alexhanke's Xanga

One nice thing about unemployment......

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:51:56 GMT

One nice thing about being unemployed is I am getting to spend a lot of time with my wife and kids. I am really enjoying the time with them. I have a couple of good possibilities working, and am hoping to have a job this week. I look forward t having paychecks again so that I can continue to persue my hobbies.............wait I don't have any.

On a side note, I have developed an unhealthy appreciation for Ikea. I have several items that I will be heading over there to buy in the next few days. It is a very cool store, with tons of stuff, and the great thing is most of it is cheap and nice. Going to get some chairs and some kitchen stuff.

Gotta go feed the kids breakfast. Later. Oh and if you want to be kept up on the rest of my family check out our family blog at http://www.hankehomepage.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:21:02 GMT

Oh yeah one more thing. If you have not read this book yet, drop what you are doing and go buy it now, or go online and purchase it, read it, then live it. Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell Not to mention it is packed with some neat biblical history and neat perspective. Check it out and I mean now......................

are you still reading this......go get it

seriously go read it.

When I said 96 Hours I meant 96 days.....

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:47:25 GMT

I would venture a guess that the above title may be the first time that phrase has ever been uttered....... I say uttered because I talk to myself when I type, almost always. It bothers people.... namely, my wife.

There is no shortage of new things to update you on. I have so many things that have happened to me since I typed before. I have been laid off from the job that I got after I was laid off from the driving job. I am now currently unemployed other than my job on Sundays at the church. I am however looking into starting a degree program from a university that most are not aware exists, Fullsail. I am going to hopefully major in recording arts, I have a campus tour coming up on Sunday.

All of these trials that I have been going through have been horrible and amazing at the same time. I have been constantly dealing with financial and occupational difficulties. I am going to go watch the season finale of Biggest Loser, and I will type again tonight or tomorrow.

Also, Drew, send me an email so I can get you my new phone number.

alexhanke@yahoo.com

When I said 24 hours I meant 96.........

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:02:24 GMT

When I said 24 hours I may have been a little hopeful. Internet is UNAVAILABLE at me and Mandy's new house, so I can only send when I am at other locations.

AS evidenced by the above statement abuot my internet I admit that I live in Hick County, USA. They are running the wiring but It will be several months before I am able ot get it. Hopefully next month we will have it. Until then I will type posts in word and copy and past them in here when I get a chance. And to Drew. I miss you in a totally hetero, non man-purse kind of way ( is man-purse supposed to be hyphenated, pretty sure that isn't in grammar check huh?). Give me a call the next time you are in town and me and Mandy will have you over to the house for some dinner and such. Talk to you later and will try to get a post up tomorrow at work. ALso you have got to check out the new Shane and SHane album, it is freaking awesome.

The Return of ...... ME

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:48:15 GMT

I will be returning to writing soon. My life has been a little crazy as of late but I am looking forward to getting back to writing here on xanga so that nobody will read it.

I will try to get a post up in the next 24 hours filling people in on what has been happening in the last few months.

a "funk"y day.......

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:16:19 GMT

After reading Drew's post today, i began to wonder about the day. See he has been in a funk today, as have I. We were also both in Gainesville today.... coincidence? Yeah, most likely. You see as I drove through Gainesville this morning.......... well I had better start from the beginning.

Early this morning (around the 4 oclock hour) I had to get up, and drive to Ocala, which is of course, about 44 miles south of Gainseville proper. All the way there, I was driving in a downpour, in the dark, in a 26,000 pound vehicle, that is top heavy, at 4am, when most other drivers are not so alert and like to try and join me in my lane. Then I got to Ocala, and loaded up a car, in the rain. Of course even with 24 hours notice, they had failed to prep the car for transport, so I got to take care of that for them, in the rain, for 20 minutes. This also put me behind schedule, and I have to be to the yard in Gainesville by a certain time, or they will not release the car to me, as they will have gone home (most repo people work from about 10pm to 9am).

I barely make it to the gainesville yard, and get loaded up on time. The vehicle is a total piece of garbage, a pontiac Grand am that is beat to heck and barely rolls, and I have to pull it behind my truck. I pull out of the gainesville lot and start to drive down the road when the steering wheel lock on said piece of crap car breaks and it swings wildly behind my truck. First instinct is to slam on brakes however that would jsut cause the vehicle to swing to one side of the truck or the other and slam into it. Bad idea. Rule one of transport driving is DONT HURT THE TRUCK !!!! So I have to slow down very slowly with this car flailing about behind me and try to keep it straight or the car will definately come off of the wheel lift. At this point some idiot tries to fly around me in his piece of crap car, and promptly rear ends the car I am pulling, sending him careening into a ditch, and dislodging the pontiac from the wheel lift and sending it into the other ditch. I now have to get out of my truck in the rain again, unload the car on the bed so that I can use the winch to pull the moron, and the pontiac out of the ditches. His car was pretty messed up, but from flying into a ditch, not from rear ending me. The pontiac was already dented up real bad in the back so that didn't matter. At this point he asks me to please tow him for free to his dorm, since I made him get in a wreck. I said no. It was his fault, plus he passed me when I had on a bunch of caution lights. At this time a cop pulls up, listens to both sides of the story, asks if we are both okay, and quickly writes the guy a ticket for wrekcless driving AND for failure to control a motor vehicle, and tells him to be more carful when driving in the rain. He then tells me to have a nice day, gets back in his car and leaves. I am in the process of pulling the Grand am from the ditch when this kids friend shows up to pick him up. The kid walks over toward me, opens my door locks it and then runs to his friends car as he slams me door, locking me out of my truck. So not only has this kid now cost me an hour in the rain, in a ditch, because he is an idiot, but now I have no way to get back into my truck. I become slightly agitated...

I finish pulling the grand am out of the ditch which is only a few feet from where I dropped the kids car when I pulled it up. I am angry. I pull my winch out as far as it will go (about 65'), walk as far back into the wet, swampy are by the road as I can get, then run the winch cable around the biggest tree I can find, and run it back to the kids car, and attach it to the frame. I turn on the locking hubs on my truck, and pull his piece of crap car right back into the swamp I had just pulled it out of (just slightly farther in and a little deeper into the water) I then write him a nice note and leave it on his dash it read, very politely, next time dont be a jerk to a guy with a 10,000 pound hydraulic winch. I then cracked all of his windows and walked away (and by cracked I mean I rolled them all the way down). I love animals and felt that his hunk o crap corolla would make a nice place for some little animals to seek shelter from the rain.

I walked back to the pick up yard and caught them just as they were leaving, borrowed a slim jim (the lock picking tool, not the meaty snack stick), went back and opened my truck and drove away, after, of course, I had reloaded both vehicles.

So with an awesome day like that under my belt, and it only being 10 am, I was in a bit of a mood. I thought about how I, while being a very well spoken, kind, knowledgeable, thoughful human being, still amange to not have a single friend outside of my family. Every time I get a good friend, they somehow manage to remove themselves from the position of friend either by circumstance, or because they are total nut bags.

Craig Leist - One of the first, was a great guy, loads of fun, lots of stuff in common with me, plus he had a wife that got along with Mandy. We did all kinds of stuff with them for about 8 weeks, then his band got a record deal and off to Nashville. Good for him, but was it a harbinger of things to come for me?

Adam Forlaw - Ugh...... dont get me started. Good childhood friends, then as we aged he never grew up. Things like poo and farts cracked him up, and were the full extent of his social repetoire. Seeing as how, while we were within 6 hours of the same age, and yet I was about a decade ahead of him in the maturity department, and had seemingly lost his mind, I moved on.

Jarrod - While he and I were pretty good friends for a time, certain behavioral issues cause him to go totally insane it seemed. From substance abuse issues to spousal abuse issues, it ran the gambit with him. I eventually realized that he was a serious emotional drain on me and my wife and moved on.

Drew Allen - Drew moved. It sucks. I wish he hadn't. Drew and I could have been very good friends I think. With similar interests and talents, I had even thought about going in to business with him one day. But he moved, perhaps however we can still manage to be friends. ( this sounded totally homo after reading it, but whatever.)

I wonder what it is about me that seems to drive people either away, or insane. Plus my wife is having some health issues, and is pregnant with our second child, a son. So needless to say after all of this today, I was in a funk........obviously.

I need friends..........

p.s Oleander is a freaking awesome band. Love it. Found the CD, it has been like 6 years since I have listened to it.

Big Truck that I drive

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:53:13 GMT

This is the truck that I start driving on Monday. With the trailer attached to it, it is just over 64 feet long. Yeah, thats big. That is like semi truck length. I can move 4 or 5 cars on it at a time depending on the size of the cars. It is a beast. This picture is actually not exactly right. Mine is the extra cab 4 door truck.

It is going to be fun to drive. Hard, but fun. I have been meaning to do this for a while now, here is a link to my family web site:

http://www.hankehomepage.blogspot.com/

Check it out.

My truck.....

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:01:41 GMT

Here is a picture of a truck that is exactly the same just a different color from the one that I drive every day. I also am going to upload a picture of the truck I will start driving in a week or so. I just completed my CDL testing (got a perfect score and i got all the testing done in two days, the class is normally three weeks...... can you say cramming?)

Its been awhile...........

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:01:30 GMT

It has been some time since I was able to do a post and this one will be short. When my daughter takes a nap later today, I will add another more elaborate post, explaining what has been going on in my world.

I find myself missing my friend Drew. Whiel our lunch hang outs were short lived, it was most excellent to have a good friend to break bread with (literally, we ate a t Macaroni Grill every time and literally broke bread), talk to and just generally enjoy spending time with. I understand that all is going well for him in G-Ville, which is great. With my new job I am in or near Gainesville at least 2 to 3 times a week, but am constantly on the move to my ext stop. Perhaps I will get to see him again soon.

My daughter is growing so fast, it is freaky. More on that later.

I have gotten a new nephew since my last post. He was born at 2:54 am on thursday June 21. I know because I was there all night. We got there at 11pm, and were there until around 4 am. We went home and I slept for 2 hours then got up at 6:30am and drove to Gainesville, Daytona, Ocala, Aburndale, and then home to Lakeland, a good 10 hour day, and then went back to the hospital to see him.

I will write more later.

OK so now I am back

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:19:31 GMT

It is official I will be leaving my current employer. I however, have not turned in my notice yet, and don't plan on it until they give me my last commission check. They still owe me like $1000, and I ain't going without it. I had a great story for here about the IRS, but I am completely not in the mood to type it right now, so nevertheless, I will sum it up for you until I get around to typing it in the next few days. The IRS suck. They have no "competition" for my tax money, so they can treat everyone like crap and get away with it. They suck.

As I sit here enjoying a wonderful piece of Sundae Pie, I lament the fact that my good friend Drew Allen will be moving back to Gainesville, well, today. This seems to be my lot in life. I make a friend, then, they move away. Never fails. Tat or they go insane or become such an emotional drain, that I can't stand to be around them anymore.

Craig Leist

Josh Cranor

Jarrod Joiner

Drew Allen

Grrr. I am going to attempt to start blogging more often, I have just had a really crazy couple of weeks, and needless to say, blogging does not rank super high on my list of importance. I have to go pretend to work.