Kill Phil, Vol. 1

For those of you who don't know, I currently moved to LA to begin my advertising career.  Anyone who knows anything about LA knows that it is very big and could be extremely confusing.  If that is all you know, let me just add that to be a driver here, you better be like a circus act or something to survive!  In fact, within the first 1o seconds of driving in LA I quickly realized that if an earthquake doesn't take me out, the 405 interstate will.  

Anywhoo, I'll move on to the subject at hand...PHIIIIIIIIIIIL...

Phil is Eric's GPS system that was given to me to be "helpful." (Eric is my bf) Apparently I was suppose to bond with this gadget and in return he was suppose to guide me around town.  Well...nope, he hasn't .  You see...Phil has tried to have me "turn right" a couple times INTO A WALL!!! NO PHIL!  THERE IS NO RIGHT TURN!!  He's also changed modes in the middle of my driving which confuses me even more, gets me lost and puts me in a situation where I don't know what to do and can't figure out because geeez...I'm driving ON THE CRAZY STREETS OF LA!!  Oh, and sometimes he just won't turn on.  And of course when I tell Eric about Phil's behavior, he starts acting properly in front of his father!  Like I'm some crazy stepmother he refuses to like!

So yes, I hate Phil.  I know hate is a strong word but it's pretty much hate...almost hate.  He's added stress on my way to job interviews, made me late to some apartment hunts and is not helpful when I need to find furniture to pick up.  He sucks...literally!  He's making me waste all this gas for a 3.5 mile drive because he wants to play games and get me lost and have my mexican temper flare!!!  And that's not a pretty sight!  

Well, I'm hoping that things turn for the better tomorrow as I am hoping to hear back from some agencies and this really cute apartment I applied for.  So, hopefully I will have some insightful advertising stories soon.  For now, my LA survival stories are all you're getting!  

Join me next time for Phil is dead! :)  (not really because Eric would kill me, but we can pretend!)

P.S. Great Grey's Anatomy season finale!!  

Is Bud Light Rick Rolling?

I was on a subway ride sponsored by bud light today, and i noticed something about the copy. I think they took a page out of Rick Astley's book. Two of the lines of copy are as follows: Never fills you up. Never slows you down. I can see the new parody in the making: Never gonna fill you up, never gonna slow you down, never gonna turn around and...(i dunno what to put...).

Anyway, I can't find any pics of it online, so I'm gonna try and take some myself if I come across those ads again. Damn I need a camera on my phone. Maybe I'll just tape one to it.

UPDATE: I came across them in the subway on the way to Brooklyn with Liz a week ago and had my camera on me. I'm sure everyone thought I was crazy taking these pics. Oh well. I lost my SD card, but had them stored on the camera's internal memory. I just got access to another SD card, which is why they're just now making it up. Anyway, here they are, in all their glory.

The Adventure Begins (...sort of...)

After weeks upon weeks of waiting, I just received the most wonderful news: my placement for Japan. Yes folks, I will be spending the next year in beautiful Hyogo Prefecture.

...

Yes, I know. It doesn't sound like much. But you see, by train, Hyogo is:
-- An hour from Kyoto (old temples)
-- An hour from Osaka (beer and night clubs)
-- An hour from Kobe (beef)
-- Two hours from Kansai (University of Florida students)

To be honest, this is perfect. I just can't tell you how exciting this is. Perhaps the best is that I simply know now what is going on.
While waiting for this e-mail of my placement, I would sit there, tossing and turning waiting to know where I was going. Today I couldn't do anything but sleep, dreaming that I found out where I was going.

The best way to describe the awful anticipation is that it was akin to waiting for Christmas...except you know your parents didn't get anything on your list and you don't even KNOW when Christmas is. You could be sitting at dinner when suddenly your parents say "HEY LAUREN! IT'S CHRISTMAS!"
"In the middle of July?"
"YES!"

Right. That sucks.

But now, I just feel so much better. The reality of going to Japan feels real again. I was slogging off on my studying (though I currently have memorized 612 of my 5,000 words) -- and yet, once I got this small sliver of information I felt my interest and my passion to kick the ass of my fluency test returning.

However, as much as I am hurrahing life and a newfound love of doing things, the simple fact remains that my to do list is, well, rather extensive.
After all, I still have three grammar patterns to study, two Japanese blogs to read, a presentation to create, and, now, two places to pack for.
Oh, as well as reading over my extensive handbook of things I cannot do (really, I can't sleep with the elementary school students? That's a new one.)

Hrm, maybe life was better when I was just sitting and waiting.

UPDATE: Oh! And now I get the letter from my internship that I've been waiting for. Hell, I'm just racking up the good luck today. Maybe I should go get some lotto tickets...

My Two Weeks Notice...

Dear Unemployment,

It is with great excitement that I write to tell you that I will officially be ending my time with you. Consider this my two weeks notice. After that, I will no longer be unemployed - I will be working at BBDO on the Gillette account. I thought I should let you know I faxed in my signed offer letter today. There's just a lot more opportunity for me at a place like that, and the pay is better.

So yes, I am moving on. The moving truck is coming tomorrow to take all of my stuff to New York. I will be following a few days after.

To be honest, there were a few times I enjoyed being in your company. I will miss the ability to suddenly take a trip to the lake or the beach. Late nights filled with alcohol and debauchery will become a much more rare occurrence (as will the awful hangovers!).

But now the time has come for us to part ways. And to be quite frank, I hope we never cross paths again. I wish you the best, but Unemployment is just not right for me anymore. I'm sure you won't have a problem finding someone to replace me.

Take care,
Sean Solomon

P.S. I apologize in advance for anyone else I convince to leave your ranks. Hope you understand.

I got a freelance job!

Woo Hoo!

So I will be one of many bloggers on the upcoming blog "Digital Pivot" a new media blog through TalentZoo.com, which will be launching on Monday.

I am totally stoked over the whole thing, although it is not paid right away, but I don't really care. I will be getting my name out there as a blogger and be in with a relatively well-known company. They will pay eventually, after the advertising revenue builds up of course. Hopefully it will be really fun and we will get a lot of traffic. I'll repost on Monday to link you to it. YAY!

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Hey so I encourage everyone to get something to read RSS feeds. That way, you won't need to keep checking the blog (or any other blog) to see if there's been an update. For those of us using a Mac (yay!), Apple's Mail app does a pretty good job of it. Just hit the + on the bottom left of the window and add an RSS feed. Our feed can be found by clicking the RSS logo up in the top right of the page, or by clicking here. That's the address. Just copy and paste it. You can even bookmark it in Safari, but that kinda defeats the purpose of having something check for you. If you don't want to use Apple Mail, you can try NetNewsWire.

As for you PC users, I don't know if Outlook or anything reads RSS on its own. But there are some pretty good RSS readers out there. FeedDemon is supposed to be pretty good. NewsGator Inbox is one that works with Outlook if you like using Outlook.

So that's my shpiel about RSS. I highly suggest it - it makes life a lot easier, and more exciting! Now you'll know exactly when one of us has added something to the blog! Yay!

You've been assassinated by Awesome...

Hey y'all (my new greeting even though I'm hispanic), I'm the admin with most PG (post-Gainesville) experience but that doesn't mean I've grown up, especially where I'm going to school now. I've been attending Miami Ad School of the last six weeks. MAS is supposed to be one of the best, if not the best, portfolio schools in the world and let me tell you it lives up to its billing. Some of the stuff that comes out of that place is pretty incredible. The people are also awesome and we can drink in class, which helps a lot in class by making brainstorming easier and also helping you get through 3 hour blocks. Even though right now I'm taking some of the basic classes like InDesign and Design/Layout, I'm still learning a lot. My favorite work right now is work I'm doing out of class for the Future Lions contest. If (when) I win I'll be flown to Cannes, France to accept an action figure that looks like an anime lion cub. I don't want to go to France though because, you know, there's french people there (FREEDOM FRIES!!!) so I might send a stand-in even though I think he might be a little too skinny...and a little too asian. Ok...now to tell you what I've spent the vast majority of my time doing: playing HALO 3 multi-player battles. If I had known how seriously this was taken at MAS I wouldn't have slacked off the entire Fall semester and actually let Sean teach me how to kill others successfully. I am proud to say that I'm now getting double-digit kills in almost every battle and I've even won a few (though not against the best MAS players). Oh and my username is "awesome" so whenever anybody comes up and asks who's awesome I can point to myself and yell "I'm Awesome!" Well, now I have to go to sleep because this post is going to become incoherent if I continue without sleep though I'll post again soon because it's actually pretty fun. 

PS: Let's give Sean a rousing hand of applause for the great art work

Here we go!

I feel as if this is some sort of Mouseketeer Roll Call as everyone begins their first posts for the blog. Thus, I suppose I am up next for the song and dance.

To be honest, I can't help but feel rather out of the loop as everyone is starting to pack. While I will be moving in two weeks for Detroit, in reality I will be staying in a dorm with only a suitcase of clothing and a TV with me (as well as as much candy as I can carry). Following that I will be moving to somewhere in Japan (and I say somewhere because, while I know that I will be in Japan, where in Japan I will be is still a mystery, much to my chagrin) with whatever I can fit in a single suitcase. The other suitcase will be empty, to be filled with Japanese candy and drinks upon my departure from the country.

Packing, studying for fluency exams, getting ready for internships, having your parents pay for your meals. Who says the life of a college graduate isn't glamorous?

Well, at least for the next two weeks it will be.

OMG! HOLY FINALLY!

Holy freak, I finally figured this thing out!  I was trying to keep my word to Sean by writing tonight since I'm currently going through this whole thing they call "moving!"  Well, I've never written a stinkin blog and I was signed in as Matticus, aka Matt, who used my computer and my computer liked him better for a couple minutes because it refused to sign me in!  Seriously!  Phew!

Anywhoo...HOLY PACKING!!!!!  Why was I born a diva who must have everything I see?!?!?!?!  It just makes for a messy room all year/life and hell week during packing!!! To top things off...I HAVE ADD!  I've been buying sweet tunes on iTunes and watching HGTV to inspire me to decorate a super cute apartment in LA!  Oh, and I've been cleaning out the fridge!  Basically, I'm eating my face off as I freak out because I have NO idea how I'm going to get everything to LA.

Let me tell you a sad story...I've already sent my boyfriend back to LA with a ginormous suitcase and a half, the other smaller one was half-filled with his stuff AND I've filled my car up with junk before it left!  Yes, my car left...with a little foreign man who doesn't speak English.  I have nothing against him because I am, after all, a proud Mexicana!  But when I'm sitting there freaking out about my car, while he's stacking it with the other cars, and I'm trying to talk to him about what to look out for and what I should expect, he says "uh huh, yes!" And I'm like, "It wasn't a yes or no question!!!"  To make matters worse, my mother decided to be undercover Madre and park her car behind this poor guy to watch him put my car on his truck!  Clearly the stressing and worrying is hereditary...*ahem* mother!  The only thing that made me feel better at that point was the fact that there were two Mercedes and a BMW there to make the trip across the country with my Toyota!

And now all I have left is the rest of my room; which looks like Hurricane Nancy hit it.  Pray for me!!!

Well, I'm off to LA this Saturday and my next week is full of job interviews!!! ahhhhhhh New state, new (looking for) job, new life...HOLY WHOA!!!!!  

All I can say now is that I already miss my fam, friends and my Gators!!!

Cup of Soup

So I spent the entire day up until 5 pm scouring the Interweb for job opportunities and openings to find some interesting, and some that require too much experience. I'll just go ahead and chalk it up to a day in front of the computer (sans desk).

During my surf time, the television was left on, which I would normally flip on Discovery Channel or a movie, but paid little attention to whatever was left on... that is until Rachel Ray screamed and knocked me out of my zone. I have never watched her daytime show, but I'll tell you, it will be on the Soup this week. Joel McHale will have a field day with her and her high pitched screams after she sticks her hands into boxes with small creatures inside. The segment was titled "what's in the box?" or something stupid like that and her "friend" some animal expert shows the audience what is in the box and proceeds to lure Rachel to touch it and guess what it is.

Next on the local CBS station was Oprah. Oh Oprah. She devoted her entire show to youngsters with mostly musical talent and one 2.5 year old who memorized countries locations on a world map. Here is a video of her and her talent. It looks very fake to me because she points and then turns around immediately, and cannot read because she is not even 3 years old yet. But then again, she could be a super genius, who knows?

The background

Ok, in case you want to see it once in all its glory:

Because I don't feel like typing it twice...

http://www.seanbsolomon.com/blog/2008/05/where-hell-have-i-been.html

and while i'm at it, a little self-promotion....
SeanBSolomon.com
NotesOnSean.com (didn't anyone see the ridiculous sign my mom made at graduation???
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