12:56 AM:

Stage Five complete. It's all gone. I can now see my face for the first time since puberty.

It's not a bad face. I could get to like it. Looks younger, too, which is just fine in my book...

Oh, and, yes, expect a photo to follow any day now. (There are none from the interim stages, though. Yes, this was intentional.)

3:23 AM:

Operation Shave and a Haircut (Operation Shave, really, but that doesn't sound nearly as snappy) is in its fourth stage, as of Saturday night. Based on the past day or so, I preferred Stage Three.

Stage One involved cutting off an inch or two from the bottom. A simple snip of the scissors, followed by a teensy bit of evening out. Psychologically and symbolically significant, but hardly noticable to the casual observer.

Stage Two lopped off another couple of inches. Not a drastic change, but now apparent to those few who were paying attention.

Stage Three made the quantum leap in which it was obvious to even the casual observer that I was, indeed, trimming my beard. The extent of this wasn't entirely intentional. I was going for a more gradual change, but accidentally cut on an angle and found myself in the middle of a Marx Brothers routine, going ever higher while attempting to get the various parts of the beard even. With that said, the results weren't half bad. Much shorter, but also much neater.

(The scissors, by the way, are a standard large pair of Fiskar scissors, bought a couple of months ago for the purpose of cutting paper and such. I'm glad I decided to spend the extra couple of bucks for the brand name. I've got a smaller pair from that company around somewhere, and it's served me well for some time. Fiskar's scissors rule. End of product endorsement.)

Stage Four has turned out to be almost as close as I can get using scissors; for Stage Five, I expect to use the electric shaver I've just bought. Again, the change from the previous stage is drastic and obvious. This time around it doesn't look so great, I think, and it's also so short as to be really annoyingly itchy. I'm half tempted to skip ahead a week or so and shave the whole thing off right now in the hopes of stopping the prickling on my chin whenever it hits my neck as I try to read my assigned homework material.

I need to get back to that homework, but I know I owe you guys a long and detailed explanation. The short version, for the moment: no, I haven't abandoned Orthodox Judaism, nor am I really considering doing so at the moment. I am abandoning the customs of a particular subgroup within Orthodox Judaism, a subgroup to which my father has belonged since he was 17 or so, and a subgroup with which I haven't agreed ideologically pretty much as long as I've had an ideology to call my own. There are plenty of Orthodox Jews who shave; that particular subgroup doesn't.

The one teensy little catch -- which has held me back from doing anything of the sort until now -- is that I don't have any particular group or rabbi to switch my allegiance over to. I've decided to stop waiting until that happens, which may be the one major infraction I am committing just now, but I seem to be holding the line at that.

I could -- probably should -- go on for pages more, but I do have a novel and some textual criticism to read, so I'd probably better get back to that. G'night, all. More to follow...