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Home Improving

If you follow me on any kind of social media you’ve likely seen the bane of my existence since October: green paint.

The previous owners of my place used it on both the walls and the ceiling of the kitchen, and thankfully just the walls in the master bedroom:

Now, that’s all gone, replaced by a nice grey color. Other improvements to the bedroom include a double layer of blackout curtains covering the window for my daytime sleeping needs, a refinished TV stand and two accompanying speaker stands I built:

Nearby in the master bathroom, not much has changed. Though I have no idea how they were functioning with a shower head that barely squeaked out any water. It took all of three minutes to swap that out. I also added a much-needed medicine cabinet:

That bathroom will soon be blue (“Moroccan Blue” to be exact). Over in my second bedroom/office, there’s an awesomely huge closet that came equipped with a wire shelf system. When I moved in, most of the shelves only had two supports, so I massively upgraded to having supports throughout:

Note the many pictures on the floor there waiting to be hung. That’s been a slow process. But in addition to a new coat of paint, that room does have a couple of things on the wall:

Down the hallway toward the living room I added a coat of paint on the walls, plus a little bonus for the carpet as well:

The hallway bathroom got its own coat of paint. I’m also quite pleased with this picture that’s hanging up in there:

Oh and I put in a new shower curtain rod:

My very first project was tackling the coat closet. The shelf on top is quite deep, and when I moved in the front half was made up of these three pieces of plywood stacked on top of one another:

I purchased a better piece of wood, cut it, slapped it in there and did a coat of paint. Much better!

Not much has happened in the dining room. I know this will be a great shock, but I don’t do much dining there. Instead it’s been kind of a catch-all place, especially for all the materials for these projects. Though I did solve a need for more storage in there by building this box:

In the kitchen, by far the biggest development has been getting rid of this situation:

On Friday morning I made the ceiling white again, and yesterday I painted the walls grey:

There are no words for how much better this looks. I actually want to spend time in there now.

Moving on to the living room, there are only tiny projects in there. The first was making a pair of white stands to elevate the back row of my signed baseballs:

Then I made a felt-wrapped stand for my Hillary Werth bat, which is far from my best work, but gets the job done:

And of course there’s the Simpsons yard I covered in another post:

This room is the only one that’s really complete, with plenty of artwork on the walls too:

Next on the list: addressing the outdated/unnecessary GIANT telephone panel in the kitchen.

My plan is to get a big piece of sheet metal, screw it into the panel’s holes and have a nice magnetic bulletin board. The panel on the left is the fuse box, so there’s not much I can do there, but it does look immeasurably better in grey than it did in green.

January 25, 2015 home Uncategorized
Well That Was Interesting

I was kicking around possibilities for today’s post and wasn’t sure if I should go in a certain direction, but then the people spoke:

@cjhannas YESSSSSS.
— Brooke Shelby (@txtingmrdarcy) January 24, 2015

The sad thing is I had to think about which one would earn that title. There are two strong contenders that both involve dogs, so I’ll roll them together. But first, let me get a drink.

The night started innocently enough, driving to a pizza place five minutes from my house. It was a few days before Christmas, and getting to know someone new over an easy meal sounded nice. I got there first, and spotting a nearly empty restaurant, waited just outside for her to arrive.

She seemed normal enough. There wasn’t anything at first that made me question the week or so we had talked before meeting up or whether I should grab a slice of pizza and make a run for it.

But in talking about normal first-date things, we discovered that we each had a niece and nephew about the same age. Except when I talked about mine, I used words like “she” and “he” while my date repeatedly used only the word “it.” “When it was born…” “I was babysitting it one time…” “It just had a birthday…”

The first few times I ignored her phrasing, but when she said it over and over I had to ask what the deal was. Her answer? “Babies don’t have personalities, so I don’t recognize them until they turn 5.”

Oh. She went on to tell me how that fifth birthday was the milestone at which she not only gave the kid a proper pronoun, but also put in effort to talk to them.

I know what you’re thinking: this is a strange date. But the title of strangest date would require more. Buckle up, compadre.

Later we got to talking about pets, at which time she informed me she was the proud owner of both a cat and a dog. At some point, the dog required surgery and came home with a cone of shame. When he didn’t need it anymore, she kept the cone, tossing it in a closet until it was needed. For another surgery perhaps? Nope. Boredom.

“When I get really bored, sometimes I get the cone and put it on the cat to watch her freak out. It’s hilarious. She doesn’t know what to do, and ends up backing up until she hits a wall, then that scares the crap out of her and she tries to run and ends up crashing into more stuff.”

HILARIOUS.

Think about your strangest date. How long did it last? I would think most people would bail early on theirs. Mine went on for two and a half hours, mainly because I was so fascinated by this behavior that I kept asking her questions. It was amazing.

The close second place also lasted about that long, but involved a real, live dog.

It was another first date and happened in May of that year (I’m not a super genius, but I do back up my texts to a Gmail folder so I have this INCREDIBLY useful information). We discussed a few options for where to meet up, but she had a special request: could we go someplace with outdoor seating?

She had just adopted a dog a few days earlier and didn’t want to leave it home alone. I’m not good with dog breeds so I’ll just describe it as small, but not a yappy white one. We went simple, agreeing to meet at Starbucks at the town center right by where she lived.

It’s rare that I’m the talkative one in any conversation, but that was quickly apparent when she and the dog arrived. We grabbed our drinks and settled into a table outside next to two others occupied by couples.

Well, the dog didn’t exactly settle. He did a lot of wandering despite his owner’s quiet exhortations to “stay.” Fortunately the people around us found the dog’s curiosity endearing and not annoying. Eventually he sprawled out under a chair and we focused on conversation.

All I remember from the Starbucks portion is her telling me about how once a year(?) her rich aunt in New York brings in the whole family and rents out this super fancy hotel and there are limos involved, etc. It felt like she was selling me on her financial merit.

Eventually we decided to take a stroll, which I assumed would take a route around the outside of the town center. And we did start that way. From there though, we took a route that I tried many times to figure out on a map afterward, but to no avail. We walked down streets and across intersections, the dog out front the whole way.

At one point, we stood at a light at a rather large road. She pointed out an apartment building up the street (and up a big hill) mentioning its unique courtyard she liked. We had been walking for about an hour, and given that she told me she had walked to our date, I assumed this building was hers and we were about to walk her home and put and end to this bundle of awkwardness.

Hahahaha. I could not have been more wrong. We crossed the big road, went up the hill, into the courtyard…and kept going. We stopped only when the dog dove in random patches of mulch and rolled around as my date barely squeaked out another passionless “no, don’t do that.” At this point I both did not know where we were in relation to where I had parked nor how long we would be wandering the the streets.

But what I had figured out by then is that we weren’t going where my date was leading us, but rather where the dog was leading us. We were following a little dude who surely had no idea where I parked.

Another forty-five minutes of walking finally brought us back to our starting point. My date dropped a bowl on the ground and filled it with a bottle of water, giving our tour guide a much needed drink. We sat for about ten minutes doing some people watching as the dog rested. I was ready to go. She, however, was not, and suggested we stop in somewhere for dinner.

After three hours or so I was beyond done, and told her something about having to be somewhere. My other distinct memory of this date is walking back to the parking garage and sitting in my car for 20 minutes trying to figure out what just happened.

And then laughing, because what else can you do?

January 24, 2015 Uncategorized
AKTB

Last night, my Taco Bell trip had a bit of a wrinkle. After paying at the drive-thru, the woman asked if I could pull around and park while they made my food.

So I did, finding myself staring at the side of the building thinking that I was doing this in the wrong city.

At my Taco Bell, it’s just me. There were a few other cars there, but nobody inside of them. Over in Los Angeles though, people like Anna Kendrick are in the parking lot enjoying all the greatness that Taco Bell has to offer:

Anna, if you’re reading, imagine this wonderful scenario: a bag full of cheesy gordita crunches, you rocking your foam taco hat, me in my Taco Bell pajamas, just a couple of kids enjoying the best meal this world has to offer.

Though maybe really what I should do is be friends with Conan. He seems to have a lot of Taco Bell-related material:

After this aired the other night I tweeted out the link and got a reply from Taco Bell:

@cjhannas Or really love Taco Bell.
— Taco Bell (@tacobell) January 22, 2015

I’ll be waiting for my invitation to arrive any day now.

January 23, 2015 Taco Bell Uncategorized
Close Cut

There may be no place on this Earth where I am more popular than the Hair Cuttery three miles from my house in Virginia.

This morning I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for the place to open, and the woman who cuts my hair most often spotted me and waved as she exited her car to walk inside. By contrast, when I’m walking down the sidewalk toward work, I can easily blow past one of my coworkers and not even realize it (sorry y’all).

Once inside, I’m usually greeted with smiles and kind words from whomever is working — a combination of “honey,” “sweetie” and “you haven’t been to see us in a while.”

It’s important to note I’ve been to multiple locations over the years, and while there were some nice people say in Jacksonville, none of those other experiences has come close to this one.

I think it helps that I’m there first thing in the morning when there’s rarely anyone else, plus having spent many years in customer service I tend to have good connections with others in those kinds of positions.

Of course I’ll never be more popular than with my longest tenured hair cutter. That would be my mom.

At some point during my early-ish elementary school days we got a set of clippers at home, which made perfect sense with four kids around whose hair had the audacity to never stop growing. Mostly this was an amazing development, leaving us only to ask (usually after building a coalition) and mom would soldier through giving us all a trim.

But there was one time where everything didn’t go as smoothly as intended. I was in the fourth grade rocking something like a #4 on the sides and back of my head and a #7 on the top.

The responsibility of the first kid in line was to spread out a shower curtain on the floor, plop a chair on top, and open up the case containing the cutting supplies. Then we sat down, put in our order and let the magic happen.

Somehow during all of this my mom and I got distracted, and by the time the clippers hit my head it was too late to catch our mistake. Neither one of us put on the #7 guard, meaning my hair was instead being given a nice, close #0. There’s no going back at that point. She had to shave my entire head basically down to nothing, leaving only a tiny bit of fuzz.

In high school, this probably would have been a big deal. But as a fourth grader it took about seven seconds at school for people to ask what happened and then forget.

We were left with an important new step in the hair cutting process — putting the first guard on myself each time — as well as a memory both my barber and I still laugh about today.

January 22, 2015 family Uncategorized
Life From Way Up Here

You have the Internet (I know, tremendous guess on my part). That means that you come across daily lists of the 12 signs you’re this or 10 things only X people understand.

But usually if you’re in that X group there are only a few that truly apply, and a couple that kind of do. You see people post the list to Facebook with a comment like “#7!!!! Oh and #5.”

This list about the difficulties faced by tall people hits about 90 percent for me.

1. Comically low shower heads? I’ve encountered this in a bunch of hotel rooms. It was also an easy deal-breaker at one place when I was deciding where to move last year.

2. “Oh, did I hit your leg?” Yes, sorry. They don’t fit entirely on my side of the table. Good thing my knees are well used to nailing the table itself, so you are unlikely to injure me. Bonus related item: seating on airplanes and the Metro goes like this:

3. If you ask nicely, I have zero problem grabbing things from high places. I recognize this is one of my duties as a tall American. I would say this happens roughly three times a year at the grocery store, and although I would enjoy being compensated in Bagel Bites, I have yet to demand payment.

4/5. Hahahahaha. I have no idea how they got such an accurate drawing of me trying on clothes. The range of thoughts starts so positively as the shirt goes on, but then I look down at the sleeves and wonder where the rest of them went. Often I merely make note of styles and go home to buy the tall size online (because obvi they don’t have them in the store).

6. If you’re shorter than say 5’5″ I’m risking great injury giving you a hug. I will, but I’m there is great peril invovled. Oh, you’re 5’9″? Your hug comes with bonus Bagel Bites from #3 to show my appreciation.

7. Just like the showerheads in #1, things are often put in place for average people, which I totally understand. I have adapted to the art of standing reallllllly far away or squatting down to get a good mirror view. Actually, these techniques are exactly the same as with a short shower. At my house though, this is not an issue:

8. I would never bother trying to take a bath. But a similar situation crops up on couches in normal people’s homes. In my life, there’s been exactly one couch I’ve stretched out on without having to curl up my legs or drape them over the edge. Well there was at least, until I moved and got a new couch and that number shot all the way up to two:

I cannot describe what kind of heaven this is.

9. It’s rare that I ever have someone in the seat behind me, so I’m not counting this as a real issue. Though I will say that when I first got in my current car for a test drive, I slid the seat all the way back out of habit and was shocked to find I couldn’t reach the peddles. That was an amazing selling point.

10. I believe this has happened exactly zero times. But, I think that has something to do with the fact that if there is a group shot, and it’s being taken by one of us, it’s going to be the one with the longest arms. And that would be me. I don’t think I’m going to cut myself out.

11. There’s no real textual point here, but the picture is a good one to end on. How tall am I? Six-foot-three. Do I know this because that’s what they measured at the doctor’s office? Hahahaha. No. Around age 14 my experience with a nurse checking my vitals started going like this:

Nurse: Okay go ahead and stand against the wall there.
Me: (stands against the wall with the measuring device).
Nurse: (half reaches her hand up, looks around for a chair) “Um…”
Me: (waits)
Nurse: So…do you know how tall you are?
Me: I think like [insert current height]?
Nurse: Do you feel like you’ve grown lately?
Me: Maybe?
Nurse: I’ll just put [whatever height I said].
Me: Okay.

Eventually I did figure out that the best method was to grab the thing above my head and do my best to slide it into the right position myself, then read what it says and tell the nurse. They probably should comp me a couple of co-pays for my work.

January 21, 2015 Uncategorized
State Of The Union

Catherine always hated State of the Union day.

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January 20, 2015 Short story
Technology Best ))))))

Technology is amazing.

Yes, we have cars that can drive themselves and we’re driving around a little roving science lab on Mars, but the greater direct impact on my life involves video games.

Back in my youth, if you were playing Nintendo and something amazing happened, the only way you could go back and see it again was if you happened to be running the video through a VCR. This is not a thing people did.

On later systems, sports games got instant replay functions, but if the people you wanted to share a replay with weren’t around there still wasn’t a good way to show them what happened. Even in 2002, the easiest way to tell someone — usually my younger brother — about something amazing was to take a picture on my flip phone and try my best to describe what he was seeing.

(In this case I punted to the Broncos and this guy caught the ball while standing out of bounds, pinning them at the 1-inch line. I was far too excited when it happened.)

Fast forward to now, and we have what would have seemed like something out of the Jetsons in 2002. The other day I was playing a game of hockey on the PS4, and after a whistle I cleaned out the opposing skater. One of his teammates immediately reacted to my late hit by throwing down his gloves and trying to beat in my face:

A slight quality upgrade from that cell phone picture. And really, this was easier for me to do. All it required was pressing roughly three buttons and the system uploaded this clip to my YouTube account while I continued playing.

The other cool thing I can do now is play games on the same team as my brother even while we’re sitting on our respective couches 15 miles apart. We’ve played countless games this way, starting with Madden on Nintendo 64 and continuing with every sports game we’ve had since then.

We’ve long been able to play games against one another, but even that technology was spotty for a long time. With computer games, at first you could only communicate through little chat windows, and no matter what you were playing the game was often choppy as your systems and connections struggled to keep up.

Now the gameplay is great, and we can actually speak to one another through headsets that plug right into our wireless controllers.

So when the whistle blows after I commit a penalty (like hitting someone after a play), I can actually hear him when he says “what did you do?” And he can hear when I laugh and respond with, “my bad.”

January 19, 2015 Uncategorized video games
Ready For The Hits

A magical delivery came to my door this week, brightening these cold, dark days with the promise of spring:

Our work softball league requires guys to use wooden bats, and although I had a great season with our team’s bats last year, I wanted one that was a tiny bit heavier. Plus this one has my name and an American flag on it. I want to carry it around everywhere I go:

April can’t get here soon enough.

This is the fourth bat I’ve owned during my time on this great planet. Before this, the last time I got one I believe was way back at age 14.

I can’t off the top of my head remember a picture from the very beginning, but this one from when I was 15 is pretty close:

A photo posted by Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) on Jul 17, 2014 at 6:31am PDT

Today that bat can be found in the trunk of my car, because who knows when you’ll end up at the batting cages?

Top memory of this bat: hitting a home run in three consecutive games.

Top memory of the bat that came before this one: hitting a game-winning grand slam for my summer all-star team.

I was 12, and we were playing in a tournament down in Staunton, Va. Trailing by three runs in the bottom of the 5th inning, my coach sent me up to pinch hit. There were two outs, and with a full count the pitcher threw a curveball down and in. I golfed it over the right field fence — my first ever home run — giving us a one-run lead.

My teammates were pretty psyched:

You can see the bat in that first picture, next to the catcher (fun fact: I can still fit in the jersey). Better look at the bat in action here:

I’ll leave you with this, which I’ve posted before, but saw when looking up these videos and it’s just too excellent not to watch again:

January 18, 2015 baseball Uncategorized
Eligible Bachelor

Several times over the past few years I’ve been involved in a conversation that went like this:

For all of the proponents of that idea, Merry Christmas:

For some reason there’s an online application that requires only a few basic bio questions, while the mail-in version is six pages long. It’s a PDF file you can’t type in, and has the wonderful file name of “GuyApplication.”

I decided that if I’m putting in any effort here, I might as well put in a lot and hand-write this sucker. Of course I wouldn’t have to do it at all if one of you had gone to the trouble of nominating me:

I really want to know how often that happens and what the person’s reaction is.

The first page and a half of the application is all the boring information like height, place of birth and education level. Then we get to the good stuff, like asking if I’ve been arrested or convicted of a crime, and this:

Then we get to some curious decisions by the people who constructed this application. Ever been married and need to explain the potentially complicated reason it didn’t work out? Here’s two lines:

Sure, maybe you’re just writing “cheating” or “wouldn’t let me have turtles,” but I’m guessing most of the time you’d need some room. Wait, I found some spare space on the next page:

But now we have the good questions, the ones where I feel like I was able to mix ridiculousness with complete honesty. I’ll type them rather than use pictures so they’ll be easier to read.

Q: Are you genuinely looking to get married?
A: Yes

Q: Why would you want to find your spouse on our TV show?
A: I believe this process brings out the best in people and truly highlights the depth of their character. Plus, who doesn’t love TV?!

(Ok that was not very honest, but let’s move on…)

Q: Do you drink alcoholic beverages?
A: Yes

Q: What’s your favorite drink?
A: Half Mountain Dew Sangrita Blast/Half Mountain Dew Baja Blast (from Taco Bell)

Q: Do you have any special talents? Tell us!
A: I can solve a Rubik’s Cube and wiggle my ears. Expert Taco Bell menu adviser. I almost never miss behind-the-back paper towel shots in public bathrooms.

(If I’m not already in the keeper pile by this point I don’t know what they’re looking for. Let’s bring it home!)

Q: List 3 adjectives that would surprise people about you:
A: I’ve already revealed so much already. Let the viewers figure out this one. We’ll have plenty of time.

Q: What have you not found but would like to have in a relationship?
A: The sweet spot between “WTF and likes me” and the opposite of that.

Q: Do you think you are ready for marriage? If so why — or why not?
A (2nd half): Also, in case I haven’t stressed this enough elsewhere, baseball is vitally important. The term “deal-breaker” is pretty strong, but it absolutely applies in this case.

Get ready, America.

January 17, 2015 Uncategorized
Great Soda Can Debate

There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. Often, the right way is the way you do it, and the wrong way is another method someone else does that you never considered. Your way comes naturally.

Earlier this month I talked about ways to clap. Today’s debate is about opening soda cans.

This discussion began with my younger brother and I noticing that my mom (and we later learned her sister too) open cans in a way we consider backwards. That is, we pull the tab toward us with a finger, while they turn the can around and lift the tab away from them with a thumb.

Our way, their way:

Time for you to vote.

How do you open a soda can?

Toward/finger:

Away/thumb:

January 16, 2015 Uncategorized