OK. You caught me. I shaved last Friday, November 1st.

And I cleaned up around the beard this week.

But I'm growing my (now annual) beard a little earlier this year.

And technically I'm not fully participating in "No Shave November".

But a pre-Thanksgiving beard is kind of a New Thing.

First of all, there are a lot of wonderful people doing great things by growing facial hair to raise money and awareness to battle cancer.

I toyed with the idea of a fundraiser for my facial hair…but "No Shave" November is also a little bit of a "Too Many Things Going On In" November in these parts.

So I'm hoping that I can be a participant in the sense that someone sees my facial hair and it makes them think of donating or something.

I wanted to grow my beard in super-early this year, but I was worried it would be mistaken for support for the Red Sox in their playoff chase. So I waited until the World Series was over. Friday, November 1st was the last day I shaved. I grew in what I had over the weekend, and then cleaned it up for school on Monday.

And away we go.

(I am consciously going with no picture to accompany this post - I'm having trouble taking a picture of my face to show the facial hair without looking creepy.)

The only tricky thing is that I have parent conferences this week and I was worried about looking sloppy for them. But I think it's coming in neat…and people are kind of used to seeing me with a beard each year. I think. No one's complained yet, anyway.

In the past I've grown the beard over winter break, or Thanksgiving break, and its impact on my school persona has been minimal. This year, it's happening during the school day - no one has seemed to mind yet.

So the time frame is a little different. But otherwise, it's the same old beard - a few more white hairs than last year, but everything's the same.

Even the fact that my wife doesn't really like it.