Lots of woulda/shoulda/coulda on this one, but it is what it is and I lived to tell the tale.

Comments/Observations:
1) I'm a total noob and don't know what I'm doing nor what I'm talking about, and it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, but I question the shave-readiness of the DD Special I got in the classifieds here.
2) I'm aslo an over-excited nitwit and didn't wait until my strop arrived. It should be here *tomorrow*.
3) Porasso pre-shave + porasso cream and you may as well be shaving with epoxy. Or at least marshmallow fluff. I need some real soap.
4) Holy crap is it awkward to swing that blade around and know which part is going to hit your face first and where. And I'm supposed to learn to do this with both hands??? The downside fo the whole experience was when I just kissed my nostril with the toe of the blade. It grew a nice red blossom instantly! It's fine now, of course.
5) In the shoulda category: I probably should have stuck to the flat bits, but I pushed on and at least gave a shot to all of it (minus the goatee I'm sporting, which saves a lot of difficult areas). The neck is going to take some learnin'.

Lessons learned? Maybe one or two... I did mention that I'm a nitwit sometimes, right?

I'm not discouraged, though. I'll have a strop in mere hours. I ordered a kickass blade from Max. I've figured out that soap probably really is a good thing. And most importantly, even with my unstropped, possibly under-honed blade, skittering hands do to my giddy excitement, ****-poor technique, Fluffernutter shaving cream and everything else, I SHAVED STUBBLE OFF MY FACE WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR.

Now I just have to get much, much better at it.
Thanks for listening, gang. I love this place.