In Which A New Razor Makes All The Difference

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 13.266% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

This is what Gini bought me for Christmas:
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Look at the beauty of that razor!  The lush wood handle.  The gold(ish) filigree on the blade.  And the feel of it is different than the starter razor I got, which has a plastic handle that wobbles more; this has a heft and stability to it that’s just breathtaking, if you like using raw blades to push hairs off your face.
And my God, does it shave.  On the old razor, I was up to four passes to try to get a good close shave – one down towards the jaw, one up towards the ear, and one each going east and west.  With this new blade, one up, one down, and it’s smoother in two passes.
The interesting thing is that I’m not sure if that’s the blade, or me.  If you’ll recall, I started shaving only last Christmas, so when I set out I was horribly inefficient at it.  I’d cut myself all the damn time and wasn’t using the right kind of shaving cream (Jack Black Supreme for me), and wasted about two months learning how to do an efficient shave.
I’ve since purchased a razor-sharpening kit, but it’s entirely possible I suck at razor-sharpening.  So it may well be that the old cheap plastic-handled blade was just fine; I didn’t know how to use it, and it’s dulled to a face-grinding bleed.  Whereas this newly-purchased blade is superior because it’s off the shelf, and will slowly turn awful over the next few months.
The other interesting bit is that I shave less with a straight razor.  Part of that’s my job; I get a half-hour for lunch, which I use to bathe and read, and so shaving has moved to a separate activity – whereas it used to be part of the bathing process.  (I am not getting naked in a tub with a straight-razor near me jimmies.)  And it’s a ritual, not a habit, so I shave maybe every four days now – when I’m about to go out.  I’m actually stubblier on average than I was before the straight razor, with intervals of purest clean-shavenness.  I’m not sure how Gini feels about this, and don’t quite want to ask.
And before you ask – I shovelled the bees out from under the snowpocalypse the other day, and heard them buzzing in the box.  I hope this doesn’t mean I accidentally knocked them loose, which would indicate a fatality (breaking the cluster of body warmth they use to generate heat would be a Bad Thing), but we did see them making cleansing flights on a warm day in December, so they’ve lived for now.  Let us hope for survival.
That should bring you up to date on all the outstanding questions of my bizarre hobbies, but feel free to ask if I’ve left anything open.

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