Daddy's Got a Brand New Hat!

Ok, so not exactly brand new. I got it from an antique store owned/operated by Kevin's mom. Give me just a little more time & an opportunity to acquire a bus drivers uniform, and Kevin and I can officially do a scene from the Honeymooners. We'd both have to shave, of course. Come to think of it, Kevin, you should totally do Jackie Gleason for Halloween.

Funny thing is this is exactly the third hat I wished to acquire. I wanted a beat-up fedora style, because I felt I needed a "Tom Waits" hat. It's awesome.

Forgot to mention I suffered a little defeat a couple weeks back. I've been wanting to learn piano for who knows how long now. I got to try out Karissa's mom's clavinova (I know it sounds dirty but it's a console piano!) and got instantly hooked. I bought one of those cheap roll-out keyboards and got made fun of by Karissa for a while for it (it sounds fine enough to practice with, but it is a little dorky).
We had our Spring clean-up th second week of May. There are two streets that get picked apart by dumpster-divers with particular relish, and those are Belmont and Reeves Drive. They considered a bit "upper-class" and are more carefully taken care of than a lot of other parts of town, and the residents end up throwing out junk that is higher quality than that of us blue-collars.
Anyway, I was driving along Reeves one morning on my way home from work, when I noticed a big fucking upright piano sitting out by a curb. I thought "cool, I should take it," but just drove off and forgot about it for a couple days. But the more I kept driving by it, the more I kept looking at it, and the more I started thinking I should take it (I'm not really embarassed at taking other people's junk as long as it's quality).
One night, I parked a block away and walked up to it. The front panels were completely gone, exposing the strings and hammers and other guts of the piano. The pedals were intact, but the keys were yellowed and chipped in places. The whole thing looked a wreck. I hit a few keys to see if it would even work, and it sounded just perfect. It may have been out of tune, but this piano still had perfect tone, even sitting outside on the grass and missing cosmetic parts.
I thought, this is totally me to have a piano looking like this, and this piano should be mine. I got a couple friends to try to help me move it and a pickup, but the thing would not budge. I had figured it would be heavy as shit, but it was just too much, and the wood that was on it was old, hard wood that a lot more to the 400-500 lbs already on the piano.
I even considered getting it on a four-wheel handtruck and pushing it across the two bridges and 1.5 miles of road to my house myself, but the next day it was too late. A payloader had picked it up and dumped it into the truck long before I could get back to it.
So, defeat. My resourcefulness could have won me a free piano, but I didn't act quick enough. Back to the roll-out keyboard for now.
I'm done with my classes for th semester, and I'm anxious to get back into the comic more. I'd like to have the story done by Fall semester. The good news is that I finally got into a comics class next Fall, so maybe I can expand my abilities just a little and learn some new stuff. I'm also currently most of the way through Making Comics by Scott McCloud, which is explaining a lot of good littl tidbits to me. This guy is a frickin genius whn it comes to the study of comics theory. Yeah, that's right, there is such a thing as comics theory, you bastards.
Last weekend we went to Devils Lake for a family visit. Kevin and April went too, bcause they had Aiden baptized in the church they used to go to. I've never seen an infant take a baptism so well, especially a Catholic one.
After the baptism, we went to a reception at the Great Northern building, an old structure which used to be a hotel but now holds apartments and lends its basement to be used for receptions. If I ever get outside to paint, I've got that in mind for a subject.
Isabella gets just a little stranger every day. It seems like she's always got some new little silly dance or twit-walk, or else she's singing or talking funny. And I swear we're not teaching her this stuff, she just comes up with it. But it is entertaining. We should think of getting rid of cable and just watch her all day. A part of me thinks, "wow, what a dork. I can't believe she's my kid." Then the other part thinks, "wow, what a dork. You can tell she's my kid."