EricHiltner.com

Spring break.

2,572 miles. Charleston to Harrisburg, Pa to Nashua, Nh to Richmond Va to Charleston.
Ben, Bruce and Brian are all doing well.
I was a bit upset by the fact that I was driving within spitting distance of my favorite city (D.C.), and did not make a stop in to visit my favorite site (WWII Monument).
I got my mother’s TomTom for the trip, and while it generally worked well — there were a few kinks.

1. It tried to take me over a bridge that was out.
2. It also got me off the highway when heading through NYC and had me do an unnecessary turn-around in Jersey City.
3. It was going to have me drive through D.C., during rush-hour.

All-in-all, a very decent device. I was kind of upset that the Burt Reynold’s voice that I purchased did not share ancedotes about working on the films of “Cannonball Run” or “Smokey and the Bandit”. OH Well.

While in Richmond, I did get another tattoo. Well, 448 of them actually.

448 Tattoos

Each hashmark represents a day that I was deployed to Iraqi in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
So there you go naysayers, I have the photo to prove it.

What else?
I bought my ticket to go to New Hampshire for Bruce’s wedding in June.
I went almost 4 years without seeing him, and I am finding myself in the middle of a Bruce-a-polooza, and I am just fine with that.

School is almost done. Thank god.

And I had a bit of fun at work tonight.
Backstory- Since the economy sucks, and newspapers are failing, I have had to take on an additional task at work these days. I have to design an additional page.
Tonight was my first night designing the Talking Points page of the Times-Courier & Journal Gazette. And there is a spot on the page for a feature photo.
At first I thought about using a photo from the “Earth Hour” event, but quickly realized that it was not such a great idea. Photos of famous buildings, at night, with no lights on, is not the most visually appealing type of photo.
So I finally settled on a photo of a young buddist monk throwing flower petals.
EH, I am well aware that the photo is not the most visually appealing, but I had to use what I could find. The photogs must not have been taking their creative pills this morning.
The monk was Cambodian, in Phenom Penh, and the act of spreading the petals was an act in preparation for the Cambodian New Years.
So I had to come up with a headline for the photo. This is what I came up with: “Holiday in Cambodia”.

Ethical?

I had a hard time deciding whether this was the correct thing to title it. Even though it was simple enough, and might have drawn a reader in more than the alternative “Plenty of Petals,” or something like that, I do not think that it was appropriate do to the nature of the Dead Kennedys song of the same name.
So I decide to bring it to the attention of the copy desk. Neither Penny nor Jeff knew of the song, so Jeff googled the lyrics, and after short deliberation it was decided that even though maybe five people who read the paper would know the song, that it was better to change the title.
I, personally, thought it was pretty friggin’ awesome the way it was. Maybe I can get some props from some of the four people that read this for almost having the most awesome reference EVER!
(Another awesome reference I had the other day was a twitter update that read “Can’t stand the rain like Missy Elliot.”)

Other than that, Things are awesome.
It is Greek Week here on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. Party Time, Excellent!
I am probably one of the very few God-Damned Independents who actually, and thoroughly, enjoy greek week.
It is fun.

Also, I have met someone. And this girl is something amazing.
Here’s to hoping this is not being a typical-Eric-relationship.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.