Scott Rogers, a great friend and a great shaver

Friday I spent 2 hrs. 20 mins. getting my head shrunk with my therapy group at the south IMHC tower in Murray. Afterward I spent about 10 hours hanging with one of my favorite humans, Scott Rogers.

I roomed with Scott and Jeremy Gordon my last year at WSU, and he's still just as delightful as ever. I truly love being with people who are smart and observant enough that, for instance, you can mention different cities of the world and nation without having to specify their country or state. I could narrate my last week as a truck driver by saying I went from Seattle to Birmingham to Syracuse.

Scott himself moved to Maryland after college and worked for the federal government a few years, then switched to the private sector, making USB chips for Micron. Last year he returned to the Wasatch Front and makes the 8GB chips for Micron's Utah County facility.

Scott saw me buy my first straight razor in 2000, a lovely short-bladed, stainless steel Henckels. That was just a few years before Henckels, which had been making razors in Solingen (Germany) since 1730, dropped that line of blades; it still makes its excellent kitchen knives, a set of which I bought for my sister Charlotte as a wedding present in 1990 and which continue to serve in her kitchen.

Anyway, Scott remembered my straight-edge and later followed the LDS line of reasoning that it's good to be prepared for times of shortage, and eventually bought a Fromm, one of the only Solingen-produced razors still on the market these days, via Amazon.com. He broke the edge while shaking water off the blade, striking it against the sink; he bought another but hasn't found it easy to use.

I had the pleasure of bringing my honing tools to his very neat and modern bachelor's apartment, where I inspected his Fromm and found it was a nicely respectable shaving tool, only dull. I put a proper edge on it, then demonstrated the right method of stropping and how to shave down once, relather the face and shave "against the grain" for a nice smooth face.

Scott is the first person to use my home-made shaving creams; I sent him two 4-oz. jars last week, one of lime-scented and one of my signature lavender/peppermint/rosemary combo. He said he was pleased with it and considered it superior to the Colonel Conk's shaving soap. Although Conk's is a widely used shaving soap at a decent price (Amazon has it for $3.50 a bar or lesss), I recommend the product from classicshaving.com because it contains bentonite clay. For me, I can make identical soap in five minutes by heating some of my white melt-and-pour soap base purchased from NewDirectionsAromatics, then adding the clay and a few drops of my favorite essential oils (actually I can make it better because I like stronger scents than the commercial bars come in), and it will only cost me about$1 a bar rather than $5. That's because Conk's is nothing but melt-and-pour clear glycerin soap, with a bit of dye and scent added, poured into a soft plastic mold that doubles as its sales package.

But for someone who wants a decent soap NOW, without all the fooling around with bulk supplies that only save money in the long run, Classic Shaving has the best product at a reasonable price.

Anyway, Scott's feedback is encouraging. I also discovered the cream goes a lot farther when I'm not fooling recklessly around with it. It maybe takes half a tablespoon for a great shave, and that's two face-latherings worth. Therefore, come Monday I'll be posting my pint jars of cream for sale on eBay. I won't have my eBay store set up until some time during the week; I'll post a link when it's ready.

Enough about shaving. It was great seeing Scott. I hope to get together again with him and reunite with out third member of the old college gang, Jeremy, who is working as an EMT for Gold Cross Ambulance in SLC. Jeremy married Geri, a lovely lady he met after Scott and I left Harrison Heights Apartments, and they now have three cute kids together.

Last thing, I remember it was Scott who talked me in to getting back together with Wendy, my first wife, the day after I told her politely that things weren't working out. But I didn't need that much urging, really. I wasn't going to learn the lessons I had to learn any other way but the hard way. But my experiences do make me feel Scott is fortunate in a few ways to have reached 37 and not gotten hitched yet. If he gets it right the first time at his age, he'll be ahead of me as I start over at 40.

Plus he has some really cool toys, in the way of computer equipment, a shelf of cool videos (nothing over PG-13) and some nice guns. Rock on, Scott.