The Phantom Food Critic Strikes

Too chewy.

Yeeps! Two Months?

*poof* [blows off dust]

Um, yeh. It's been a while since I've posted here.

Very, very short reason: I went back to work at the end of August, supplementing my retirement (the monthly retirement check covers a lot of our monthly expenses, but not, alas, all of them) as a security guard for a company that provides security for a number of shopping malls across the country. This has cut back into my free time a lot.

I've meant to post a number of entries, discussing the several months between retirement and going back to work, and also discussing the new work experience. (Short take: More interesting than I thought it would be. On the other hand, from the company's point of view, a boring day is a good day; there are a lot of good days.)

I may yet get those posts finished and online; I'd like to.

In the meantime, though: One of the reguirements of working security, alas, was that I had to shave off the beard I'd had for 33 years.

Yes, this was traumatic. And Hilde had never seen me clean-shaven before. (When we were visiting my mother around the end of September, Hilde said to her, "It's like I've been sleeping with a strange man for the last month." To which, of course, I replied, "Hilde, you've been sleeping with a strange man for more than thirty years.")

I took before-and-after photos. I just want to say in advance, about the clean-shaven version, "This is not my real face."

To me, it's no contest; the bearded guy looks like me, the clean-shaven guy doesn't. And, in spite of the beard having been close to completely white, I think the bearded guy looks considerably younger than the grumpy-looking shaven guy.

Hopefully, more posts in days to come.