Remember my beard experiment? Well, it’s over now…

I thought that I would be very uncomfortable with facial hair, but I didn’t mind it at all. My level of comfort remained the same throughout the entire experiment and the goal of removing myself from my comfort zone never happened.

Here are some photos of me during different stages of my beard…
This was about seven days into the experiment with just a slight five o’clock shadow

A few days later, that shadow grew into this and I felt like I looked 10 years older.

Then this happened and I was debating on whether I wanted to keep it at this length, or go full Rick Ross/ Rick Rubin.

At this point, my facial hair was growing so quickly that it required regular maintenance and pruning. I used beard pomade, beard oil, trimmers, combs and other beard-scaping tools. All of this was consuming too much of my life, so I ended the experiment and went clean shaven again.

So now I’m back to no facial hair. When I learn how to have facial hair with minimal grooming, the beard might make a reappearance, but for now it’s gone. Too much maintenance required!

And that’s the story of my weird beard.

“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” This is a terrible quote! Don’t make the same mistake as I did and actually take it seriously. Here’s what happened…

I had a wonderful, two-month-old iPhone X that had a cool feature: Water resistance. So I figured that if I can splash it with water, then I can dunk it in water. And if I can dunk it in water, then I can throw it in water. So that’s what I did.

I was swimming in my parents’ pool when I decided to put my phone’s water resistance to the test. First I took it under water in the three foot deep part of the pool. All was fine. Then I took it underwater in the five foot deep part of the pool. All was fine. Then I threw the phone about 20 feet into the air and let it fall 15 feet under the surface of the water to the bottom of the pool. All seemed fine, so I repeated that process three times. All wasn’t fine!

After leaving the phone at the bottom of the pool for about five minutes, I went to get it. But that’s when the screen started to flicker like the stage lights at a rave concert. Immediately after, the phone made a weird buzzing/crunching sound like a bumble bee being zapped by a 2,000 watt bug zapper. Then the screen had the same grey static that I saw when I turned the TV on Channel 77 when my family didn’t have cable TV.

Then I put the phone in a plastic container filled with rice and I left it there overnight. The next morning…nothing. The following day, nothing. He was dead and on his way to see Tupac in thugs mansion. I didn’t know if the rice was there to help the phone or to bury its remains as it died a slow painful death. All because I overdid it!

Now it’s a few days later and I got another iPhone to take its place. With this new phone, one thing’s for sure…I’m not overdoing ANYTHING! In fact, I might not even use it for telephone calls because I don’t want to accidentally spit on it and destroy it with water damage.

Lesson learned: Don’t overdo it. Just do it. Nike.

Here’s the last picture that my phone took before it died. Rest in Pieces.

After 10 years of being a landlord and a homeowner, I’ve ended that chapter to move on to greater and more massive things. Although I’ve owned the house for ten years, everything started with a dream 20 years ago.

When I was 12, my family moved into the house across the street and I was constantly bored because wifi wasn’t invented yet. Each day after doing my homework, my entertainment was to look across the street and make up stories about the people entering or leaving the house. Eventually, I had fake names and personas for all the people who lived in the house. “Oh, Eduardo is going back to the mechanic because his Toyota Cressida’s exhaust has another hole in it.” I wasn’t old enough to truly know what the word “stalker” meant, but unbeknownst to me I became one. An innocent stalker with no negative intentions. I was just a bored pre-teen who couldn’t afford a Gameboy Color, so he looked outside instead. Stop judging me.

Within a few months, the house was listed for sale and Eduardo’s family moved out. The new owner of the house immediately started a total and complete renovation. Suddenly, with all of the action happening in the house, I finally had something interesting to stare at. Each day, I saw contractors tirelessly work on the house and transformed it from an eyesore to a beautiful house before my eyes. Suddenly, Eduardo’s former house became the nicest house on the block and at the age of 13, I decided that I NEEDED to have it!

Many years later, I moved out of the area, graduated from college, and started saving all of my money to buy my first investment property. When I saved enough money, I started looking at places within my price range, but they all looked like crackhouses and some of them were actual crackhouses. I spent weeks looking at houses and none of them made my heart jump with joy until I looked at a house on the street that I grew up on. The house I saw didn’t meet my requirements, but as I walked to my car I saw my dream house that I admired for years. I was in awe when I realized that the house still looked as amazing as it did when they first renovated it, and to my surprise it for sale. When I did some further research, I found out that after the big renovation, the former owners couldn’t afford to pay their mortgage and the bank took it. I had to have it.

It was months before the housing crash and I made an offer to buy the house at a price that was almost embarrassing. Somehow the bank accepted it and also agreed to pay $5,000 of my closing costs. Months later, the deal closed and I became a homeowner!

From that day, I owned the house and experienced some of the most exciting moments of my life there. It was at this house where I mowed my foot with a lawnmower, met one of the worst tenants in existence, met some interesting people, established my lab (where Peculiar PPL was born), had a sewer line back-up into my basement, and so many more interesting things.

A decade later, I felt that it was the right time to sell, so I quickly learned how to become a pseudo-real-estate-agent and I handled the entire process. I marketed the house, took every phone call, conducted house tours, and negotiated the offers every weekend for the past four months. Now, after signing several documents at the lawyer’s office, I have closed on a deal and have completed my era of being a landlord.

While it’s the end of a chapter, it’s also the beginning of one. Greater things are coming and my 2018 is off to a great start. Goodbye dream house…now it’s time to pursue and accomplish bigger, greater dreams—like my dream jet, or my dream zebra.

Ever since I started growing facial hair at the age of 7, I’ve shaved every 2-3 days. I’ve never had any significant facial hair in my life, but that’s not because of my inability to do so. In fact, if I hold my breath my mustache and beard will grow at an average rate of .01 mm/sec. But now, 2018 is here and it’s time to get out of my comfort zone.

Five years ago, I did a comfort zone experiment of going one month without a haircut. It was very uncomfortable to me, but it helped me to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. The thing about being out of your comfort zone is that you’re forced to make a move— you can either move forward to overcome the discomfort, or move back into your comfort zone. For me, I am starting my year by putting myself into unfamiliar territories so I can adapt and grow. The first unfamiliar place that I’m going to is my beard.

I’m doing a repeat of my comfort zone experiment, except this time I am going to grow a beard. I have no idea what I look like with a beard, but as of today it has been about seven days since my last shave and, from the looks of things, I’ll achieve “Santa Claus” levels of facial hair growth by next weekend.

The worst part of all of this is that I just realized that I’VE GOT GREY HAIRS IN MY BEARD. WHAT IS LIFE?! I’VE NEVER FELT SO OLD IN MY LIFE. I’M UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THIS…but I guess that’s the point.

2018 is a new year, but for me it’ll bring a new beard.

I was at a desk minding my own business when I heard, “I’m bored does anyone have any games?” I saw this as an opportunity to add another Uno win to my career, so I took out my deck of Uno cards and asked her if she knew how to play Uno. She responded, “yes, you get seven cards and you match the colors and numbers, then I say Uno and win.” This explanation was close enough, so I agreed to play with her.

After dealing the cards, she went first. First move: a red 2 card placed over the blue 4. Wait…wait…that’s not how you play Uno! I said, “wait, you didn’t match the colors or the numbers!” She didn’t pay me any mind and without hesitation she put down a red 9. “Wait, it’s not your turn yet!” Instead of waiting for my first card, she searched through her cards and put down a blue 2. The game was suddenly slipping away from me!

I put a blue 6 down on the pile and she followed with a green 2. The game belonged to her at this point and I didn’t know how to recover. Do I compromise the integrity of the game and disregard my morals by quickly putting down five random cards at one time? No way, Geremy, you’re better than that!

I was thinking “morals” and she was thinking “victory.” She put a yellow skip on the pile and said “UNO!! I WIN, YOU OWE ME A DOLLAR.” I said, “I don’t have a dollar.” She said “that’s okay, you can go to the bank.”

I’d just been hustled. Bamboozled. Swindled. Finessed.

I was the man at the pool hall and she was Uncle Phil.

I owe her a dollar.

When my mom was young, she was attacked by a dog, which made her eternally scared of them. This was especially tough for my dad and I since we both liked dogs. But back in 2010 my mom decided to come to a compromise and allow us to get a pocket-sized “dog” that some might call a guinea pig.

The guinea pig’s name was Groffy and he was extremely well trained. He’d leave his cage, walk around the house and return to his cage when he wanted to eat or rest. After a year, Groffy unexpectedly passed away and everyone in the house was sad. That’s when Tommy entered our lives.

Tommy the guinea pig was intended to fill the void that Groffy left, but Tommy was completely different. He didn’t care about cool tricks, he never wanted to leave his cage, and he didn’t know how to use his house and he’d sleep on its roof. Tommy was basically the guinea pig version of me. He was the oddest animal that I’ve ever seen, but he was odd in a special way.

He’d also scare easily, so when I was stuck in bed from my foot accident, I used a robot camera to check on him, while hilariously freaking him out in the process.

Three years ago, I read an article that suggested that Tommy had all of the characteristics of a female guinea pig. Since I’m not too skilled at identifying the man part of a guinea pig, I assumed that the article was factual and I told the family that Tommy was actually a girl. That’s when Tommy became “Tommy the Female Guinea Pig.” Months later, I purchased a female friend for Tommy and he demonstrated his male characteristics by constantly trying to…um…make little Tommys with her. So she had to be given away because we lived in a nice Christian household.

Tommy eventually got a male friend, Sylvester, and their friendship quickly grew. They would wait for each other to eat, they’d sleep at the same time, and Sylvester would freak out when Tommy was missing from the cage. In April of this year, five years after we got him, Tommy started demonstrating signs of old age and decreased wellness. When I took him to the [super-duper expensive] vet, she prescribed medicines to try to cure his illnesses and prolong his life a little longer. When it became evident that Tommy would be going to guinea pig heaven, Sylvester refused to leave Tommy’s side and he spent most of the day staring at tommy and helping him maneuver with decreased vision.

Tommy eventually passed away at the ripe old age of 6 after living a wonderfully exciting life. Sylvester was somber for about a week and a half, but then I rubbed his belly and gave him a slice of watermelon and now it seems that he forgot that Tommy even existed. How rude…what kind of friend is he?!