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  • 25 Jan

    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.

    By cjhannas home Uncategorized
  • 04 Feb

    Growing Up on the Farm

    I grew up on a dairy farm. Well, it wasn’t a dairy farm when I lived there, but at one time it was.

    I just finished reading “Stories From Floris,” a collection of essays written by people who grew up in the same area I did during the early- to mid-1900s. Back then it was all farm land, but except for a few remaining landmarks all that is left are subdivisions and shopping centers.

    My neighborhood, Copper Crossing, was built on the land once known as Blossom Hill. A woman who grew up there said her family “had dairy and beef cattle, pigs, poultry, dogs and cats, and a Chincoteague pony.” There are plenty of dogs and cats still there, but in all my years I can honestly say I never saw a Chincoteague pony roaming our streets.

    While many of the essays followed the same formula of naming every person ever related to anyone who set foot on each piece of land, it was neat hearing some of the things that never changed. Kids at Blossom Hill played tag at dusk, running around on the same ground that me and my friends used to play flashlight tag on summer nights.

    Children also used the many hills in the area for sledding in the winter, doing their best to stay out of the creek that ran through the property. Across the street from my house was a great sledding hill, which with a little more speed than we could ever muster would have landed us in those chilly waters (I may have fallen in once while trying to walk on some ice).

    The first person to settle that land came in 1742, when the property was part of Loudon County. Today it is in Fairfax County — a change that unfortunately cost me many snow days as a kid since our neighbors to the west always seemed to have school canceled when we didn’t.

    Almost all of the essays lamented the way things have changed. There was an incredible sense of community and a way of life the writers really missed in our modern times. Where their farms once sprawled across the Floris area (now Oak Hill, or Herndon), now there are hundreds of homes packed together.

    I put together a quick slide show of the area today, where neighborhoods and shopping centers bear the names of old family farms:

    Of course, one nice thing about our community is that there are still some links to the past.

    Just across from my neighborhood is the Frying Pan Meeting House, a worship space built in 1791 that hosted services until the late 1960s. Behind the building is a small cemetery where many of the area’s early settlers are buried.

    Up the street is a church built in 1895 that served as the main congregation among Floris residents. Today the building — with a few additions — is a Korean Presbyterian Church.

    One of my favorite places is Frying Pan Park, a working 1920s-1950s era farm that gives a sense of what the surrounding area was like during that time. It has historical farm equipment, a collection of animals and a nature trail that is one of the most peaceful places I have found to run.

    On the park land there are a few buildings left from the early school system. The 1911 Floris Elementary School is there, as well as a 1921 building that high school boys used to learn tractor repair and woodworking (I attended the newer elementary school just up the street, which was built in 1954).

    One of those boys wrote about his incredible role in the community, which we might want to think about bringing back today. He was involved in the Future Farmers of America, played on the football team and during his junior and senior years of high school drove the school bus.

    That’s right, a high school student was in charge of picking up his classmates and getting them safely to school. I can’t decide if that system today would result in fewer or more surly bus drivers.

    If I had read this book a few years ago — when I actually got it — I could have shared a picture of the community’s general store, which also for a time served as the post office. The store and an adjacent house later became a furniture store, which continued to operate when I lived there. A two-lane main road ran just past the store, but became a traffic bottleneck to wider parts of the road on either side. The road eventually needed to be widened, and while the four-lane road is nice, the chain link fence that runs alongside is not as quaint as the historic structure that had to be knocked down.

    A look at some of the pieces that remain:

    A quick shoutout to friend AV’s blog, Multimediating101.com, where I read about both the free slideshow creation site I used here as well as the type of camera that took the pictures.

    By cjhannas books home Uncategorized
  • 21 Oct

    Read Like It’s 2009

    Yesterday was all about catching up with posts from this year.

    Today I’ll follow up with the best 9 posts of 2009. Like yesterday, these are in chronological order, not ranked by merit:

    Door-othy We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
    A debate erupts on the merits of opening car doors for female companions.

    Taylor Swift: Pregnant and Confused?
    I start a rumor about my nemesis, Taylor Swift, with some help from The Washington Post.

    The Smell of Cheap Living
    A poor choice (in hindsight) at the grocery store takes me back to a time of very cheap living. (Note: I will never ever under any circumstances buy these things again).

    Peace Out
    I react to the negative uproar that follows President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win.

    In Defense of Sweatpants
    A Newsweek article grinds my gears on the topic of men wearing sweatpants in public.

    But the Hat Came Back
    A key piece of my winter wardrobe comes back into my life, years after it was stolen by a swift, crafty blonde.

    All I’m Askin’ is Please, Forgive Me
    Music triggers a round of neighborhood carpool nostalgia.

    Creative Confusion
    Making use of elementary school artwork, and my horrendous handwriting gets me in trouble.

    Do It Yourself Ping Pong
    You never made your own ping pong paddle? Well we did.

    I do not plan retrospectives for the other years in the archives, though there is some good material in there. Solid new stuff coming soon — stay tuned.

    By cjhannas best of fashion food high school home hot dogs running Taylor Swift Uncategorized
  • 09 Sep

    That’s Sick, Yo

    Sick days were much cooler in elementary school.

    Back then it was downright exciting to get to stay home and spend the day with your good friends the couch and cable television. It wasn’t every day that I got to catch up on my Gilligan’s Island, Andy Griffith Show or Wings.

    Though judging by the list of shows I remember, it is clear that even in the era of the burgeoning cable universe there was not much for a 10-year-old to watch during the day. Fortunately, Mom must have understood that because multi-day sicknesses sometimes featured some sort of video rental to help us pass the time.

    I remember being entertained on one sick day by the classic film “Hot Shots! Part Deux.” Thanks to the wonders of technology (mainly Netflix streaming) I was able to once again utilize such an amazing tale to get me through a less-than-healthy day.

    It is odd what small details from your life you remember. I recall another sick day (maybe the same one, who knows) that involved drinking some Sprite. For some reason I had my “baseball books” on a table next to the couch as I recovered from some illness. The “books” were three-ring binders filled with my baseball card collection. Most were just plain-colored binders, but one had a snazzy baseball-specific design and a plastic cover on the outside.

    There was some kind of stain or mark on the plastic, and being the genius I have always been, I decided to use some of the Sprite to get it off. Apparently getting up to get some sort of wet paper towel was out of the question for this operation. The result, of course, was a sticky film where the mark used to be and I had to get the paper towel anyway to get that off.

    I had something else to add here, but can’t for the life of me remember. I blame/credit Nyquil, nectar of the cold-having gods. It also gets credit if none of the above made any sense.

    By cjhannas home Netflix Uncategorized
  • 30 Jun

    Six Years Ago Today

    Today is a pretty big day for me. It is my 30th consecutive day of blogging, the last day at my part-time video job and the sixth anniversary of a great relationship with Altima.

    Of course, Altima is my car, which I bought on this day in 2004. When I rolled off the lot, the car had a whopping nine miles on the odometer, most of which came during my test drive. I remember the instant peace of mind that came from trading in my dying 1993 Pontiac Grand Am for the gleaming Nissan goodness.

    Here’s what I looked like that day in my family’s standard driveway car picture:

    Note the tucked-in blue polo and khaki shorts, which indicate that I was either on my way to or from a shift selling shoes at Galyan’s. My brother’s red SUV with 18 bajillion miles on it is down at the street.

    Strangely enough, all of my life journeys since that day six years ago have covered exactly 49,994 miles. I was doing a lot of math on my way to work yesterday trying to see if there was any chance I would get home today at the 50,000 mark. I think this is pretty close (remember I started at 00009):

    During the past six years I moved six times, lived in four states (Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Florida), had six employers, was called a nerd on live TV (for my Rubik’s skillz, thanks Rebecca!), ran a marathon and three half marathons, owned two different cell phones and two different laptops, attended five family weddings (cousin, aunt, brother, sister, cousin), and ate countless meals at Taco Bell.

    Altima also acquired two bees in that span of time. They are both located in the bottom left corner of the back window, just an inch or so apart. Strangely though, one of them has been there since the first week I owned the car and the other just appeared sometime last year.

    You can’t quite see them here, but they are just below the stickers:

    A closer look at the peacefully resting bees:

    I tried several times to get the first one (left) out with a vacuum and other implements, but to no avail. At this point, they are really a part of the car’s ambiance. I mean, if things get lonely on a road trip I can always talk to the bees.

    That brings the June Blogoganza to a close. Hopefully someone enjoyed me posting that much, though I apologize for the days I clearly had nothing to write about (and wanted dearly to skip). Definitely not writing anything tomorrow, so you’ll just have to occupy yourself with the archives. Hasta luego.

    By cjhannas car family home nostalgia shoes Uncategorized
  • 02 Jun

    Call Me Junior

    As a left-handed kid who played baseball — and let’s face it, a baseball fan in the 1990s — I was a huge fan of Ken Griffey Jr.

    He hit home runs. He made awesome catches in center field. He brought a youthful energy to the game that made him the most likable perennial fixture at the All Star Game.

    Oh and he had a sweet batting stance every kid mimicked in their back yard and for a few swings at baseball practice.

    Now his baseball career is over after his retirement Wednesday night.

    He leaves behind a legacy of home runs without a hint of steroid suspicion and a thousand what-ifs related to his far-too-numerous season-ending injuries. Fortunately he also leaves the Nintendo 64 game Major League Baseball with Ken Griffey Jr. Even today, it remains one of my favorite video games of all time.

    I recently reacquired a copy thanks to eBay, and though the graphics seem incredibly outdated, the game itself is as fun as ever. It’s not really a challenge — my brother and I have racked up so many wins by dozens and dozens of runs it hardly seems we could ever lose a game. In fact, we even played an entire season as the 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays and never felt we were in danger of not achieving perfection.

    I am also not ashamed to admit I mis-heard the lyrics to the song at the beginning of the game for a long time. Take a listen:

    Did you catch the words? I originally thought Griffey said “Home, home, homey-G.” Imagine my facepalm when my brother gave me the “are you an idiot” look with the corrected “Call, call, call me Junior,” which clearly makes more sense.

    The makers of the game also put in a nice feature after any time you make a jumping or diving catch. Griffey will respond to your efforts with something like “fantastic play” or “great catch.” So if you get bored and want someone to talk to, just hit the jump button right before you catch a fly ball (really easy), and let the following unfold:

    Griffey: “Fantastic play!”
    You: “Why thank you.”

    Now that he is retired, here’s to hoping he takes a few hours to play the N64 game and have that conversation with himself.

    By cjhannas baseball home not smart Uncategorized video games
  • 24 Feb

    Creative Confusion

    Have a room in your home in serious need of redecoration? Why not turn to the artwork of children to brighten those bare walls? Even better, dig up some of your own work if you still have it laying around.

    My parent’s basement is plastered in the artwork my siblings and I brought home during our elementary school days, mainly because my mother kept every single piece of school-related paper. Several years ago, we all started going through our boxes and boxes of material to try to pare down the gargantuan load. In doing so, we ended up with a pile of our artwork, and were sitting in a rather undecorated space.

    So this happened:


    In my case, it was clear that my artistic skills ceased at about the second grade. If I drew a flower today it would look quite a bit like one done by my 8-year-old self. But there is one piece that I find particularly entertaining. It’s hanging on the wall just above my computer screen. According to what’s written on the back, it was done in the sixth grade. The assignment was some sort of poster contest, though I’m not sure the exact theme.

    I went with “Save The World, Stop The Violence.” A worthy cause if I say so myself. I’ll point out the globe in the “O” of World. That’s probably my greatest artistic achievement. I remember tracing the gun from something, and my teacher not wanting to display my work because it had a gun. I can’t imagine what would have happened today. I probably would have been expelled for plotting to take down the school.

    Then of course, there is the stop sign. If you didn’t look closely before, I’ll wait while you give it another glance…….Ok, what’s wrong with this picture? That’s right, my sixth-grade self made a stop sign with only six sides. It’s not like I didn’t pass by at least three of them while I rode my bike to school every day and should have known better. Maybe that’s why I didn’t win the contest.

    One of the overall best works is courtesy of my sister. It makes me want to have a little card next to each piece explaining what the assignment was supposed to be. Check out this girl standing outside on a nice, sunny day:

    She certainly looks very happy. But what makes this picture curious is the text. It has apparently been translated by a teacher to read “Abraham Lincoln got shot.” Um, what? Why is the girl so happy, and what does Lincoln have to do with this outside scene? Obviously the assignment was completed, since we can see the teacher’s red smiley face in the upper right corner. Was this a depiction of Jefferson Davis’ granddaughter? A previously unidentified Booth co-conspirator? This is why we need time machines.

    The confusion brought to mind a casualty of my horrid handwriting from my Susquehanna days. My dorm room desk featured a pull-out keyboard tray that I used to store pens and an ongoing to-do list. My entire organization system depended on a single sheet of paper with a list of the item, a day I intended to complete it off to the left and the day it was due on the right. If I needed to scribble down a random piece of info, like a phone number or a message for my roommate, that made it onto an unused portion of the page.

    But my final list has an entry I cannot decipher. I had no clue what it said just days after I wrote it, and definitely don’t have a better idea today. Here’s the full sheet:

    Down in the bottom right corner is the boxed-in, questionable item:

    Any ideas? I think it’s a name since both words appear to be capitalized. That is of course if we assume it is two words. That would lead me to say it’s Lauren B—. I hope I wasn’t supposed to call her or provide any sort of vital assistance, since I can’t recall ever knowing a Lauren B—.

    Of course, it could just as easily be Carmen or Camera or Laven. If only I didn’t use the blue pen to write it, I’m sure this would have been no mystery. Despite my known poor handwriting, I still sometimes used a blue ballpoint pen that always added extra loops and confusion to my writing. Why didn’t I use the trusted set of black pens?!

    Lauren, if you’re out there, I’m sorry.

    By cjhannas family handwriting home nostalgia Uncategorized
  • 28 Jul

    I Wanna be the First, the Best…

    Sometimes we do things that are stupid, awesome, or stupidly awesome. You might think, “Man, I bet not a lot of people have ever one that.”

    But what if nobody has? What if you’re the first person to ever do it?

    We have lots of records or so-called “important” milestones—The first guy to reach the north pole (Santa of course), fly around the world, hit 50 home runs in a season, eat 60 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

    But what about the stuff that doesn’t matter?

    The other day I was playing pool in my basement with my brother Pat. It was during our rousing game of 15-ball that I assert Pat became the first person on the planet to skip a cue ball off a pool table, and have it land on a Playstation 3 controller.

    Think about all of the pieces involved, and how unlikely it is that they come together. It’s not often that you hit the cue ball off the table. Sure, when you mess around all the time and attempt the number of jumps we do, it does happen more frequently, but in the greater world it just doesn’t happen.

    Then take into consideration the placement of most billiards tables in the world. How many of them are even in the same dwelling, let alone the same room as a Playstation 3? Then you have to have the controller within striking distance, and in a position to be struck by the cue ball. Line up the angles just right, and bam, you’ve got history.

    I’m still pondering whether to get him a trophy. Maybe just a gift certificate to the Selinsgrove Sub Shop.

    A pictorial version of the feat (recreated):

    Click here, yo.

    By cjhannas family home Uncategorized video games
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