Harry Belafonte: A Glass Half Full

Wednesday evening, my Theories of Professional Writing class (along with approximately 1,000 other people) got the opportunity to hear Mr. Harry Belafonte speak about his life and thoughts about equal rights and the current state of politics. I know Harry Belafonte largely as a singer and an actor, and for his work on 1985’s “We Are the World,” but I must admit, I wasn’t familiar with all the humanitarian and civil rights work Belafonte has been involved with. The 90-year-old Belafonte shared anecdotes about both John F. and Bobby Kennedy, and about the first time he met Dr. Martin Luther… (read more)

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Star Wednesday: One of a Kind Sign

One of the more interesting and occasionally frustrating things about Star Wars collecting is that sometimes you run across something that is as mysterious as it is enjoyable. A few years back, a friend of mine who buys, fixes, and sells arcade games found this sign in a warehouse and gave it to me. He didn’t know anything about the sign’s history, and neither do I. The sign is not actually blue. I took the above picture with the sign resting on the hood of my car. It’s actually clear plexiglass. Inspection of the artwork reveals halftone dots in a… (read more)

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Stepping Into a Tiny Home

Rob O'Hara Tiny House

I have blogged about my infatuation with Tiny Homes before. I find the concept of paring down all of one’s material possessions and moving into a tiny home exciting and a little bit wacky. I know that a tiny home would not be compatible with my current lifestyle — I simply own too many things and love them all — but it’s still fun to dream about owning one. This past weekend at the Oklahoma Home and Garden show, several local builders set up a Tiny Home Village consisting of half a dozen tiny homes for the public to inspect.… (read more)

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Shadowlord Cards

Back when we were kids, my buddy Jeff had all the best board games: Crossbows and Catapults, Dark Tower, and this game from Parker Brothers, Shadowlord. From what I can remember, Shadowlord was a bit like Monopoly set in space. Players moved around planets, built spaceships, and fought one other. The ultimate goal was to beat the Shadowlord, whose name is Starlord (no relation to Peter Quill). If you want to know more than that, here’s a link to the Cliff Notes version of the manual and here is the full manual. I’m not saying the game was complicated, but… (read more)

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Right. Back to it.

After a month and a half off, today is my first day back to school. At the graduate level, nine credit hours is considered full time enrollment. I’m taking ten in the form of Young Adult Fiction Writing, Writing the Screenplay, and Theories of Professional Writing. I have no idea if I can handle this much school in one semester while juggling things at home and things at work. It will be fun and exciting for us all to see what I fail at first. Last semester I submitted roughly a dozen short stories to various online magazines and journals.… (read more)

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Coffee Mug Tree

Susan and I are the only two people in this house who drink coffee. Between the two of us, we own at least thirty coffee mugs. Because 2017 is The Year of Parting with Things, you might think donating a couple of those mugs would be an easy place to start. I went into the kitchen last week with every intention of picking out a couple of coffee mugs and getting rid of them. Instead I walked out of the kitchen and ordered a MyGift Vintage Rustic Brown Iron Mug Organizer from Amazon, because, and this should be obvious to… (read more)

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1,825 Things

What do a beat up Star Wars arcade cabinet, a toy telephone that utters horror phrases, and an old iPad case have in common? They are three of the twenty things I’ve parted with so far in 2017. If I get rid of five things a day every day this year, 5 x 365 = 1,825. Minus twenty, that leaves 1,805 to go. Bill Clinton once famously said “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” and along those same lines, when you say you’re going to throw away 1,825 “things,” at some point you have to… (read more)

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Ten Resolutions for 2017

Later today I’ll be printing this list out and reading it twice a day, once every morning and once very night. 01. Watch one movie per week Easily achievable (I watched 83 last year). Just like 2016, I’ll keep track of the movies on my Media List page. Additionally, I’ll write a sentence or two about each one. 02. Read one book a week. Last year I averaged less than one book per month, so this will be a huge challenge. I’d like for the majority of these to be fiction, but I’m not setting that as a hard rule.… (read more)

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My Year in Review: A Look Back at 2016

Rob O'Hara, beard, Chicago Bears

In 2016, the FDA once again announced that eating raw cookie dough will kill us all. Somehow I survived, and celebrated by cutting off Beardie, the beard I grew throughout the entirety of 2015. Everyone rejoiced. On January 1, 2016, our cruise ship docked in Ensenada, Mexico on our way back from Hawaii. Our vacation began in California where we watched Star Wars: A Force Awakens in Hollywood, and ended 2 1/2 weeks later. As of that trip, Susan and I have now been to all fifty states. Last year we also took road trips to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and… (read more)

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Revisiting the Arkadia Retrocade

While working on my end-of-2016 post earlier this week I realized I had not visited Arkadia Retrocade this year. This injustice will not stand, I said to myself. Wednesday morning, I hopped in my car and made the four-hour drive to Fayetteville, Arkansas. I’ve written and podcasted about the place before (and even sold them some of my arcade cabinets), but in case you missed it, Arkadia Retrocade is a retro-style arcade where customers pay a fee to enter, and all games are free to play. They aren’t the only arcade operating with this business model, but they’re the last… (read more)

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