Today was my first day back after nine days off.? This morning I was actually a bit stressed about having to return.? I like my job, I really do, but I know we had a really bad week while I was out and nothing has changed (other than me being there) over the weekend, so it stands to reason that this week wouldn’t go much better.

Today wasn’t bad though.? I got to spend the majortiy of my day doing what I enjoy doing; a side project here and answering questions there.? I started making arrangements for a training session to take place later this week and I talked to a few agents about joining our speciality group.? Yeah, we had a lot of calls all day long, and a lot of people got stressed out, but overall it wasn’t bad.

I really needed that time off though - more than I ever knew.? Next year I think I’m going to spread my time out a bit better, take a week every three months or something.? That way I don’t have to kill anyone.

I went out and took some photos today. Two of them turned out pretty good. I’ve posted an altered version of one below. The other was used to make my new header. Watch for a color change this week.

I would normally wait and add this to next week’s sampler, but this was just too good to wait.

It seems that a young X-Ray tech from France named Daniel Anceneaux went on-line one evening looking for some nookie.? Instead he met Juliette, a sweet, sensitive girl who had looks to boot.? After months of racey chat and emails they decided to meet.

On the appointed evening young Daniel went to the shore to meet the woman of his dreams.? There she was, standing on the beach wearing the white shorts and pink tank top she’d described.? With growing excitement Daniel approached his Juliet only to discover he’d been misled.

Apparently his dream girl wasn’t the girl in the photo she’d sent.? Instead she just scanned a photo of? rather curvey and mostly naked woman she’d scanned from a men’s magazine.? And who was the decietful woman?? Who was it that dared soil the Internet with her web of lies?

Daniel’s mom.

(source)

On Wednesday I went to the mall with my sister and brother-in-law to look at photographs of the newest kid taken at Picture People.? This is a place sort of like Olan Mills or other photograph studios, only more hip and quicker.? So…its the same.

So we got in around 8:00 and there are two staff members present.? One is a young guy, probably just two or three years out of high school.? The other was, I am told, also a guy, though some debate lingers.? Here are some of the observed facts: breasts, womanly curves (hips and butt) and a very thin and neatly trimmed mustache.? When Aroesmith’s Dude Looks Like a Lady came on the radio while we were in the shop, R and E were barely able to contain their laughter.

But it was the other guy who was to help us on this evening.

So the other guy was trying to sell pictures to R and E while I tried to entertain myself.? I asked: “So, you guys shoot softcore porn in here at night, right?” He says, “No” and then winks at me.? I look at R and E and they look at me.? “Did that just happen?” we ask with our eyes.? Then the dude goes for his wallet!

“No!” we all scream.

“It’s not bad,” the guy insists.? “Let’s just say dating the assistant manager has its benifits.”

He shows us photos of his plus sized lady in various, fully clothed poses.? We’re polite.? We smile and nod.? “Very nice,” we say.

Weird!

Okay. After weeks and weeks I’ve finally fixed the last of the bugs with the theme. Thanks to Yosemite from the WordPress Forums for the help.

Now that the basics are working correctly I’m going to try to make a few changes, make it a bit prettier.

Later.

Welcome to yet another Sunday Sampler! I’ve actually been working on this one all week long, collecting little tid-bits I’ve found just to bring them to you.

Before we get started though I want to point out that I am now number 3 on google’s search results when searching for my first and last name. Take that all you other Jeremy Hohns out there. Soon I will rule the internet! (Update: I took a closer look. The 2nd result on Google is actually me too, but its not a result for this site.)
With that out of the way:

• The good folks over at the j-walk blog have a parody of a new, fake google service, the Google Content Blocker. While we’re on the subject of google fun, back in 03 during the run up to the war in Iraq the people at albinoblacksheep made a site dogging France.
• I get a lot of pleasure out of looking down on people who park in handicap spots without permits. I always dream of having the power to have their vehicle towed away while they ‘just run in for a minute’. This is a better idea.
• This week was my birthday and my sister T asked me if I received any Lego’s. I didn’t - which is okay. I really don’t have a place to play with Lego’s right now. But she did get me thinking about Legos again so I headed on over to the Lego site to discover they’ve now got Batman themed sets. I will have a Batman Mini Figure if nothing else, thought the Two-Face one really excites me too.
• And finally a question to round out this week’s sampler. When did the word gay stop being an adjective and become a noun. I am speaking of the trend of saying someone is ‘a gay’ instead of just gay. I’ve heard this mostly on NPR but its also come up when speaking to my gay friends. Is PC invading grammar now that it has finished with our vocabulary?

I don’t see a lot of movies these days.? Until tonight the last movie I saw in the theater was probably Batman Begins and the last movie I sat through on DVD was Donnie Darko back at R and N’s. I’ve watched two movies in the last twenty-four hours.? Let’s go to the map!

First of all, I watched Garden State, as mentioned before it was a gift from my sister for my birthday.? It wasn’t bad, but could have been better.? In the interest of full disclosure I’m a big fan of Zach Braf and an even bigger fan of Natalie Portman’s body so I started off assuming I’d enjoy it - and had it come out seven or eight years ago it surely would have been on of my favorite movies.? Now days it was just another movie.

It couldn’t help but compare it to a truely great Natalie Portman flick, Beautiful Girls.? Each of them include someone coming home to their New England hometown to face their pasts and while there they meet up with a uniquie, self-confident, smart local girl played by Natalie Portman in both cases.? In both films that main character learns from seeing his old friends and the mess their lives are which, along with the girl, he finds the strength to make the touch choices in front of him.

Garden State felt like a lot of character development with no real plot though.? Over and over we got to meet some really great characters that, if they appeared at all, only made later appearances as background, not the interesting pieces of the story they could have been.? It almost would have been better to not have them there at all.

While Beautiful Girls is a better film, if you want to have a guilt free crush on Ms. Portman check out Garden State.? Marty (Natalie’s character in Beautiful Girls) is a lot more interesting of a character but she’s just thirteen.

Tonight I went and saw The Ballad of Ricky Bobby with my parents.? This one wasn’t bad for what it was.? Needless to say I didn’t have high expectations for this one, it stars Will Farrell for goodness sake.? My only real comment is that comedians need to realize that you don’t have to fill your movie with sex, religion and race jokes to be funny.? English is a pretty robust language, you don’t have to try to shock people to make them laugh.

Those of you who know me know that I can tell some really great stories about really bad birthdays. In the past I’ve spent my special day throwing-up all day, fighting with friends and family or even letting it go unnoticed.

This one was good though. I got up early to play golf with my brother-in-law E. Golf is hard - don’t let anyone tell you that its not. The truth is golf is the only thing I subject myself to that I am a complete and total failure at doing. It’s not that I get bogies when I want birdies and its not that I have a really, really bad hook. These are things that every golfer faces - even the pros from time to time. No, my problem is that I miss the ball…a lot. I’m talking sometimes seven or eight swings of the club to move the ball fifteen or twenty feet down the course.

It was hot yesterday. So hot that I didn’t finish the nine holes we’d agreed to play. I got through seven and had to stop. I was frustrated, sore and terribly hot. E was as encouraging as he could be. He reminded me that I only play about once a year (it was, in fact, one year to the day since we’d played last) and that I should just spend some time on the driving range to get my swing under control. To encourage me he gave me his spare set of clubs. Thanks E! Now I have to actually practice so next year I can show him my mad skillz.

There were birthday greetings scattered throughout the day. T, a girl from work, put a note on my car making her the first person to with me well, S sent a text message and J left a voicemail. My sisters T and J both called and I got to speak to my niece E for a few minutes (we share the birthday).

For dinner last night the family went to an Italian bistro in Knoxville. R and E bought my a steak dinner and there were presents. E and R, in addition to the golf clubs gave me a cap and a DVD. The nephew B who is always allowed to select the gift from him, got me a nifty pair of Simpsons boxers. From mom and dad was a shirt and a card. T has mailed a hat and she says something else - it should be arriving very soon I am told.

After dinner I went to the mall with R, E and the kids. The actual purpose of our visit will be gone over in another post as its just too good to bury four paragraphs down in this one, so I’ll leave it at we got ice cream and I got a flat tire.

Now back at home, S came by for some quality hanging out time. We went and got ice cream again, paid a visit to everydaycompanion.com to see what Panic was playing in Lousiville and that was pretty much the end of my day.

Thanks to everyone who made my day a good one. Birthdays are a funny thing. I personally think that everyone should get their own birthday off work. A special day just for you, like Presidents Day or Labor day - a day to recognize all that you do to support your employer and government.

So here’s to thirty. May it be better than 29.

So I missed this week’s Sunday Sampler.? I thought about it all day long but just didn’t feel up to the task and instead spent the day in other futile pursuits.? These tasks are not worth mentioning here, or much of anyplace so I’ll spare you the mundane details of how I spend my time when I’m not at work.

I turn thirty tomorrow.? In the past few weeks leading up to this day of days I haven’t been too concerned - its just another birthday after all. Most of my conversations have been related to my once oft-stated goal of retiring by the time I was thirty.? Now, as I sit here in my crappy one bedroom apartment, just a few hundred yards from where it all started nearly a third of a century ago, I feel like I haven’t made any progress.

Sure, sure.? I’m not covered in afterbirth and I dress a whole lot better, but I’m still rather dissapointed in my progress.? You see, life is not best measured in what you have, where you live or what you do - it should instead be measured by the relationships you’ve built, the people you’ve touched and the people who have touched you.

And it is through this lens that I see myself as a failure.? I don’t have relationships.? There are people that I talk to, even some I love; my family, S and J, M and L and maybe a few others.? But, apart from my family and S, I don’t really know this people, and they don’t know me.

Is it a lack of effort that has put me in this situation?? Maybe.? My mom and sister say I’m very quiet when I’m around other people.? That’s probably true.? The thing is I don’t remember how to build relationships with new people.? The people in my life, those listed before, are all pretty much those who have been in my life for years and years.

I do meet new people sometimes, you can’t go through life without meeting people you don’t know unless you completely leave society.? But it seems that the people I meet are already living full lives.? They have their friends, their family, their routines already established - there is no room for a new comer.

I often think about how I’d like to meet someone who has lost those ties - someone who, like me, has nothing better to do that go through all the boring getting to know you stuff that starts off most new friendships.? A transplant, an expatriot?? Someone who just needs a friend.

But these people are rare.? No one picks up a moves to a new city anymore, at least not without a pre-determined place to plug in.? I know when I moved to a new city I went because I already had people there; S and J, plus family if I got really lonely.

But this is not why we’ve come here today.? Today we’re here to talk about….