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A Proper Introduction

I just re-read the post I made last night and it makes me sound like a petulant child complaining how he didn't get what he wanted for Christmas. So maybe I shouldn't post at 1 A.M. Therefore, I have decided I would do a proper introduction casting aspersions my brother-in-law, Mike. (But he's a Duke fan so it makes it so very, very easy.)

My name is David Samuel Thornton, Jr. I was called "Junior" by everyone until I was in first grade and Mrs. Carter wouldn't let me use that as my name. So now just my parents call me that, or (sigh) sometimes Little David, though I am now literally heads and shoulders above my Dad, Big David. At some point in middle school, I tried to start going by Sam, but all my classmates already knew me as Dave, so Sam never stuck, though on the school paper and annual, I went with the byline D. Samuel Thornton.

I spent four years as a Biomedical Equipment Specialist in the Air Force, which sounds considerably more exciting than it actually was. While I was in the Air Force, I earned an Associate in Art degree in Creative Writing. (Study what you love, they said. You'll never work a day in your life, they said.) After the Air Force, I attended Murray State University pursuing a degree in Middle School Education. I have completed all my coursework except my student teaching semester. That would have happened last Spring, except you cannot work while you are doing student teaching, so I took a semester off to move back home and earn some dough so I could eat while doing my student teaching. Then the Pandemic-That-Must-Not-Be-Named befell the nation, and I decided to wait until in-person classes are a thing again.

Big David is a bank branch manager and faster than you could say "nepotism" I found myself as a bank teller at a different branch (if a supermarket "branch" can be considered a branch) of the same bank. My mother is an assistant manager at a drug store, and in a moment of weakness I let her talk me into applying for a 30 day temp job as a photo tech, again at a different branch than the one she works at. That temp job thankfully ended today, But I'm not giving back my "Ask me about joining mywalgreens!" T-shirt.

What else? I'm a UK fan. I went to the University of Kentucky for one semester before transferring to Murray State (GO RACERS) because UK was too big, and also because my little sister (who is now Mrs. Mike) was already a sophomore and having a kid sister as an upperclassman is not as fun as it might sound.

I, like my father and his father before him, am a member of the Masons, though I had only attained the degree of Entered Apprentice before they shut down granting degrees due to the Pandemic-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. So I'm still not allowed to attend meetings.

Finally, aside from University of Kentucky's Men's Basketball team and voting Libertarian to vex both my Republican father and Democratic mother, my only other passion that moves me to near-religious ecstasy is a little card called Rook, which is similar to Spades, and played with a specialized deck, but could be played with regular deck of cards if you added the Joker for the Rook and discarded the 2s, 3s, and 4s from the deck and you also wanted to go to Hell for playing with gambling cards.

Now that I've penned my Pulitzer deserving autobiography, because this is a shaving forum, I'll give you shaving history. I got my first razor when I was 14. It was a Gillette Fusion Proglide Power. The one that vibrated! I had for about 2 years when I had to have an electric razor and I got one for Christmas. I don't remember the name of it, but it was yellow. I didn't like it because it tended to tug hairs. But I was stuck with it. After about a year, it didn't cut at all, so I trashed it. By this time I had to buy my own razors, so I started getting the dollar tree 6 bladed razors. I stuck with those until Basic Training. At Basic training, I switched to the Exchange Select Twin blade razors. They came in a pack of ten and were about $4 and the were single use because if even one hair was detected, you'd flunk your inspection. I stuck with these through BMT and Tech school. Soon after being stationed, I switched back to cartridge razors and got the Schick Quattro because it was on sale the day I went shopping, and that's the handle I'm still using.

So until 21 I was pretty much clean shaven. I had a soul patch during my senior year of high school but that had to go the night before I left for BMT. After exiting the AF, I kind of rebelled against the high and tight military cut and grew out my hair hippy style and had a porn star mustache for about a year. Then I cut my hair and trimmed the stache and grew out a goatee. I had that until I worked at the bank, where like the AF, they do not tolerate facial hair at all.

So that brings me up to last Friday when I got the Gillette King razor, which I still haven't used but I'm not afraid of it any more.
 
Welcome to B&B. I enjoy a good game of Rook, but it’s hard to find two more people that want to play. My wife and I learned the game from her parents, aunt & uncle. Now that they have passed no one knows what Rook is and they don’t want to learn. It’s all PlayStation and Xbox.

Don’t let that DE blade scare you. Watch Mantic’s series of videos on DE shaving before your first shave and then go slow and easy. If you have any problems, the folks here on B&B will be more than happy to give their advice. It’s up to you to figure out what advice to follow and what advice to ignore.

Happy Shaving and beware the Rabbit hole.
 
I enjoy a good game of Rook, but it’s hard to find two more people that want to play.

You play 3-person Rook? I've heard of a cutthroat variation of Rook, but I'm not even sure how a 3-man game would even be possible, unless you got A LOT of cards, at which point it would be very hard to discard an entire suit.

At our house we play a modified version of Kentucky Discard, with the variations being that the person who makes the bid leads the first play of hand and that the Rook is always and only a trump and that it cannot be played if you are holding a card in the lead suit.

For what it's worth there's an android app called Blackbird which is Rook by a slightly different name. The game play, point cards, bidding, etc is exactly the same. There are several rule sets, including one for Kentucky Discard and an option to modify the rules. It's not a free app, but it's only 99¢ from Google play. You are also playing three computers and your partner is the dumbest of the three computer players, making bonehead plays and at times outrageous bids that defy the basic strategy I was expected to have mastered by 7.
 
First you got rid of the soul patch, and now you have a Gillette King razor. I’d say you’re headed in the right direction.
 
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