Highschool has ended and a new step in my life has begun. Yah, it is an over-used cliché', but I guess it fits. When you're in highschool you don't realize how much time it takes out of your life until you have that time. For the past few weeks I have been trying to waste as little time as possible until I go to college in the fall. I've been taking care of a few personal projects that I have been meaning to finish, and those are coming along nicely now that I have six more hours of free time in the day.

Oh wait...I don't...I have even less...sort of.

I started my summer looking for job. Unfortunately as many young people know, the economy sucks and it is very hard to find a job. Michigan's economy is even worse, so finding a job in this state is damn near impossible. Somehow I found one, but it was a lucky break. I had been searching for a while and thanks to help from my friend's mom I was able to track down a job at a local McDonalds. No sooner than I had filled out the application did my mom come in and offer me a job. She is a partner in a small law firm and they have been understaffed recently since one of their secretaries quite unexpectedly. She offered me the job of being their receptionist for the summer. I took the job and started my journey into office work.

I've had the job for just about a week now and I must say I enjoy it. I get in around 8:00 a.m. and make the coffee, then I sit down for eight hours and answer phones, take messages, and do other tasks that I am asked to do. While it may sound boring on paper, it is actually enjoyable, and the pay is great for a summer job. I also get to enjoy the company of everyone working, and they are a bunch of crazy characters.

Another great part about my job is the free time I get in between calls. With this time I've been able to do a lot of different things, including researching a new laptop to buy for school. I decided to get a Toshiba A305-s6916. It's a beauty for the price and should be perfect for flash work, as well as the daily tasks of school work. I've only had it for a day, but I already love what it can do for me(I'm posing off it right now). With the free time I also have time to work on flash projects.
Hmm...that was weird...just got a call and nobody was on it...oh well....

Anyways like I was saying, flash projects. While I can't animate on this thing until I install Flash on it I have been able to continue storyboarding on my next movie. It's embarrassing, but I've been sketching on and off since the beginning of September, but I am proud to say that I am ALMOST done with it. Better late than never I suppose. I hope to have the storyboards done by the end of next week. Then I can start production on the actual movie and get out of this nine month pre-production thing I've got going on. I guess it could be worse. At least I have ideas.

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I also have news about actual animation work. The third Disturbed Collab piece I'm working on is coming along nicely. Primary animation is nearly complete. Once that is done I can go back and add backgrounds as well as shading, lip syncing, and other snazzy details that make movies good. I'm not sure if I'll take another part, or even if there will be parts to take, but I will definitely have something to work on once I'm done with it.

Now onto some other news. First I have a call...

... Hmm..that one was actually a person. I prefer those calls. Back to the news.

I went down to the Newgrounds Michigan Meet Up a few weeks back along with YungJazz , Pijju, and my girlfriend island_chick. We met up with Jonas, SardonicSamurai, 36Holla, and soncimega. Jonas has a better write-up of it than I am going to bother to write, but I thought I'd write something about it.

Everyone was amazing to chill with for a day. Everyone was nice, funny, social(save for Jonas who kept wandering off, but that's where those pics came from), and overall great people to hang out with. Lunch was where I realized we were all dorks, but I loved it. Sonic and sardonic started talking to each other in their various voices and when Yungjazz joined in we scared some families. The arcade was awesome and we got a lot more time to socialize. Sardonic and I played a game of pool and he beat me, but it was a close and fun game. While we were there Jonas whipped out his prototype Tankmen the Card Game deck and taught everyone how to play. The game is relatively easy to learn and a whole lot of fun to play. The basic idea is to capture areas through battling each other, and there is a lot of hilarity along the way. If I remember right, Jonas is passing the game back and forth between the NG Office so it can be in the store eventually for everyone to buy. I highly recommend that everyone should buy it when it comes out (whenever that is) and if you ever go to a NG meet-up with Jonas to play the game. You won't regret it. Overall the meet-up was an amazing experience. I hope I'll get the chance to attend more in the future.

Well I'm going to get back to work now. I expect the calls will start flooding in like they always do in the afternoon. I'll try to post a screen shot of something when I get the chance. I took the cue from Yungjazz to try to post artwork with every post...even if his last post was some dude taking a dump.... >_<