That guard slipping twice right above your left ear made me laugh because that's exactly where mine always got me too. But the "practice on yourself for 6 weeks" thing isn't really the lesson, since what actually saved you was the two months of buzzing your own head and messing up. Most guys never get past the brother's warehouse interview phase because they quit after the first bad fade instead of doing the boring reps.

Feels like people are reading way too much into this. Paying off credit cards with home equity has been a thing forever, it just makes the math work for some folks and that's it. My neighbor did it back in 2010, not because of some big shift in how we feel about houses, but because 22 percent card rates versus a 6 percent mortgage is a no brainer. A house is still a house, a place to live, and the guy doing a kitchen remodel and the guy killing his Visa bill are both just using the tool that's in front of them. Sometimes the boring answer is the right one.