The Adventures of han

Good evening everyone,

After yesterday's miracle of posting a blog entry before midnight, I'm back to having to tweak the date/time when I'm about to hit Publish.

I know I've said this before, but I'm trying to keep work out of the blog as much as possible. Confidentiality issues aside, this blog is one of my escapes from work and since I spent a lot of time at work, I should take my me time for me. I could talk about being on duty this week or the fire alarm issues in my building, but at the same time, it doesn't seem that interesting to you all as readers.

I don't think I talked about The Adventures of han, so let's do that instead. When I was in Ohio last weekend, Michelle and I spent part of one day shopping in a variety of stores. We were making our rounds in the stores that seemed interesting, which included the Hallmark store. One part of the store had a bunch of "Itty Bittys", which are little plush figures of various Disney characters. Since Disney now owns Star Wars, some of the Itty Bittys were also Star Wars characters, including a 2-pack of Han & Leia. I proposed the idea to Michelle where we would get Han & Leia so that each of us could have one while we're apart.

(I re-read that paragraph and it just seems repetitive and poorly written. However, I'm tired, so I'm just going to keep going. Bear with me.)

As you might guess, Han quickly developed a tiny voice and loved to wave at Michelle and Leia. Jump to Sunday morning while I'm putting everything back into my suitcase and an idea comes to mind. Michelle will sometimes send me silly selfies and I know that photos can brighten both of our days. (It's a nice little "thinking of you" token, for sure.) So, I thought that I could have Han be the subject of photos that I would send to Michelle. I quickly snapped a photo of Han and Leia together while Michelle was in the other room and started to develop my idea.

Yes, I had them hold hands on purpose.

While waiting in the airport, this idea grew into a daily photo chronicling The Adventures of han. If you're asking why han's name is lowercase, it's because he's itty bitty - duh! :P Anyway, I took some different photos of han during my flights back to Wisconsin.

It's entirely possible that the woman sitting next to me on this flight was giving me weird looks.

I sent some of these to Michelle but then on Monday, I put a bunch of them up on Facebook in an album called "The Adventure of han". If you're Facebook friends with me, you should be able to see the whole album. Speaking of Facebook friends, I was surprised by the response. Quite a few people liked the album and said the idea was adorable. One of my old MASMC students said I should make it a daily comic strip. It was encouraging to see the response; that's for sure.

So, I want to keep this up, since it's a fun low-stress project that people enjoy. I have enough random stuff in my apartment to keep the photos interesting (at least I hope so). I even have thought about "storylines" or at least series of photos that tell a quick story.

Here's today's adventure. By the way, do you wanna build a snowman?

Not much else to say right now. If you're Facebook friends with me, feel free to give me any suggestions on future adventures for han.

I don't think I've said it enough, but I enjoy the silliness of some of these holidays. Today, for example, is Northern Hemisphere Hoodie Hoo Day. The point of the holiday is to go outside at noon, wave your arms in the air, and yell "Hoodie Hoo!" to chase winter away. Apparently Thomas Roy, an actor/radio announcer just said "this should be a holiday" as a joke and the idea took off. Okay, where can you do this, because I need to make a random holiday. I don't know what yet, but clearly the sky's the limit.

DFTBA!