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Downsizing and the theory of relativity

Kallax cubes are perfect for putting things in.
IKEA KALLAX cubes.
My favorite of all the cubes.

It’s funny.  You’d think that moving from a 1000 square foot apartment to a 1000 square foot home wouldn’t be difficult, but then you’d be wrong.

This house is tiny and meticulous.  I’m shedding skin and shedding possessions.  If you are the kind of person that romanticizes tiny houses, or feels like we all need to be a “little more Zen”, I’d like you to meet the reality of my life.

Those of you who know me, know that I’m a musician.  I play piano, bass, guitar, and trumpet.  I have gear.  I have amps.  I have a giant upright bass that takes up about six square feet of floor space and stands about six feet tall. I have sheet music and files.

The long and short of it is that there’s no room.  I can’t have the house with the “flow” and the “energy” and also keep my stuff.  It’s almost like the theory of relativity applies to stuff… energy and matter are related.  You can convert matter to energy by selling your stuff.  Less matter – more energy.

I sold my couch (more on that later), my desk, my dining room table, and a coffee table.  The only furniture I moved to the new house were beds, my kitchen table, and a bunch of those awesome IKEA Kallax cubes.

Selling the piano was the hardest – I’ll talk about that later.  But for the most part, selling was a liberation for me.  Each possession was a reminder of a part of my life that led to now.  My ex-wife picked out my dining room table, and it was a scarred, damaged relic of a failed attempt at a “normal” family home.

I sold “Oaky” the table to an artist in Logan Square for $73 (she was supposed to pay $75 but she didn’t have it on her).  My craigslist ad read like this:

“Oaky” the big dining room table.

This table is big (76″ x 42″) and solid.  It is the kind of table at which you eat stew.  Not a watery, soupy stew but the big thick stew that has potatoes and carrots in it.  This table is also good for making art.  Not the little ninny coloring book kind of art, but the huge-ass, giant, messy art where you climb on the table and you get paint under your fingernails.  It’s got some scuffs and paint stains but each of those is a badge of artistic heroism.  This table has seen some stuff, man.  If it had a name, it would be Butch or Shane or Tex.  It’s a survivor.  $100 or best offer.

Unloading stuff was fun – so far I value the energy more than the matter.

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The weirdest blue house in Lincoln Square

This is the story of how I came to be the owner of the weirdest house in Lincoln Square.  I’ve lived in the city of Chicago since I was 17.  I’ve lived in this neighborhood since 2000, and I can’t think of anywhere else that I could call home. 
I bought this house on July 14th and it is a pretty big life transformation for me.  Or rather, it’s the next step in a series of transformations.  It’s a pretty expensive step, I’d say.
This will be a blog about the house, but it’s not really about the house.  The house is where I keep my life, and my life is full of people and music and other things.  So if you are interested in people and music and other things, go ahead and check in frequently.

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Welcome to Rob Online

I like to make things work better. I live in Chicago with my 2 kids as a single dad. I work for a large healthcare data company in the IT department as a solution architect, but in my spare time I write and record music, play bass, coach soccer, and run marathons. So welcome – I’ll be populating the site over time – no pressure on me, but I want to make sure I have someplace that reflects me online besides the many social media footprints that I have. So welcome, look around and feel free to come back soon to check out what has changed.

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The most unpleasant things…

In the last few weeks I have bought a car and shopped for health insurance – easily two of the most unpleasant experiences know to man. But then it got me thinking – apart from the obvious (sickness, death, violence, grief, crime, etc.) what are the most annoying things in my life and what makes them unpleasant. So here goes take one of the list of things that suck:

  1. Moving – Everyting sucks about moving. You have to organize labor, pack up your crap, and do all that annoying bill-paying related stuff, like deal with your phone and electric and change your address on your credit cards and everything else. Moving also involves asking for favors which, if you’re a guy, is particularly challenging. Mostly though, moving involves changing your home base. Home is a sanctuary and a way that you define yourself, and when you uproot yourself and change sanctuaries, it’s usually not fun.
  2. Car shopping – Car shopping sucks because it is scary to spend that much money on something that, let’s face it, you don’t really know that much about. It is in your best interest to get the best car for the least amount of money, and it is in the car dealer’s best interest to sell you the least amount of car for the most money. They want to get the crap off their lot, so that’s what they want you to buy. They use time and fatigue and ignorance against you, and you pretty much have to take it if you want a car.
  3. Looking for a job – Especially lately, looking for a job has never sucked more. You wear your best suit, comb your hair, and summarize everything that is worthwhile about you in a two-page resume that reads like a careerbuilder ad. At its core, job seeking is repeated rejection. It used to be that you applied for 10-15 jobs and got rejected by all but 2 or 3. But now, due to the glory of the Internet, you can get rejected hundreds of times in one afternoon. If you get the interview, you then get to prostrate yourself in front of a disinterested middle manager and tell them – in dollars – what you think you are worth as a human being. Then, to make matters worse, they tell you that they think you’re worth less than what you thought.
  4. Breaking up – Man this is a hard one (allegedly, it’s hard to do). I’ve been married for 12 years and I still remember what it was like to break up. It involves doing something willfully that will hurt another person. Even worse, it’s another person that you (supposedly) cared about at one time. The only thing worse than breaking up is breaking up about 6 months after you should have broken up. Then it’s just plain ugly.
  5. Dealing with banks/insurance companies/ universities / brokers/large commercial institutions – This admittedly is a catchall, but all of these things have one thing in common. They are in business because they get money out of you for a service. This means that you are paying them to do something you can’t do for yourself that you need to be done. Health insurance is a perfect example. It’s like playing roulette at a casino. The game is rigged in the house’s favor. You can’t win. All you can do is try to mitigate the expense. The bigger the company, the more stable the service – but the less of a poop they give about you. Blue Cross could not care less about me. They want my premiums and they want to pay as little as possible in claims. Period. Keeping me alive is only in their best interest if I am not filing claims and paying as high a premium as they can squeeze out of me. Ugh. Must stop before ugly Rob takes over.
Surprisingly, the dentist and doctor didn’t make the list. I really don’t mind them that much, compared to these other things. They do their best and they really have my best interests at heart (or at least mine do). Hangovers also didn’t make the list because, let’s face it, they are my own damn fault. Next post will be my favorite things. I promise.
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The Day After Christmas


A friend of mine, John Austin wrote a song about the day after Christmas and it’s pretty good. It paints a picture of the strewn detritus that is pretty inevitable after the typical family Christmas. It would work as a pretty good “morning after” song in general, and he just picked December 26th as the biggest let-down day of them all. It’s a hopeful song, though, and like a lot of John’s songs points to hope in tragedy.

My parents countered that inevitable post-holiday letdown in their own way. They were married on Boxing Day in England. In all fairness, Boxing day is really still a pretty big deal in the UK. It’s the day after Christmas when people still give gifts and everything is still closed. This, of course, made it hard to find things like florists and caterers, but all the same, there they were.

My Dad is a small-town methodist, and my Mom was as Catholic as they come. They were married in England after a really quick courtship. I’m not sure my Dad’s family even made the trip from upstate New York. I know my Mom’s Catholic great-aunt almost boycotted the wedding because they would be serving communion to a protestant. But there they were, married nonetheless.

So they added some joy to the day after Christmas that wasn’t there before. For our family, the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s is one event after another. I, my sister, and my grandmother all have December birthdays. We celebrate our parents’ anniversary, and, oh yeah, there’s Christmas.

December was stressful growing up. There was a lot to remember, and we always seemed to have lots to do and gifts to buy. Looking back, though, I think my parents made the right call – picking the 26th for their wedding. For them, the day after Christmas is not just changing batteries, cleaning the mess, and eating leftovers. It is a dinner out, sweet gifts, and a memory of a wedding that happened 41 years ago, across an ocean, in a small chapel, on a day when everything else was closed.

So Merry Day After Christmas to you all. And happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.