I went up to the old apartment in Uptown to snap a few pictures for the “Where I’ve Lived” photo album. Hopefully I’ll have all the pictures to make that thing live by the end of the summer. I did make an update to the photo album, though. The new car now has a place on the cars page of the photo album.

Visiting the old apartment brought back all kinds of old memories. Old feelings, old friends, old occasions. I lived in Uptown (south Minneapolis) for about a year, had two roommates, and I’ve lost touch with both of them already. I never got too close to the one guy, he was an animation student who kind of kept to himself and had his own circle of friends elsewhere.

The other roommate I became pretty good friends with because he was kind of a chatterbox and you could never get him to shut up. He got kind of hard to hang around, because it was himself that he was always blabbering and bragging about. He would have done anything to help you out when you needed it though, if you could wade through all his self-centeredness you could find a genuinely nice person. His extroversion clashed with my introversion from time to time, and we butted heads a few times, but we were ultimately friends, never enemies.

He dropped out and moved to Wyoming to pursue something else not long after I moved out, so he wasn’t around for my last half of college. I never heard from him again. The other guy moved on to another school I believe, which was probably a smart thing. Computer animation is an even tougher field to make it in than Graphic Design is. And i’ll be the first to tell you Graphic Design is an incredibly tough field to break into.

There were a few others in the building I would have liked to have kept in touch with. Especially this one fellow who lived down the hall, who was one of the most brilliant and interesting people I’d ever met and we shared a lot of interests. But, he found out he wasn’t going to make it in animation also, and moved back to Iowa. I was going to get his contact info, but when I went to get it, he was already gone.

People come and go in your life pretty quickly. That seems to be happening to me a lot lately. People at work who have quit or been terminated, I quickly lose touch with these people who had otherwise become pretty good friends. It’s hard to get used to this. Growing up where I did, the same people were always around. These days I’m always seeing new faces, and before I know they’re gone and I’m getting to know new people again.

As I walked around the old apartment snapping some pictures, I had a lot of memories of those first few months I was here in Minneapolis. In a way they felt like they happened so long ago, but in other ways it seemed like it was just yesterday. Unbelievable, it’s been almost a year since I graduated from college, 7 months since I started my current job, and almost a year and a half since I quit working at the bank. Three and a half years since I started seeing Lizzie.

Time flies, I guess. I mean, summer is already half over. Thursday is my birthday already, wasn’t I just talking about finally turning 21? Well, now I’m going to be 22. Lizzie’s birthday is on the 17th (Sunday) so we’re trying to plan something special for the weekend to celebrate both of our birthdays. My work automatically gives me the day off, so I’ll have to find something to do on Thursday. I’ll probably sit around and twiddle my thumbs.

Today I’m just going to go try and enjoy this hot and sunny day. See you next time.

Well it’s official, I’ve graduated with my Bachelor’s degree and now I’m digging deep into the job hunt, and already I have a pretty hot job lead. But first, what an incredible weekend. What a great showing of support that so many family members showed by going out of their way and putting their schedules aside to come celebrate with me. It was truly a great feeling to know how much people cared. I especially didn’t expect my sister to make it because they are just in the process of getting moved in to their new home in Kansas after moving from Alabama, and they made it up here even on really short notice. I had been having one of the most stressful weeks of my life, and when I heard the day before graduation that she was coming it just turned everything right around! It was so cool having her here. Of course my parents and grandparents, and even Lizzie’s grandparents celebrated with us, which says a lot of things about how her family feels about me which is really great.

My brother Jeremy and best friend Randy also made it from Fargo, they stayed until Sunday so we had a really fun night Saturday night bowling and having a few drinks. They wanted to try White Castle really bad too since they don’t have one in Fargo, so they tried it but I didn’t, because the last time I tried White Castle it was disgusting and I got sick to my stomach.

The end of the week right before the portfolio shows was really stressful. Wednesday night my Lexmark printer crashed big time, and it’s completely broken now and unfixable. No warranty so it’s just going in the garbage. What perfect timing! So instead of printing some final projects at home I ended up printing them at school at the last minute, which was really nerve wracking. I ordered a new printer from Apple because they didn’t have any in at the Apple Store, so I ordered it online and it came in the mail today. I got an HP All-In-One printer and it’s like 200 times nicer than the Lexmark I had. I was printing with it today and it’s just awesome! I don’t think I’ll ever get a Lexmark again.

I also had a bit of a scare with my computer on Thursday. I had my iBook set up presenting my interactive CD-Rom at the portfolio show, and for some reason my battery charger wasn’t working. I brought the charger to the Apple store, the expert plugged it in and it worked fine, so we figured it was something wrong with the computer which meant I was screwed. So I rushed home, got the computer itself, brought it down to the Apple Store, and it worked fine even with my original charger. I felt like such a dork. Then we looked at the cord on my old charger and it was breaking and getting a bad connection, so that’s why it wasn’t working. So I was releived that it was an easily fixable problem. Warranty covered it, if I wouldn’t have paid for the extended warranty the new charger would have costed me $164! I’ll never say a warranty isn’t worth it.

Anyway, the portfolio show was quiet, talked to only a couple of employers and they were impressed with my work which is a good sign. I do have a big interview tomorrow morning for a 90-day contract job that will pay really well if I do it. I’ll have to work down in southern Minnesota about 2 hours from home, so that’s kind of a bad part but we really need the money. I’m hoping that will work out so I can get started working full time as early as the end of this week.

I’ll give you more details later, I’m still looking into other positions and hopefully I’ll have something by next week. I’m excited to get working!

Talk to you again soon!

I was taking my Psychology final yesterday and when I was done I got up and left without picking up my portfolio from next to the table. I made it all the way home and when I was getting out of my car, I looked next to me and realized that I didn’t have my portfolio. I nearly had a heart attack. I drove like a maniac back down to the school, thinking to myself that someone probably stole it (I paid $450 for my portfolio, it’s not exactly something someone wouldn’t notice lying around unattended). What I was worried more about was all the work that I have in it. Sure, I’d be able to reprint it all because I have everything saved and backed up multiple times, but that all together would cost a few hundred dollars to have reprinted. I don’t know where I would have come up with that in one week. The good news is that it was still there when I got there 30 minutes later. Talk about almost losing it, that was a nightmare.

Today was my last day of classes. Three years ago I came here to Minneapolis nervous about starting a new thing, now here I am even more nervous about starting another new thing. I took my last test of college today, sat through my last lecture, participated in my last college critique. I got about three hours of sleep last night, today was a day jam packed with finals and plus I had a big Psychology paper due. All I have left to do is find out my grades which will be submitted tomorrow, and then I have my portfolio shows and graduation at the end of next week. I want to be sure to get as much job searching out of the way in the early part of this upcoming week so that I can have as much of a relaxing weekend of celebration possible. Invited the immediate family and a couple friends, other than that it won’t be anything major.

I haven’t gotten any solid job leads yet even though I’ve sent out quite a few resumes, I have a feeling this is going to take a few weeks. I’m sure it will be worth the wait. I want to be sure I get the job that I want. I’m too scared of the big ad agencies at this point, don’t know if I want that kind of pressure when I’m just starting out, but ultimately that is my dream job. Maybe someday.

My portfolio is basically complete. It’s about as far along as I’m going to get it. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely happy with it, but I think the memory it will provide me of these last three years and the job it will hopefully bring me will be a long lasting memory.

I’ve been getting very sentimental, it just feels really weird to be done with college. I actually parked in front of my old dorm where I lived my first year here and walked to the school from there just like old times. It wasn’t the same because the same friends aren’t around anymore. My old roommate Tom has graduated already because he got the Associate’s degree, my old friend Rich went back to Iowa to go to a different school. The three of us kind of parted ways around the time when I was moving out of student housing, and it all happened so quickly that none of us got eachother’s contact information. I don’t even have an email address for either of them. The worst part is that I don’t know their last names, so I won’t be able to look them up anytime soon. Hopefully they’ll look me up someday.

Well, if you can’t tell, I’m excited, a little bit sad, and extremely nervous and stressed out all at the same time. I’ll talk to you all again soon, and I look forward to seeing some of you next weekend.

I’ve been extremely busy preparing for graduation, my final classes have been pretty tough. I have lots of work to do before I’m done. Currently I’m starting to focus attention on my display for the portfolio show, I have some pretty interesting ideas that are bouncing around and hopefully I can follow through on something really cool.

Speaking of that, the schedule for the Portfolio show and graduation are pretty tentative at the moment, but they have the dates and time frames sort of figured out. The portfolio shows will be September 23rd from 11 AM - 3 PM (time is a maybe, date is certain) and also on September 24th from 10 AM - 1PM (time also a maybe, date is certain). The graduation ceremony is going to be held at a *gasp* church… downtown. We don’t have any auditoriums, and apparently that was the best they could get. The Orpheum theatre or something would have been cool, but the school is acting really cheap lately. They also aren’t renting a space for the portfolio show, it’s been held right at the school, which should be interesting (in a not-so-good kind of way). Graduation is going to be on the 24th also, probably right after the portfolio shows, I assume. Maybe in the morning. Once I have certain times I’ll announce those here and also will be sending out invitations to immediate family/prospective employers.

But I don’t think I’ll be relying on the portfolio show to get jobs so I’m going to focus most of my attention on finding them the traditional way. I’m going to be sending out my resume and doing the whole cold calling routine in the next couple weeks. I’m going to send out to every place imagineable in this city in hope that I can find what I’m looking for.

Everyone is welcome, but not expected to attend the portfolio shows and graduation ceremony. They’re on a Thursday/Friday so you may want to make sure those days are free in advance. It’s getting exciting the closer I get, but I’m also getting more nervous than I think I’ve ever been about anything. Excedrin Tension Headache medicine has been my good friend these last few weeks.

Talk to you later.

July went by awfully fast, didn’t it? It came so fast, I almost forgot to pay the rent on the first. If I hadn’t been watching the news and saw that it was the first, I probably would have forgot. It sort of snuck up on me. Maybe I’m just wishing for the days to slow down, as I move toward graduation in September. Part of me wants to get school over with, another part doesn’t want it to be over.

July wasn’t a very eventful month, as you could probably tell by my almost lack of posts here last month. I’m afraid August may not be very different. I’ve been so busy and backed up with stuff that I’m wearing myself out. A weird thing about me is when I’m tired I can’t sleep at night. When I’m not stressed out and I’m rested, I get wonderful nights of sleep. I can’t seem to figure that one out.

July was also a very hot month, our electric bill was the highest it’s ever been. It seemed like the instant we’d turn the air conditioner off it would just get sweltering hot in the apartment. The humidity has been just unbearable this summer, it hasn’t really gotten over 90 much but it’s just been more humid than one can take.

Hmm… not much to talk about. My brain has really shut down here. Let’s see, oh maybe I’ll talk about my classes. They’ve been going well, not the best. Because i’ve had such a heavy workload, I’m afraid the quality of my work hasn’t been so great. I’m taking more classes than usual this quarter, one being Physics, so it’s really been a nightmare. I was always just awful at Sciences, and this Physics course is taking up so much of my time it’s crazy. All the math and researching through a textbook that makes the subject as boring as possible makes it incredibly difficult. My avoidance of science classes in high school doesn’t help either. I took the bare minimum of what’s required for science when I was in high school. I wasn’t a big fan of regular math either, but I took all those classes anyway. I liked the teacher I guess, he was also my track coach and he was a good teacher. My science instructors on the other hand, one was semi-nice but had really high expectations, the other was not nice to me at all and just wouldn’t work with me. If it wasn’t for that jerk, maybe I would have actually given Science a try and wouldn’t be in this position right now, spending hours upon hours on few Physics questions.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting back on things lately. For the last three years my mind has been pretty focused on what’s going on in my life right now and what my goals are, which is exactly where my mind should be. In the past I was always such a daydreamer and I’d dream a lot at night. That’s been coming back to me lately and I’m not sure why. I actually am keeping two journals now, this “public one” and a “private” one. Maybe jotting it all down at night will get it out of my system, and I can stay focused. I’ve tried starting journals in the past, but wasn’t able to stick it out. Then of course I started doing this public one, and now that I’ve been able to keep doing this 2-5 times a month, I should be able to do a private entry 3-5 times a week. So far I’ve written in it every day, so I’m doing okay for now. My first entry had to be kind of a catch up, I sat and wrote about pretty much everything I could remember from the first 21 years of my life. I stayed up all night doing it. I sat in bed on my laptop typing away, expecting to just write for an hour or so, but then I looked over at the window and the sun was coming up. I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep that night anyway.

But since I don’t really have anything overly interesting to talk about, and I’m just basically rambling now, I’m going to give up on this for today. I’ll keep up writing here. It started out as just a way to tell people what’s new on the site, and somehow I’ve just kind of turned this into my little connection to everyone who seems to know me somehow. I’ll try not to bore you, I’ll try to keep this little life of mine interesting.

See you next time! And stay cool, it’s awfully hot out there.

Update, 5:07 PM - I’ve updated the top 40 music list, didn’t have a lot of time to do it as I’m busy working on a school project today that I need to have done Monday. Sorry about any mistakes on the Top 40.

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