everything, but with so many vendors missing, to actually get a full meal out of your ticket you had no option to go to every stall present, with a ten minute wait at each, and no real choice of what to eat. And if you wanted more of one thing or another, well, tough luck. So we skipped the actual event and just went and had ice cream.

Anyway the funny thing was that one stall had ribs, but with the small sizes, you only got one rib, and like I said, if you liked it, there was no way you could get a second (gasp) rib.

So obviously the rest of the evening all we could think about was

[Niku]

We did something similar to that in Indiana a few years ago, but it was a lot more successfully run from the sounds of things. Tons of restaurants from all around the Indianapolis area (40 something?) doing that kind of shindig, so there was plenty of variety to get full on the small bites. And since it was four of us (one of whom couldn't do a ton of walking around), a lot of what we did was split up three ways and get a few samples to then come back with and try all at once (since the small portions were still big enough to be splittable) to cut down on the waiting around.

but ice cream is still always better.

[pacobird]

Yesterday in downtown Detroit I saw an... interesting billboard. I texted the number on it and got a quick response.
https://imgur.com/a/HrGC7cb

Tartarus's First Family of Law

[pacobird]

also i'm growing a beard for the first time in my life - actually committing to it - and it is turning out okay

[Yoji]

(scratches his neck beard) hrm, his is way better than mine...

[Joxam]

So a tip i have for if your mustache is kind of shit is to trim it. What you want to do is essentially trim it at your upper lip line so that the hairs on the top of your mustache grow longer than the hairs at the bottom to fill it in better. Of course that only comes into play a while into your mustache when its growing into your mouth. Essentially the greatest asset to growing facial hair is to know how to trim it properly and that is kinda hard to learn.

[Thad]

I've recently switched from electric clippers to scissors for my beard. The reason I grew it in the first place is that my face is sensitive and shaving irritates my skin. I found that electric clippers leave me itchy too (and my beard is thick and curly enough that the damn comb keeps flying off and launching across the room), so now I'm trying scissors.

The first time I used scissors my skin itched for days after, possibly because it involved about half an hour of either running a comb across my face or tugging my hair between my fingers. I think if I did it every week or so it wouldn't be so bad, but I have trouble setting aside the time (or, more precisely, I set aside the time, then somebody asks me to go do something else).

[pacobird]

Good tips! Thanks all.

[Thad]

I'm not sure how much my experience will translate since your hair is a lot straighter than mine. I'd say it's probably worthwhile to try electric clippers first and switch to scissors if the clippers don't work for you. (I see a lot of recommendations for the Philips Norelco Oneblade Face as a cheap option. That's the one that irritates my skin and launches its combs across the room, but apparently it works better for most people than it does for me.)

Scissors for the mustache are definitely a good idea regardless of whether your hair is curly or straight, though.

There's lots of other stuff about oils and shampoos and brushes and combs and stuff too, but a lot of it's going to depend on your hair, your skin, and how long you choose to grow your hair.

I spread a nickel-size drop of oil on my beard daily; it's about half jojoba and half argan with a few drops of tea tree per 10 oz bottle. I shampoo it about once a week. I haven't settled on which shampoo I'm going to stick with but I've seen a lot of recommendations for Professor Edward J Fuzzworthy's.

[mharr]

This thing is the greatest tool for anyone that finds hair growing out of their face on occasion. It's just that crappy little flip-up clipper part from any standard electric razor attached to a handle, battery and switch in the shape of a safety razor so it's actually usable with human paws. The battery lasts forever when travelling.

[Thad]

Yeah, that's the one. It's cheap and seems to work great for most people. I find it frustrating to use, but I seem to be an outlier.

(Do we have a thread for this? Seems like we used to have a shaving thread, but I'm not sure if we had a not shaving thread.)

[Mongrel]

I've recently switched from electric clippers to scissors for my beard. The reason I grew it in the first place is that my face is sensitive and shaving irritates my skin. I found that electric clippers leave me itchy too (and my beard is thick and curly enough that the damn comb keeps flying off and launching across the room), so now I'm trying scissors.

The first time I used scissors my skin itched for days after, possibly because it involved about half an hour of either running a comb across my face or tugging my hair between my fingers. I think if I did it every week or so it wouldn't be so bad, but I have trouble setting aside the time (or, more precisely, I set aside the time, then somebody asks me to go do something else).

Man, I can sympathize. Shaving is something I do once a week, takes three to four tools, and takes anywhere from a half-hour to an hour.

I love the way a good close shave (Wallace and Gromit are the best! :V ) looks and feels, but my face invariably ends up covered in a million tiny nicks. What I tend to do is shave, shower and let the cuts close in the shower, then apply a good moisturizing aftershave after I come out and that does a pretty good job of cutting down the residual effects.

I'm pretty bad about going over the same spots without applying more shaving cream (even then I'm reapplying 2-3 times during the final actual-shaving part of my shaves). I feel like I need to find sharper razors, but as it is, I buy fairly good razors yet the cartridges only last about 1.6 shaves and then they're blunt as fuck.

[Mongrel]

Oh and today today...

I really want to get a gift for the teacher who's mentored me all year. She's the type who overworks herself and can mostly handle it, but probably could use at least a tiny bit more free time than she allows herself (She's on multiple school committees, mentors a half-dozen student teachers in-class each year, tutors 2-3 students professionally outside of class, and still does a fantastic job with the kids as a teacher).

I want to get her something in the $50 range that'll encourage her to take a day or night off, but I've been really struggling to think of what's a good idea. She's married, her kids have grown up and left home, she does drink sometimes, and she'd doing a really big home renovation right now in what remains of her free time.

[Brantly B.]

I'm sure there's something wrong with Spafinder that I don't care enough to find out about but pretty much all the women in my family always want a Spafinder gift card. Like, way more than actual gifts or money. Just a card that says "Fuck you, I'm going to a spa."

[Niku]

i have a stupid extraneous wire thing on the floorboard of my car and didn't notice it got knocked out to the pavement when i went into work today

but ants sure figured out that it was like a magic bridge into the interior of my car

a viking funeral might be too good for this piece of junk