My Forearms

This morning as I was having my pre-commute coffee Ollie came flying through the air and sliced my left arm up with his back claws.

Then I went to work.

Then I went to my other work.

As I was walking home I fell on some ice and made a huge bump on my right arm to balance my injuries out. (The photo does not do justice to the swollen-ness of the bump.)

That was my day.

I hope this is at least moderately amusing for you. It kinda made me laugh.

Skiball

I don't take our camera out too much since it started acting up. I took this photo with my camera. It's Danny Klaver collecting all the tickets he'd won playing skiball.

Just thought I'd post a lil' something in case anyone still checks this blog.

missing email

Apparently my email account has fallen off the face of the earth. That's what I get for trying to have my own domain name and everything. Oh well... so if anybody's sent me anything in the past 2-3 days I probably never got the message.

I can still be reached at robhaan at mac dot com.

Crossword Puzzles

Does anybody else do crossword puzzles? I don't know if I've ever completed one yet. This morning I was only missing about 7 letters, but they always throw in one word that's from some other language or some actor from the 1920's or something.

I've been doing them almost every day since I saw the documentary called wordplay on Independent Lens on PBS. I guess Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton, along with a lot of other people do the crossword every day. I wouldn't be surprised if the current president does crossword puzzles too. They'd be easier for him though because he can just make up his own words.

Lately...

Life has been good. Rob finally has regular shifts at his new job, and I can sense that he is a lot happier. My job has been going quite well also. I only have 3-4 kids this weekend because of Thanksgiving, which isn't bad.

A couple weekends ago, Mic was traveling through Chicago. I took him downtown and we went shopping for a new jacket. We met up with Katy later and had a few beers. It was a blast. Thanks guys!

This last weekend, I went to visit Ginelle in Lafayette. I love Chicago, but it was great to have a new scene for once. Her apartment is beautiful, and I had a great weekend. Sunday we had a Thanksgiving meal at church. Our church is so loving and warm. We had some good conversations with some amazing people.

I love holidays, and I can't wait to celebrate them. Even though Rob is staying in Chicago because of his new job, I am really looking forward to seeing my family. It has been a long time since I have been with them, and being a person who has never really lived away from Sioux Center, I can tell. At home, I get to see our new nephew and meet up with some friends that I haven't talked to in years.

Lately, I have been feeling older, thinking about things that I have never thought about before. But it is good. Yeah, life has been good.

Clarification

A new job

This is a photo I took with my phone before my interview. I won't disclose any more information so that "so the internet doesn't stalk and kill me." (that quote is stolen from Ross's blog).

Our camera is on the fritz so when I tried to snap a photo of the movie filming that's going on down the street tonight, it didn't work. So I'm posting a couple of photos that are a few weeks old instead. One is the gorey mess of candles that completely melted in a matter of seconds on Sam's cake. The other is of course our new nephew, Jake.

New Things

It has been a while since Rob posted about the cowboy movies that he wanted to see, and a lot has happened. Over Labor Day weekend, Rob, Ollie and I traveled back to Sioux Center for a friend's wedding and to visit our families. I didn't tell my mom that we were coming, and it ended up in a big surprise. We went out for lunch and caught up on things that have been happening over the past couple of months. It was great. We spent the whole weekend with both our families, which was long overdue. We traveled back to Chicago on that Monday, stopped in Des Moines and then I traveled on to Chicago in a rental car because mine had broken down. After a few days of stress, Rob drove back a new car.

In other news, Kris and Josh finally got the chance to see Jake. Jacob Thomas arrived this past Monday, and we would like to welcome him. We can't wait to see him next weekend!

Other than a new car and a new member to the family, Ollie got a new haircut! When we were home, my sister Ashley took out her cow clippers and did a number on his long hair. It was quite the task, but we think he looks good.

It's about time...

Anybody else excited for these?


Even if one's a remake and one's based on a book, it's about time for another western or two.

Threadless again...

Since Rob is on his way back to Sioux Center for the weekend, I thought I would write about his new Threadless submission to make sure people go and vote. I like this design a lot, and think a lot of people will, so I think you should definitely see it. If you want to check it out and vote, click this button:

The Decemberists

How to Be Dutch in Chicago

Spoon Concert: free
General Admission to Shedd Aquarium: free with pass from library
Movie at second run theatre: $3 each

and that was our weekend.

WXRT sponsored a free Spoon show at Schubas. I was planning on trying to track down the reps from the station on Wednesday night as they went to various Wicker Park & Bucktown locations to give out tickets, but I managed to win a pair of tix off the Schubas website, so I didn't even have to mess with that.

You've probably heard Spoon on the trailers for "Stranger than Fiction". The first song on this trailer is them... they had 6 songs on the film's soundtrack. They were on Letterman last week too.

The show was super-crowded, but good.

The Chicago Public Library has passes to all the major museums that can be checked out for free admissions. The shedd passes seem elusive, so I grabbed it as soon as I saw it was availible.



Logan Theatre is a second run theatre near here. It's really old-school, but for $3, it's a great deal. We caught "1408" there. I like Stephen King short stories. It was no "Shawshank Redemption", but it was pretty good.

Around Our Neighborhood

Threadless

I submitted my first Threadless submission in a long time. My scores have gotten worse with every design... I suspect I'll probably get such a low score that the design will be dropped before the week is up, but it's worth a shot.

It's kinda disturbing & creepy. Don't say I didn't warn you...

That being said... if you want to check it out (and give it a 5) click here.

another good thing about this city...

I always kinda assumed that there were no real good FM (as opposed to online, not as opposed to AM) radio stations anywhere. There were 4 main popular stations back home. A rock station and a pop station from each Sioux City and Sioux Falls. I think they all try so hard to be popular that they're always behind. When they do get a good track they play it to death (except of course on Z-98 with the no-repeat guarantee).

However in North Carolina we found a station that seemed really good. We were only there for a few days so I can't really say for sure. Then after we got back to Chicago I started listening to 93XRT (93.1 WXRT). I never thought I'd be such a big fan of an FM station. I still listen to RadioParadise, but in my car I don't even have a CD player, let alone web access.

If you're ever in the Chicago area check out 93.1

Mates of State

Mates of State is a drummer & keyboard/husband & wife duet. We saw them live once when they were here in Chicago in the fall of 2005. Meg likes them a lot. I like them too. You may have seen them on TV and not even known it was them. They are featured on this at&t commercial.

Chicago Loves Food & Music

Regarding the comments from Meg's post...

The "horrific" crab wasn't so horrific actually. His leg span was no more than 5 inches and he was quite entertaining. He looked like a leaf blowing in the wind when he ran and could bury his entire body, except his eyes in a matter of seconds.

The other photo, the purple and blue balloon, on the other hand could have been quite dangerous. It was a portuguese man-of-war. Apparently something had already had his potentially lethal tentacles for dinner. This is probably one of the strangest things I've come across in my life. They are actually not single animals, rather communities of zooids that work together as one unit. Strange.

The people in the top photo are:
• Two fish that my dad caught at the same time
• The fella on the left is the First Mate of the charter fishing boat
• The one in red is my brother-in-law Josh (who is soon to be a father)
• The one facing him is my Aunt Beth from New York
• The one with the beard is Dad
• The one in the foreground is my sister Kris (who is soon to be a mother)

And regarding our "IKEA" house... the shelves in the bathroom & above the oven, the wooden cart next to the oven, and the lanterns in the living room are all from IKEA. I think the frame Brielle put on her print (in the bedroom) was from IKEA too. I think we'll get a table from IKEA pretty soon as well. Then we don't have to eat on the couch and we can play RUMMIKUB again. (I hate playing on the floor).

In other news...

I haven't posted in quite some time because mostly I've just been looking for work. I'm sure that most potential employers will probably come across this blog so I hesitate to write anything about job searching. I'll just say that I've pretty much decided that for the time being I will consider myself a freelance graphic designer who, depending on the outcome of my interview tomorrow, works part time at a department store.

Meg had little trouble finding a job. I'm guessing the industry she's working in is somewhat less likely to dig up blogs and such, but none-the-less I never want to too much about work. As much as I'd like to keep family and friends up to date with our lives, I think we'll probably be posting mostly stuff about the stuff we do with our free time.

That being said, I'll try to post more often... stuff like this:



On Saturday we went to check out Linoln Park's Pizzafest. They advertised the event as having every kind of topping and crust imaginable. It turned out that only three pizza vendors were represented and with just cheese, beef, and pepperoni. Apparently this was the first year for the event and they didn't really know what to expect. Oh well... the music more than made up for what the festival may have been lacking in culinary diversity. Over the Rhine played a free show. We snagged seats (on the ground) quite close to the stage and the show was excellent.

Yesterday afternoon we braved the crowds at the mind-bogglingly huge event known as Taste of Chicago. We tried the small portions from various vendors, but the highlight was these crazy homemade potato chips from Harry Caray's. This isn't a great shot, but you can see the drill contraption that they spin the potato on to make one super-long curly pile of chips. The hot BBQ sauce was quite tasty.



After slowly maneuvering through the crowds by the food stands, we headed over to the band shell to catch a few country shows, Craig Morgan and Sara Evans. As much as I enjoy country music concerts, give me the Sioux Empire Fair over Taste of Chicago any day. I think Meg and I were the most "county" people there. And we're not very "county". Don't get me wrong, they put on a good show. It just felt kinda wrong.

North Carolina

Rob and I went to North Carolina for his grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary gathering. Other than missing our initial flight and not have luggage for the entire trip, it was a great time. Here is evidence of that...

Ollie

more photos...

Moved In

a haircut

My hair was in bad shape and needed to go.

That's probably okay though, because I'm having a hard enough time getting the pig poo smell out of my short hair after powerwashing hog buildings on Friday.

Meg flew out to Chicago this weekend to check out the public school job fair. You know the price of gas is high when it's cheaper to fly there.

NCDC Extreme vs. The Condemned

Exhibit A is a poster I made last semester for the Dordt College/Northwestern College spinoff of American Idol.

Exhibit B is a poster for a new movie.

I should sue.

No... not really... it's not thaaat close of a rip-off... plus it may be possible that whoever made that poster and I got the idea from some place else subconsciously. Plus I like Vinnie "Bullet Tooth Tony" Jones. Not so much the other fella'.

Just thought it was kinda funny. I have to admit, the numerals look better. Okay, maybe everything looks better... but they have 10 people... I had a stock photo of a microphone repeated 10 times.

In other news. I'm done with school. All that's left to do is pick up the diploma at the grad ceremony tomorrow morning. I am glad to be done. I'm going to slip into a coma for 2 weeks to catch up on sleep.

Art Shows & Moving To Chicago

Hi. It's been a while. A lot has happened since I posted. I worked my last shift at the theatre. I didn't think about how much I was going to miss that place until that night. I've spent an incredibly large chunk of the last 3 1/2 years there. Many hours were spent cleaning by myself and I can't say I will miss that. I will certainly miss working with all the people I've got a chance to know while working there.

The art show is down now. All went well. People seemed to really appreciate that we had coffee. I don't know if anybody's done that before. I didn't even have time to grab any though. Oh well... I heard it was good.


Now the "Super Show" is up, the show that features work from all 15 of us senior art majors. Check it out if you get a chance.


The biggest news, however, is that Meg & I recently visited Chicago to find an apartment. Although the mission wasn't accomplished until one of the last hours we had in the city, it was accomplished... so we are happy. We'll be living up in Logan Square.

Art

Last weekend was the Rock Rapids Art Show. I didn't submit anything, but I told Meg that she should submit the largest piece that she made last semester in her ceramics class. She got second place in sculpture for the piece. I would take a photo of it to put here, but our digital camera died suddenly and mysteriously. It's being fixed now... I don't know when we'll get it back.

Our art show is up. It's the last of three shows, each featuring five senior art majors. Check it out if you're in the area.

Meg's Birthday

Tomorrow is Meg's birthday. We're going to go to Nitwits Comedy Club to (hopefully) share a few laughs. That is, if she's feeling better than she was today. Seems like some people never get sick unless it's their birthday and/or Christmas.

Anyhow... if anybody reads this yet tonight, they'll know what Meg is getting for her birthday from me before she does... but i just wanted to share this tidbit: A certain local store that may or may not be a part of an evil empire has in stock a CD that is not supposed to be released until next Tuesday. I guess this wouldn't be so strange, except for the fact that their CD selection is usually completely worthless and lacking in anything worth listening to... although they do have a lovely set of hymn CDs that comes in a pink tin with a Thomas Kinkade painting on the cover (I feel like I need to cover my bases here and make sure that everyone understands that I am being sarcastic here). So anyhow... I thought I'd take a look over in the CDs to see if they might have a Natalie Merchant CD that Meg doesn't have yet... or maybe something else that she might like. So there it was... the new Bright Eyes CD.

Strangest thing ever. Maybe that's why I can never find any worthwhile CDs there... maybe they put them on the shelf before they're supposed to be released and then on the day of the release when I go to look for the CD, they're sold out already.

I guess I could be totally off on this and maybe they changed the release dates, but on Amazon and iTunes, "Pre-order" is still the only option.

In other news (can I call my shopping & movie watching activities news?), Mic & I watched the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko tonight. Unfortunately it's been so long since I've seen the regular one, I'm not sure how many of the differences I was aware of. Still a very good movie though. I'm pretty sure I like the Director's cut better, but as I said... it's been a while.

Alright, time for bed...
Goodnight!