Lets Play Catch-Up

Making excuses has never been my strongpoint. Why did I wait to mow the yard? Uhhh. Why Did I not take the trash out? Uhm...

Pedestrian examples I know, but the excuses that I was going to make for not making a post on here in the past month ended up being the meat and bones to my post this evening so just sit back, relax and try to enjoy my months events:)

After being given my rental car, a Chevrolet Cobalt 4-door, I was ever so nicely introduced to the difficulties in ergonomics in a budget vehicle. Which, I mean, there are plenty of vehicles on the market that are miles better than the Cobalt and they have more features-per-dollar and they can do more tricks but after 1200 miles in the car and literally using it for what its worth I can tell you that I really enjoyed it, and I am not afraid to say that in a crowded room.

Here are the specs.

Vehicle Weight-2,805lbs

Gas Mileage (cty/hwy)-25/37

Trunk Space-13.9 cu/ft.

Silver Car, Black Interior.

The car had a CD player and some mini features, things like real-time TPMS sensors and an honest-to-goodness sound system. The fabric was busy at best but durable. Gas Mileage was strangely below average considering my light foot after the first week. Traveling to work though was great at road testing the vehicle on roads and highways but the tires were super fuel-saver economy tires so they weren't shy at showing their lack of adhesion in everything except going around the drive-thru.

However, the day I turned the car in and left. I was riding with my good friend back to my parents house. I was racking my brain at the thought that this car had actually been legitimately good to me. I hated on it, I had the A/C blowing all the time, I carried 4 people in it, I spilled sweet tea on the passenger floorboard, sorry. I flipped the backseat down and carried a weed-eater to a family members house to trim some shrubs. I royally made this budget car work. The thing is, it never complained. Not once did it break a sweat or act any less eager to do what its meant to do. I really like the car. No greater than my MINI but GM is listening to the blue-collar crowd out there. Make it durable and affordable, granted at the cost of material quality but I would call it faux and aware.

Moving on I was called at work by my mother in the beginning of june.

"on the 30th your wisdom teeth are coming out, I set up an appointment for you"

In the mean time I was working on wrapping up the brief stint-turned-full-on month and two week stay back at Honda while I was in town (thanks to my wreck). I had been moved to the service department in an attempt by my General Manager to solve a growing problem back there, that, really only had made it self pronounced as the customer base there grew. Some quick facts about my prior job before I moved to Pasadena---

It serves the largest area in Middle Tennessee, it has the largest customer base and also is ranked #1 in the state in customer service for Honda and sales, plus it is # 6 in the nation in service. The service department has (as of when I last checked) 96,000 customers on file and is busy and open 6 days out of the week (5 of which I worked). On my second day back in town back in June I had sat in with my GM and he spoke to me about a position he was considering creating for me over in service to better provide communication to the customers/provide quick-fix solutions/relay messages and basically be a buffer between customers and service advisors when need be, say if one of the advisors had a customer at his desk and another one showed up to pick up and pay for their vehicle I could look up their information and last name and lead them to the cashier and subsequently to their car after. My goal was to provide the best experience for them while giving some southern charm and really using my knowledge of the brand to my best ability and pushing the boundaries of what my job title was, so much so that the cashier had started calling me "Gladiator" and then "Gladiator Liason". So there I would be, dragging my Gladiator rear end in the morning at 6:45am and leaving at or around 5 everyday. My swiss army knife-like abilities being exercised at will and putting a smile on my face and a pep in my step in doing so.

At the end though, I was back were I started. Sitting with my GM and talking about the blessing I had been given and that I appreciated that a position was literally created for me when I came back because I had set the stage for myself and as my GM put it "You made a name for yourself when you were here, I felt I wanted us to take care of you while you were back and possibly create a position that you could pass onto someone else and do some good back in service".

When I left, I made sure to go around and remind everyone that they meant the world to me and I loved them. I thanked them, because you know some people need a good thank you in their day. That is what makes me the happiest man in the world. I feel like I did the right thing and this was my reward.

It was now time to get my wisdom teeth removed. Ill go ahead and speed through that process but basically the room was spinning because I was fighting the anesthesia, but I went under and woke up at home. Delirious. The next day, I was jazzed because I felt great! I was up putzing around the house and feeling good but the following week I realized that....I had dry socket. However I would not realize that until I had gone through 5 days, and a 2,200 mile trip back to California in my car plus a flight back that I had dry socket. The second I landed my mother had me in her office in a chair at 9:30pm stuffing dissolving gel packs into my mouth soaked in clove. Within seconds my mouth was completely relieved. Dry socket was described to me as basically kicked in the face by a horse then set on fire and rolled down a hill in a suitcase filled with bricks.

Dry Socket in my case was just incessant throbbing. It was just miserable because it was slight.

Basically the rest I will try to make up with pictures (as seen from the top)

School starts soon and OH MY GOSH. I forgot. I leave for Milan, Italy on Thursday.

Love you

Would you call this work-related?

After being home since the last week in June, as I have covered already, I have worked.

"Honda Service how can I help you?"

If I have said it once, I've said it a thousand times. This is in no way a complaint, more ov an observation. Honda as a brand has very loyal customers. Customers that get very pissed if you tell them that their service visit will cost over $20 and will involve more than 16 minutes of their time. I say 16 minutes because they have spent the past 15 minutes telling me about this noise that they hear everytime they slam on their brakes and turn the wheel hard left and eject from the car. Really ma'm? Your van has 1700lbs of random crap in the back and youre telling me the reason why the doors wont shut around in properly is my fault? No.

Once again this is not a complaint at all, because I know the pains of bad customer service, so I go to great lengths to commit to a good overall customer experience. The only drawback of making work personal is that the second you emotionally commit yourself to someone elses problem, you in turn allow other day-to-day issues bother you. Your relationships with others are non-existent because you've spent the past 12 hours getting the full spectrum of the human emotions. These people absolutely hate giving the dealership I work at money and they want a face to be mad at. That face is mine!

Things Happen So Quickly

To me, its difficult to believe that it has been close to a month since my last post. I guess I will start back the week following my semester ending. I have never been so elated to have the semester be complete and looking forward to this summer kicking off right. I was able to spend the week of the 16th of June being active with my best friends, going hiking back in the canyons here in Pasadena, and playing football on my schools campus field. It really was nice! Saturday the 19th of June I decided to leave about 8am and hit the road in my car to drive back to Nashville.

Ill fill you in on why I chose to do that-there were 3 great reasons so no chastising me for making the 2000 mile drive! My first reason ended up being the information I found out regarding the whole "moving to California" rules that they impose on vehicles coming to the state. Im trying not to get myself in trouble but I will be honest. From what I have learned, after you move to the state you are given 10 days to go to the DMV to register your car and pay for new tags-drivers license-taxes that the state wants to charge you for and I never did that because in all honesty, I had figured that since I am just a student and not really considering staying in the state after graduation, I did not think that I needed to go through the licensing monkey dance. I of course was wrong and found out that registering my vehicle is somewhere north of 400 bucks for me for everything.....ouch California.....you really are broke.

Needless to say my other two reasons were merely choices, one being-and I know this sounds crazy......but I really wanted to drive by myself back across the country. There was something so self-fulfilling and independent about driving for hours on end, music blaring and singing along and looking out to see the sights. Second being I wanted to renew my license here in TN cause as opposed to paying 400+ in CA. I was gonna pay fifty bucks in Nashville. Thats a WIN.

Well I made the big trek across the country and did just fine, Charlie my car did good too. He was a trooper in El Paso, TX where the temperature at 9pm was 104º F! I was able to stop in Dallas, TX to see my good friend Kristen and her boyfriend, met them for a late lunch but we laughed about the heat and my silly drive home that evening. I got in at around 3am to Nashville and my mother was up waiting. I slept until about noon-ish the next day and I went to wash my car and then Mom and I went shopping. Picked up some new shoes!

So if you're keeping track, I didnt want to pay for all the California expenses so I drove my car home and made it in 2.5 days on Highway 10!

That Tuesday I drove back down to my previous job that I had before my move at Honda and was able to see all of my great friends there, I ended up having a summer job opportunity present itself and I took it!

Well, with all great news does come bad. In this case, just sad-bad. That thursday, on my way home from work, I was in my car driving towards Nashville and when I was getting off at the exit that goes towards my parents, a driver in front of me came to a complete stop at a yield sign when there was no traffic. I did hit her, and in all honesty, she was unfamiliar with the area so she didnt know to keep rolling in this particular situation. For those that want the location it was Highway 65 headed north towards Nashville at the Old Hickory Boulevard Exit in South Nashville. Anyway, I hit her, so well in fact that the estimator from the insurance company had to call me personally to ask how I was. Then she told me the number. $6,680.00 in damages, to my car.

So there you have it. Please drive safe. :(

Since then, I have been placed into a rental, and not a good one. I cant complain, Im alive and I have a job and Im going to school to be a Car Designer. This is merely a life lesson and a test of my patience and faith. I have been God smacked. The weekend following the wreck I also went to go pick up my grandmother that I have mentioned before here up in Louisville, KY from my aunt who was able to have her come stay up in Lafayette, IN. It was so great going and picking her up and laughing and talking the whole way home. I missed her greatly.

Also In lighter news I have officially signed up for my FALL 2010 SEMESTER!!!!

Class Schedule---------

Advanced Rendering

Advanced Product Design

Intro to Lettering and Type

Intro to Digital Tools(basically learning to utilize Adobe CS)

WOOO!!!

Spring 2011 is on the horizon and it smells like Art Center at Night!

Im so thankful to have this support from not only you, the reader, or a friend of mine who reads this, or family or whoever because sometimes we do need that boost of reassurance or just a "Im proud of you" every once in awhile to make it all feel and sound right.

I hope your JULY 4th went well. Mine was great and I had quite possibly the best one ever. Thank you to my best Nashville friends.

My great friend in California is about to move to England this August. Hopefully he will have a blog that we can all check on too! (Ill try to talk him into it otherwise!)

I want to be a Car Designer and I am getting one step closer. Love Love Love. I hope you are having a great summer. Keep positive and I will hopefully update this with any projects that I was hoping to work on this summer soon too!

-B

SPRING SEMESTER COMPLETE!!!

I know, I know. You noticed my lack of posts on here, but in all truth, I like to provide you with a good quality read whenever I do a post and frankly I wanted to also save time by not putting up work from this semester until I knew it was over and I could also add pictures and info to this!

With that out of the way let me just start by saying that I had a revelation about mid-way through this term, probably around the time when I was assigned the "build a functioning lamp from re purposed or recycled material" project in my product design class. I remember sitting there thinking to myself that my quality of work could use a re-check. Not saying it was entirely bad but it wasn't where I wanted it to be, makes sense no? Okay so the whole re-evaluation came and went and so started my work work! REMEMBER-the harder you work-the better the payoff.

Gosh there is so much to cover so Ill try to start with the top class that I am so proud of and will provide pictures and information to go with it! PRODUCT DESIGN 1

Product Design, for those that have read previous posts, has been an absolute blast and I recommend for anyone aspiring to do Industrial Design, to take a product design class immediately. It's worth it(x100). I'm walking away from this semester having earned my key to open this next door. It's that perfect. The product? I created a lamp from 4 Capri-Sun boxes, how cool right? I learned not only the importance of the manufacturing process, but time management, how to utilize the Adobe Creative Suites and create a process book to go along with my projects. Call me the cool kid on the block! Also I want to make a side note, my very best friend, the very first person I met out here had an awesome lamp too. I named mine ILLUME. Ill post pictures because if I keep going this post will be solely dedicated to product design and the lamp I created!

PERSPECTIVE:

As agitated that I seemed to be at this class at times, at the end of the day, I have to say it truly enabled me to understand perspective from a very structured point of view and I am proud of myself for following through with every project and making sure that it was done and done correctly. Even if I had to re-do it, once it was finished....It was a weight and stress pulled off my shoulders. The final in this class consisted of doing a full book full of everything that we have done since day 1. Organized neatly with a follow up project that was turned in today, Ill post pictures.

LIFE DRAWING:

Never did I think I would find drawing naked people so informative and engaging. Since the beginning back in Feb. I have seen where I have come and I am SO SO SO excited to show you what I created with my own HANDS! I'm telling you, I know you're thinking to yourself....wait doesn't it say " I want to be a car designer" at the top? Yes it does. I cant take one step forward until I know for a fact that I gave all the necessary classes a solid attempt at fluffing my portfolio that I will eventually submit to Art Center. Remember, anything that could help sell myself as a designer!

CONCEPTS IN DRAWING:

There is a reason I put it last. Don't take it.

There is such a lack of professionalism in this class, and that's sad. I don't know if this is particular people in my class or the lack of the instructors position as the person in charge, but I feel really let down. There is so much potential in the beginning to basically pick your brains apart and find out what you are capable of as an abstract artist. I'm not abstract in my drawings, cause Ill admit that I really like the structure of Trans Design, but I legitimately tried. It was the instructor who checked out. Her lack of communication with the student body left all the students feeling shortchanged, and in my case, 700 bucks down the drain....I know I was vague in exactly why I didn't enjoy this class and its primarily because this is an open blog, but let me reassure you, it was not worth my time.

On a lighter note, my next door neighbor is the President of my school. The best part about that is the fact that when you take the President name tag off, she is just one of the nicest, most caring, intelligent individuals I have ever met. EVERYTHING has happened for a reason and I will say I have learned more in 10 months than what I learned in my 2 year absence from school. Seriously.

So let me say this before I go and hunt down all these pictures to post. Follow your dream.

Follow it and don't stop until it happens.

Please, do it for yourself. Be happy.

Also, be aware. Think things through and know your surroundings and NEVER EVER EVER be afraid to ask for help and talk. Talk until you're blue in the face because as long as you're following your dream, there is someone along the way that wants to listen. I promise.

Dear June

I have been a busy busy bee since my last post, however I will address the giant elephant in the room and admit that I am bothered that my family is so far away, still. Its more of a nuisance than an obstacle now, and I think that it might get worse before it gets better! All I can do is laugh it off though.

I am luckily working hard on my lamp design and I have it probably 80-90% assembled and all that I am doing is working out the kinks of getting a layout made and a book developed.

2 more weeks before summer vacation!

I have decided on my fall class lineup as well.

they arent in order but this is what I will be holding out for:

Advanced Rendering

Advanced Product Design

Advanced Life Drawing

Digital Imaging and Design

By the way, went to Vegas for the very first time. It was hilarious.

I will also be talking with a few of my professors to discuss summer projects and assignments that I can work on the keep the creativity FRESH.

I want to be a car designer

:)

What I fear.

There are a few things that I had high hopes for when I moved out here and the most obvious one was continuing on to Art Center, and beginning my career in the Transportation field.

The other ones included changing my daily habits to a better lifestyle, and trying to work hard hard hard.

There were a few things that scared me though, and that was when I moved, how soon would it be before I would be sitting in my apartment, alone, in the middle of the thickness within the semester at 3am looking around wondering if this was all worth it. I guess that I am at that point now.

When I moved out here I also had decided that I would wait on getting a job because I wanted to solely focus on school and nothing outside of that. So my money situation is tight, always. This process of going to school can be very draining and overwhelming to me at so many points during the week and at so many points in my day. Im learning so much about myself as a person and I really do not like the person I'm seeing sometimes. Other times I pride myself on my creativity and adventurous nature.

Lately though my stress levels have been ever increasing and my patience with people is beginning to wane. For example, I was in my Concepts in Drawing class this morning and, without doing much back-tracking through the semester, there are a certain group of people that are either un-interesting or downright annoying. I hate to categorize people, nor do I enjoy speaking badly about others so without diving too much into it, the annoyers were in full annoy mode today, and the un-interesting people were in full un-interest. The instructor that I have is not in control of the class either, her lax nature bothers me and my attention-deficite tendencies don't bode well when placed in the environment she sets up. So during the beginning of the class I was getting so agitated and irritable at the fact that I pay 700$ per-class right now whereas the in-state kids who are surrounding me are paying 90% less than that and I really truly felt like I wasn't getting my monies worth and the rest of the class period felt like a waste of my time so I left.

After going home and laying back down to gather my thoughts and rest my eyes, let me clarify that I know that I am so lucky to be where I am. I am so proud of myself and my parents for encouraging to follow my dreams. However I could find a heck of a lot better way to spend 700$ than on a class where all people do is talk about themselves and bring their children to class with them and talk on the phone and really waste my time. Unnecessary.

Regardless I have felt lately so tired and wanting to just go home and be with my family and work, live, and have money. Like I used to. See familiar faces and be in a place that I know a little bit better than the state of California.

Sometimes I just wish it was okay to miss home as much as I do and not feel like I might have made a mistake in pushing for all of this.

I needed to get that off my chest because I have felt like this since my last post and after further readings-I realized that I short changed my Spring Break post and did not tell you how the rest of my vacation really went. Ill try to fix that.

-also in the mean time, Nashville floods were the worst on record but my family is okay, and so is the house, luckily. Please pray for those who were not as fortunate.

-B

Earlier in the week I was on the flight back to Los Angeles and I broke out the laptop and began to type on the Pages program I have on here...

Starting Saturday the 17th of April, my Spring Break began and I was able to fly home and spend time with the family, heres what I did in as much detail as I can remember...

Starting the 16th, a Friday, I spent it being a lazy kid. I enjoyed my day with my best friend out here and we did a full day of good nothings, that evening my other friend, who is also from Nashville, and going to CSUN, came to Pasadena and joined us for dinner at Noodle World. Afterwards we snuck back over to Paiges apartment and sat in the hot tub talking about a whole lot of nothing, mainly just being funny goofy kids. Paige ended up coming back over to my place til late late cause she knew she wouldnt see me for 8 days, so while I packed she sprawled out on my couch and watched the late shows, we talked about alot, it was nice to pack and clean and have her company. I returned her back to her apt at probably 3am and laid down for about an hour to rest my eyes and remain sane for the long long saturday I had in front of me.

At 6 I was back up and packed and gussied up for my commute to LAX. Now for those of you who dont know the wild chicken dance that it takes me to get to the airport without a ride its quite an experience. First I walk about 6 or 7 blocks to the train station, where it shuttles me to Union Station in downtown LA, and then the FlyAway Bus picks me up there and tackles the freeways (110 to 405) until I am there about an hour and a half after I have left Pasadena. Once I am at LAX, I checked in and did the security monkey dance and grabbed my now ritualistic Starbucks Tall Vanilla Latte (thank you Daniel). I was a full hour early this time so I was able to relax and wait patiently for the flight to board. blah blah blah fast forward to Nashville, I landed and was picked up from the airport by my good friend Andrew, he returned me home, I immediately changed out of my suit and had to run to the hospital to see my great aunt, I will explain her situation later. Sunday I spent mowing and cleaning, Andrew and I ran to Pull-A-Part to look at car parts and try to get ideas for my final in Product Design, I then ended up finding a new headliner for my dads old Pontiac although I didnt find much else.

Monday came and Mamaw, Andrew and I drove to Muncie, Indiana. Her farm is there and we went to make sure all is well.

We were home by wednesday night and then I was back on the flight by Saturday night.