The Dread Pirate Roberts knows what’s up.

Men’s retreat was great. You’ll see more updates about it later, but tonight I’ll give you a picture of myself wielding basketball shorts, a beard, and an over-under shotgun. Forget the zombie apocalypse. If clay pigeons ever fly up from the grave, I’ve got your back. And, for the record, I want Deadeye Girard on my team.

We have now entered the stage of sickness the professionals call Really Annoying, where I’m still home with a fever and pain but feel well enough to want to work.

Today I go to the doctor for the first time in at least three years, if not more. I was supposed to get blood work done a while back. I don’t think my youngest was born yet. I am bracing for The Lecture on How You Need to Go to the Doctor More.

A definite perk to being sick, though: on Friday a door-to-door saleswoman rang the doorbell. I thought it was my daughters coming home so I was very annoyed to be woken up to hear a spiel. I interrupted and said, “I’m sick.” The woman looked at my unwashed self, bed hair and all (despite it being late afternoon), and ran away quickly. No hyperbole.

The live recording went really well yesterday. I was blessed to be able to play through the pain. Only once did things get a little hazy. I’ll be interested to hear what my track really recorded.

Yesterday was also the first time I had picked up a razor in a long time. I didn’t trim my beard, just every other square inch of my face. I should be training, though, since the United States is quickly becoming “the world’s new facial hair super power”. (Thanks, sidewalkdriver, for the link.)

I shall play Rocky to Elmar Weisser, my Apollo Creed.

I think it’s to be assumed that his beard grows wildlife.

This is the latest from the organizer. So awesome:

This is the final week, no turning back now. Pictures will be taken tomorrow, so have your face in working order. Currently there is a “wall of men” poster in the Social Studies hallway displaying the triumph of nature over fashion.

I am putting together a panel of judges, which will determine the alpha male in each category on Friday. Alan has constructed a trophy out of bear meat, guitar solos, flannel, and back hair. Still working on the time and place for judging, so I’ll let you know.

We educate America’s future.

I’m telling you: history is made by beardos.

I shaved off my beard. My first day back at work? I got my lanyard (and USB drive) stuck in the laminator while it was running and almost re-enacted a scene from Temple of Doom (not this one)(that would just be weird). I’m growing the beard back as fast as I can.

Celebrating Thanksgiving is not as big of an advertisement haul as Black Friday, so this year I’ve heard tons about Black Friday and not as much about the day before it. Maybe it’s been on TV, but I haven’t watched live TV since a football game a couple of Sundays ago. (I was entranced then by these things called “commercials”, like mini-shows with as much plot as primetime.)

Thanksgiving can sometimes be political, especially in the realm of alien immigration (I still say amnesty for Romulans only if they make their cloaking technology public domain (vote kishi)), so to play it safe, I give you a politician most people liked: Abraham Lincoln (okay, so there was that guy).

As you celebrate Thanksgiving, enjoy Lincoln’s proclamation of when Thanksgiving first became a national holiday (as you know, Lincoln was a HUGE fan of pro football and discounts on home appliances, so this was his next logical step).

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln