Mr. and Mrs. Kraus Blog

This weekend I remodeled the master bedroom with new window treatments and a little “feng shui”. We were still sporting white lacy curtains and vinyl roll-down blinds from the previous owners, and they just didn’t jive with our style. We recently had a new Caribbean style ceiling fan installed in the room because our old fan went bang, and my wife had to work, so I thought what fun it would be to take the Caribbean theme further and surprise her when she got home.

I went out shopping and everything in window treatment departments was on sale! 50% off or better, wow! I got bamboo blinds at JC Penny’s, and curtain rods and drapes from ShopKo. I hung them up and moved around some furniture and wall hangings, and here is the result:

It’s difficult to see the detail of the bamboo blinds and curtain rods in these pictures, but they look pretty sweet. Mrs. Kraus is one happy camper.

Chad Kraus Kraus House

Baseball games like tonight’s ALDS Game 2 in New York inspire the invention of new words for Twins fans to express frustration.  Fuggerdonker! (Google confirms that it has never been used before: Your search - fuggerdonker - did not match any documents.)  Every game in New York this year the Twins got a lead, and lost in the end.  It’s just so fuggerdonking  frustrating! (Haha, sweet: Your search - fuggerdonking - did not match any documents.)

Tonight’s game had its moments.  It would be an amazing game for a Yankees fan.  But I’m not a Yankees fan.  Looking at it as a Twins fan, there were some sweet moments.  Any game where your team gets men on base EVERY inning is exciting.  The chance to score every half inning is thrilling.  It just didn’t work out.

The three most fist-pound-on-coffee-table moments would have to be:

1. Gomez slipped off second base and got tagged out about 1 second before a runner crossed home plate.  If he had just gotten up and played hard to get by running toward third, he would have bought enough time for the run to score.

2. 3-1, bottom of the 9th, Nathan blows the save.  Thanks a lot A-Rod.  Tired of Colin Cowherd giving him crap on the radio every Fall about his postseason under-achievements I guess  (Colin did make it funny every time though).

3. Bases loaded with Twins, no outs, top of the 11th.  No dice.

Just a reminder that in the great sport of baseball, 3 strikes and you’re outta there.  So, down 0-2, what next?

Fly home, have some rest, and beat em up in Minnesota, that’s what’s next.  Time to write one last magical story for Twins baseball in the Dome by evening the series 2-2!  Then our Twins will get a shot at one more game in New York, and THAT game will be the only one that matters.

Chad Kraus Twins Baseball

I went to District 9 on Sunday afternoon with friends.  I walked into the movie knowing zero about it other than it had something to do with aliens, and that it was produced by Peter Jackson.  A couple of my friends seemed really excited to see it, so I tagged along.

I liked the movie.  It was definitely “unique”, something I hadn’t quite seen before.  It had a lot of action, and some pretty good acting.  Wikus van de Merwe is played by Sharlto Copley, an actor/director/producer that I had never heard of before.  Apparantly, (and I didn’t learn this until after seeing the movie), Copley improvised all of his dialogue in this film.  That is very interesting to me because I felt torn about this acting performance.  On one hand, it was very, very good.  He gives this kind of nutty, funny performance, while still managing to kick some butt in action scenes, show fear in terrifying situations, and express deep love and sorrow when talking to his wife.  Yet, when he gets angry or flustered, his vocabulary becomes limited to mostly F-bombs, which I admittedly do not care for.

The biggest critique I have about the film, is that I was unable to establish much emotional attachment to any of the characters in this movie.  On one side you have the human race who fears or hates the aliens, and confines them to living in slum-like conditions.  Maybe I should hate them and cheer on the aliens?  But the aliens go around killing people, and look like giant, upright grasshoppers.  So then should I cheer for Wikus?  Well, he is part of the human establishment that persecutes the aliens and later becomes a target himself, so really from start to finish I’m just not sure who to side with.  The result is a very cool, unique movie, where I found myself excited to see what happens next, but not really caring what that might happen to be.  Who lives, who dies– who cares– oh that was a cool explosion!

In summary, I liked the movie for its action, special effects, uniqueness, and some good acting, but the film isn’t perfect either.

Chad Kraus movies

Tonight Mrs. Kraus and I saw Star Trek with my sister and her friend. I had heard it was really good, and some of the new actors in the cast seemed promising to me. I was especially intrigued by Zachary Quinto playing Spock (he plays Sylar in the hit TV show Heroes). So what did we think?

Perfect move! We loved it! First, let’s talk about the cast. Zachary Quinto did indeed make a great Spock. Chris Pine was awesome as Captain James T. Kirk. He was confident and cool, and did the original proud. I liked John Cho as Dr. Sulu (oh Harold, how far you’ve come!), and Karl Urban was a great Bones. Anton Yelchin, I had never seen before, but he performed admirably, and had some funny moments in the role of Chekov. And I loved Simon Pegg as Scotty.

Now the story line. Don’t worry– I won’t ruin it for you. I’ll just say it was brilliant, and I couldn’t find anything to gripe about. It was rather ingenious what they pulled off: a story line that enables a whole new set of adventures rather than remaking the old ones, with the same winning cast of characters.

This is kind of a big deal for me to praise a Star Trek movie so much. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a Stars Wars guy. If you look at the classic Star Wars movies and the Star Trek movies, I always preferred Star Wars. But for me, the three newer Star Wars films fell a bit short of what they could have been, due to some strange story lines, obnoxious characters, and downright poor acting. This new Star Trek movie, however, a totally different tune. Fantastic story line, wonderful characters, and top notch acting. Let’s just say, I can live without the light saber.

What about the special effects and action sequences? WOW. Once again I’ll avoid the details so I don’t give anything away. Just know you are in for a real visual treat.

So if you plan on dropping some cash on a movie in the near future, be sure to make Star Trek your choice. You won’t be disappointed!

Chad Kraus movies