"Patchy" is probably the best word to describe what's going on here. What's there can grow and grow and grow, but it's not going to fill in the bare spots.

Good? Maybe. Bad? Perhaps. Ugly? Hell yeah.

The nice thing about cowboy hats is that you really don't have to worry what your hair looks like when you're wearing one. Just ask Dwight Yoakham.

It's fitting that I wear this hat today, as it's my snow blowin' hat, the one I only wear when I fire up my John Deere TRS-21 for some serious, single-stage, twenty-one-inch-wide snow-throwin' action. It snowed in Willoughby today, though not quite enough to warrant the aforementioned firing up of the aforementioned John Deere. But yeah, that's when I wear the hat.

I don't know that my beard is any substitute for a scarf, unless that scarf were very thin and threadbare and knitted from itchy red facial hair. Then it might be a suitable substitute, indeed. I should probably point out that I don't want a scarf like that, just in case a friend or relative should stumble across this whilst looking for Christmas gift ideas. I have a scarf, thanks. I don't have an Xbox 360.

"Legs A Lot" by danivenn

We interrupt your regular follicular activities to present an alternate perspective, specifically that of my wife, Laura.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me start by saying this: I just don't get it. The whole premise of the “how not to grow a beard” challenge is to spend a month growing a beard. Thus, the very name of the contest is the first problem I find with my spouse's November extracurricular activity.

Secondly, even if one (such as me, an erstwhile copyeditor and sometime writer) were to change the name to something more precisely descriptive, such as “How to Indeed Grow a Lousy Beard Month” or perhaps “How to Waste Precious Hours I Could Be Devoting to My Preschool-Aged Son (They Are Only This Age for but a Moment!) by Endlessly Snapping Pictures of My Grizzly Chin and Uploading Them to My Buddy's Website ... Month,” I would still take issue.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that a group of women decided on a lark to have a contest they might deign to call “How to Have Silky Smooth Legs Month.” And next imagine that this small gaggle of girls donned their Venus razors and Raspberry-flavored Skintimate shave gel on Halloween Night and gleefully removed all hair from their gams ... and then did not do that at all for the next 30 days. Further imagine that these ladies enthusiastically photographed their stubbly knees each morning and posted the images on the Internet (or “-nets” — is that supposed to be plural? Since when?) Try to visualize these females unabashedly parading around in miniskirts or capri pants, their hairy shins shining in the sunlight. (You'll have to stipulate that it's an unusually nice November.)

Can't see it, huh? Me neither. But I think it would be fun. I would enjoy it. I might even participate in it. And Kris would hate it. I would venture that at least some of the guys who are active contestants in my husband's whisker tournament would find such behavior from their wives, girlfriends, S.O.s, whatever, completely unacceptable and perhaps even repulsive. There is a double standard. I'm just saying.

Anyway, I think it is safe to conclude from my comments here that the whole HoNoToGroaBeMo phenomenon is something I put up with annually. I would even say I am gracious about it. Last year I silently suffered the embarrassment of my beloved turning his “beard” (if you can call it that) into a holiday art project. Our Christmas vacation pictures prominently feature his mutton chops. I thought those went out of style with Alexander II of Russia in 1881 (Wikipedia – look it up). What do I know?

Don't make my beard come over there...

Okay, so this post is a wee bit late. I blame the Internets, as I was mysteriously unable to access the site immediately after taking the photo last night. I can only conclude that HoNoToGroABeMo.org is afraid of my beard.

In order to post this, I've snuck up on the site while it was trying to untwist Jeff Greiner's latest photo. We don't do that fancy-dancy photo whizbangery around here, mostly because we don't have one of those shiny MacBooks.

A beard, or something like it.

I busted out the beard trimmer this morning, set the depth to "4" and buzzed my face with the intention of making myself look less scraggly.

It did not work.

Look into my eye...

Sorry, kids, my hair isn't long (or black) enough to do emo. Plus, I've still got some scars from watching Peter Parker walk down the dark, mopey path in Spider-Man 3.

I think my neck scruff has reached maximum itchiness today. Well, I hope my neck scruff has reached maximum itchiness, or I'm probably going to scratch hard enough to slice my own head off tomorrow.

Cootchie cootchie coo!

My young apprentice insisted on helping with today's photograph, and I think it's apparent that my scruff is marginally more scruffy than his.

Look! Up in...my nose!

I'm always surprised at how much the camera brings out the red in my beard; the color definitely comes from my father's side of the family, and I'm told that my hair was quite red when I was a wee bairn.

So. Excited.

I've decided to keep the neck scruff as long as I can without going (totally) insane.

"It's the only place on my face where hair is actually growing," I told my wife.

"No it isn't," she said. "You've got eyebrows, too."

That's just the kind of support I need.

Guest starring Rosencrantz!

So it's quotes today, is it? Well, here's one from the Bard himself, William Shakespeare:

"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man."