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  • 18 Sep

    Mini Redemption

    Four years ago, Taylor Swift tried to ruin my life.

    She and another young blond girl conspired to derail my epic putt-putt golf match against my friend Mike, handing him a victory that rightly should have been mine.

    Fortunately, you can’t keep me down for long, and Mike and I returned last night to Down Under Golf, the Australian-themed course that has long been our favorite.  Fueled by cheeseburgers and waffle fry nachos (tortilla chips are so 2013), we played a four-round, 72-hole match that included a visit from some local wildlife:

    Rabbits of Ocean City are very friendly pic.twitter.com/yg1lbnd2hy
    — Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) September 17, 2014

    As great as this picture is, we actually missed capturing the best moment.  For a solid minute the little guy was chillin three inches from me.  Next time we’ll be less in the moment and do the right thing for social media.

    The putt-putt action did not start off well for me.  The first three rounds ended like this:

    Round 1 — Carolina blue ball — Down 3 strokes
    Round 2 — Neon yellow ball — Down 4 strokes
    Round 3 — Green ball — Down 6 strokes

    The black ball disappeared into whatever unknown underground repository that collects such things on the 18th hole and Mike asked if I wanted to go again.  I said I wasn’t going down without a fight.

    I grabbed a lucky black ball and strode heroically back to the first hole.

    “I’m going to make up these six strokes…and then win by three,” I said.  He didn’t seem very concerned.  Until of course I started knocking down shots and his pink ball betrayed him again and again.

    On the ninth hole, I notched a hole-in-one, and when Mike got a two, my six-stroke comeback was complete.  All tied up with nine to play.

    Then I got a hole-in-one on the next hole too.  Mike was pretty concerned.

    We headed to the 17th hole with me ahead by two strokes.  I won that one, and when we tied on the 18th, my prediction was complete: a six-stroke deficit made up and a three-stroke advantage gained.

    Mike’s reaction was pretty much this:

    Fortunately for him, today we’re playing real golf, and there’s pretty much no chance I’ll be beating him there. Unless of course, Sage is there.

    By cjhannas beach golf Taylor Swift Uncategorized
  • 16 Jun

    How I Spent My Summer Vacation

    I’m not sure if anyone else has figured this out yet, but vacation days are awesome.

    As I type this, I have been off from work for a solid week and still have a few days to go. I knew this vacation was going to be solid when I got to the airport after working all night, sat down at my gate and saw this:

    That’s a Five Guys if you can’t quite make it out through the greenery. And yes, a cheeseburger at 9:30 a.m. is always a great decision. After landing in Naples, Fla., I spent six days doing this:

    And some of this:

    Whenever I go to the beach I always try to get out to the shore for at least one sunrise. Since I live on the East Coast that’s the only way to see the combination of sun and ocean. On this trip though, I was on the Gulf side of Florida, meaning I could hang out with the sun on a more agreeable schedule. Here’s my half-effort attempt at time-lapsing the sunset:



    I also took a short drive up to Ft. Myers to see a Single-A baseball game between the Ft. Myers Miracle and the Palm Beach Cardinals:



    I’m spending the rest of my time off back home (avoided using the term “staycation” there, you’re welcome). That means two Washington Nationals games and a little bit of this:

    Oh, and some writing too. Updates on that sometime soon.

    By cjhannas baseball beach golf Uncategorized video
  • 30 Aug

    Taylor Swift Hates Me

    It’s pretty clear that Taylor Swift is out to get me.

    If you happen to know her, maybe you can ask her what she has against me.

    This weekend I was in Ocean City, MD, for a few days of sand, surf and golf-related fun. I went with my friend Mike, who also happens to be my main mini-golf rival.

    At some point in our trip, we always end up at Down Under Golf, an Australian-themed putt-putt place that serves as our “home course.” There are a few spectacular things about Down Under. The first is that you can play as many rounds as you’d like before 6 p.m. The second is that you get free ice cream after your round finally comes to an end.

    We use sort of a match play style, keeping a running tally of who has won the most holes. After the first round, I was up by two–including sinking a hole-in-one on No. 18. After two rounds, Mike was ahead by 1.

    This is where Taylor comes into play.


    Did I give Taylor Swift the stink-eye?

    I had one bad hole, somewhere around No. 15 or 16. This bad hole coincided with the tones of Taylor singing “Love Story.” The music started, and my putt went right by the hole. The music continued as my next putt went right by the hole again. Just like that, my lead was gone.

    After the song was over, I was able to muster a rally during the third round. At one point, I even grabbed a small lead. But then, around the same point on the course, another Taylor Swift song sprang from the speakers hidden all over the course. This time it was “You Belong With Me.”

    “She wears high heels, I wear sneakers,
    I hate you Chris, and you will be the loser.”

    OK, she didn’t say that, but the message was there. Once again, as the music played my putt zipped past the hole. The lead was gone. Taylor got her wish.

    Tied after 53 holes, Mike and I stepped to No. 18 to settle our epic match. Remember, this was the hole that produced a hole-in-one for me during round one. Mike, however, saved his for the final round. So there I was, needing an ace just to tie. I took a moment to focus and launched my green ball on its way. It went up the ramp, around the loop and slowed as it rolled towards the hole.

    And then it stopped. Three inches from its target. Mighty Casey had struck out.

    I have never met Taylor Swift, so I’m not sure why she had to go out of her way to ruin my day. I’m also not sure how she pulled it off. I mean, there are plenty of places on the course where she could have been hiding, waiting for the perfect moment to unleash her musical attack.

    No, wait. It is all so clear now. The seemingly nice, young blond girl working at the course. She was so pleasant when taking my money and telling us about the free ice cream. She had nothing but a smile when we picked up new balls for rounds two and three. And yet, who more perfect to perpetrate such an evil deed for a young blond girl than another young blond girl?

    So now I guess the question is, why do Taylor Swift and this other girl hate me?

    By cjhannas beach Taylor Swift Uncategorized
  • 30 Aug

    Have Your Wave and Eat It Too

    So I’m back from another weekend in Ocean City…only the fourth time this summer…

    Sitting on the beach on Saturday due to some wimpy waves I was able to watch one of the great human battles of all time: Big brother v. Little brother.

    The family was sitting to our left, about three feet closer than us to the water. The sun was shining, the seagulls were gulling, and the two boys in the family were full of energy.

    The older kid grabbed his paddle ball game and made the rounds of his family–dad, mom, grandma, what looked like an aunt and uncle. He asked each one if they would play with him, and despite his pleadings, each one declined to really even acknowledge his existence. Dad didn’t even look up from his book.

    Meanwhile, the little brother had picked up the other paddle and was following big brother around. He asked again and again if he could play the paddle ball game. Seems like an easy solution to both of their problems.

    But older brother wasn’t having any of it. He kept asking the rest of the family, brushing off the little brother as hastily as the uncle did to him.

    “Why won’t you play with me!!!!” The little brother’s question goes unanswered.

    Older brother hits the ball with his paddle, playing all by himself down by the ocean. Little brother sulks for about four seconds, staring off into the ocean contemplating his next move. He goes for making himself happy and forgetting about the older brother’s treatment.

    So little brother goes to the great beach pasttime–digging a big hole. He grabs his plastic, little-brother-sized shovel and sets to work two feet in front of mom. Mom warns him about throwing sand up too high since the on-shore breeze would blow it on other beach-goers.

    Little brother takes heed and settles into his project. He gets a nice two-foot hole going before the tide comes in. One wave brings water to his feet, alerting him to impending doom. He stops digging. Another wave comes in as he stares out into the sea, seemingly begging it to retreat to England, but to no avail. The wave pulverizes his hole, proving that despite what you may have learned on The Simpsons, holes have to natural enemies: Piles, and things that can move piles into holes, such as a wave.

    Some kids would have been devastated, but not little brother. He simply tossed his now obsolete shovel behind mom’s chair, and ran in to join his former enemy, the ocean. He ran right past older brother, who was still hitting a ball to himself, miserable that nobody would play with him.

    By cjhannas beach Uncategorized
  • 11 Jul

    What’s Better than M&Ms?

    Hit up the OC (that’s Ocean City) this weekend for some relaxation and general merriment.

    Visited the always wonderful Dumser’s Dairyland on Friday night for some ice cream and had what might be the first American, English-speaking waitress to ever serve us there. Her name was Jennifer. She had freakishly good handwriting, as you can see here displayed as my order for chocolate ice cream with M&Ms…

    “You get another topping with that”
    “How about more M&Ms?”

    So Jennifer drops off our ice cream and the check, comes back later to see if we need anything, and I drop the smooth line, “Hey, you have really nice handwriting.” She seems a little embarrassed and says that people give her crap for it all the time, so of course I–who have perhaps the world’s worst handwriting–tell her that she should be proud of it. And though we didn’t need anything else, she definitely checked on us a good three more times, including one mysterious time when she took our fully functioning salt shaker and brought it back a minute later. Good times.

    Also oddly fun, as always, is waving to random people when driving down Coastal Highway, which everyone uses to get just about everywhere. People walking down the street, standing at a corner, waiting in the median, all targets of the random wave. And surprisingly, there seems to be about an 80 percent chance you get a wave back. I mean, here you are standing on the median in Ocean City and someone in a car you’ve never seen before waves at you…and for some reason you wave back…

    But boy is it entertaining when they do, and then get this look of “Why did I just do that/who the bejeezus was that?”.

    There are some more pictures on facebook, but I of course am too, what’s the word I’m looking for…oh right, lazy to post them in another fashion.

    By cjhannas beach food Uncategorized
  • 19 May

    It’s All Becoming So Clear

    So it’s been a while, but nothing overly exciting. Finished the school part of school, just been waiting for the graduation part. Took a little detour to the beach where I saw a beached 35-ton whale that had been dead for weeks rotting in the sand. Yeah that smelled like microwaved death. Also came out of a McDonald’s and saw two seagulls…um…”wrestling” on top of the ice cream place next door.

    But that’s not important.

    I’ve also spent the last few days going through some boxes of papers and artwork from elementary school. My mother kept just about everything there was from those days, and I’m trying to get all that cut down to the really interesting or really bizarre stuff.

    So far, there has been a recurring theme. Who I was in 1st grade is not all that different from 2nd grade, 3rd grade or 4th grade, and even now. In my box from 3rd grade (that was Ms. Stellabotte for those of you scoring at home), there was a stack of birthday cards — one from each person in the class. Now it wasn’t reallllllly my birthday since that comes in the summer, but May 3rd was close enough for me and I appreciate not being left out.

    Apparently the class was able to write whatever they wanted and decorate the card however they pleased. Some drew airplanes, others just wrote “Happy Birthday!” (or some spelling that let me know that’s at least what they meant). But two of the messages really stuck out as right on the money. One had a picture of a spaceship, and underneath it says “Aliens from outer space, and Chris your [sic] one.” Sounds about right. Another is a little more direct, “Chris you are a very different boy from the rest.” Why thank you.

    There’s a poster from Kindergarten where I was apparently the “Star of the Day!!!” On the poster, there are messages like “You are nice,” “You are Funny,” and my personal favorite, “I like to go to the cafeteria with you.” Apparently I was a good lunch date back then. Some girl also apparently liked to use the computer with me. Not sure what that means.

    Two things I noticed haven’t changed a bit since then–my handwriting and my artistic ability. I really should have just stopped in 2nd grade. Neither one of those things improved measurably after that. Thank God for the advent of computers.

    By cjhannas beach McDonald's nostalgia Uncategorized
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