I sold my display, I got paid for freelance (theres more around the corner too), and I borrowed some money on next weeks paycheck.



I bought a macbook pro.

I'm still selling my old desktop to help pay. However, I did get 10% off the notebook!

Also, today my boss told me I got a dollar raise, effective on the 1st of Jan, so I'll get a slightly bigger paycheck next Friday for backpay! MY first raise!

Its been cold lately! So cold. Soooo cold. My fingers go numb from my steering wheel and shift knob being so cold. A couple of days ago I got up around 8.30am to go to the mechanic.

Greeted with fog. It's scary driving in fog in my car.

This is how it looks when its not foggy, and at dawn.

I don't remember why I was awake that early then.

I like taking pictures of the same place, or the same things. Dashboards and glasses of drinks. Glass photographs really well, so I guess its an easy picture to do.

Tomorrow I'm selling my computer monitor. I'm going to miss it. I'm selling it to someone I know, and I told him he has to post on the message board about it so that I can see that its doing OK. On monday I'm ordering a macbook pro.

material stuff and things lead to unhappiness.

Today I went to a car meet up at my mechanic's garage in Hayward. The owner of the shop is the president of the Bay Area Miata Association. He invited me to come by when I got my car fixed. I saw a lot of cool cars that made me feel humbled about mine. Nothing that really wowed me and made me want to strive for as a project, nothing really made me jealous either. It kind of made me realize how Mazda got it just right, and theres really not much that can be done to it to make it better, or prettier. I think thats an interesting thing to be ok with, for someone my age who is enthusiastic about cars.

Except for little things regarding wear and tear, I'm pretty content. I sat in a car with a very simple but effective roll bar, and I think It will be a good investment. I'm more likely to get rear ended than flip, but, you never know.

I got paid for one of my freelance jobs today. I received the check. There was a post-it note saying
"Thanks
Grayson -
Great work!
Mike"
Its from the head of the company, not the Mike that I've been working with. I thought that was a really nice touch. Apparently he is a cool guy. Hopefully I'll meet him eventually.

I went to deposit the check and stop by the apple store to compare models. When I went to park on the street, I stopped behind someone pulling out. The cars were all parallel parked like normal, and I had my blinker on. The car pulls out, and I notice the car behind me is passing me, so I wait for them to pass and they try to take my spot!

The people that were behind me, passed me and pulled into my spot! They also had their blinker on. For some reason they didn't pull all the way in, and I had enough room to wedge myself in next to them. They looked over, kind of puzzled and maybe shocked. We rolled down our windows and they ask me

"Didn't you see us with our blinkers on?"

I calmly said something like "Yeah you were behind me, my blinker is still on". They shook their heads and said "well, alright.." like they were settling for a lesser deal of a sudden and found drove away. I *almost* said "Sorry" but I had no reason to, and I had a streak of defensiveness inside my gut. I wasn't upset, it was almost comical. It is comical. I'm glad it worked out.

I went into the apple store and checked out their toys and was approached by a boy that worked there, but he was trying to convince me that Dell made some really great monitors now because I brought up that I was selling my display and buying a laptop. I was really confused about why he was so into this Dell product and we went over to the 30" display and he pulled up a gay gaming website (gaygamer.net) that had a photo of this really awesome monitor (to him) an pictures of half naked boys. After a few minutes I started to realize he was flirting with me and dropping these hints and stuff and asking about my earings and telling me about himself (he's a photographer). It was really flattering, but really bizarre. Not because I was being flirted with by a guy, although thats always a little interesting, but that he was flirting with me AND hawking a Dell product. Flattering.

250 stickers, $40



who?

I've decided to move to Chicago.

I also want to share what I've been working on.

This is one icon I designed for a freelance project. They are being used in a flash thing for a web thing. I'll be able to say more when its live. Thats actually not the final piece, and in action it will be a lot smaller, but its a nice illustration on its own.



These are some more icons, for a totally different project. They started out as vector illustrations, but ultimately I had to get down and dirty and mess with the pixels one by one.


Lastly, a logo designed for a friends company.

There is a journalist I like, who mostly reviews cars. He's a pretty popular personality and since he's a reviewer, he's really opinionate, and doesn't really apologize for anything. I apologize for a lot, very easily. But I really like one thing he's said, and thats that he reserves the right to change his mind. If he doesn't like a car at one point, he's allowed to say why, and later that year if something happens and it just *clicks* in his head, and all of a sudden he gets why the designers/engineers did what they did, then he should be allowed to voice that he wasn't necessarily "wrong", but he just changed his mind.

I forget things, a lot. I forget my opinions and my views. I forget advice I've given, and jokes I make and why I told them. Being told I said something that, out of context, just sounds embarrassing is hard. Why did I say that? It doesn't sound like me at all! It must have made sense at the time. I wonder why this happens. Maybe its because I'm young and my personality is still young too. I change my mind a lot I think, and so I forget my opinion. I'm also pretty stubborn about things, which is an interesting mix, I think. Being stubborn and having a change of mind. Does that work?

I did not like miata's this time last year. I thought they looked like big bars of soap. I respected them, because they are small, light, balanced and made for autocross. They're also almost directly inspired by the Lotus Elan from the 60's (just before the golden era of automotive design in my opinion). But, until I studied about them, and realized their influence, I just thought they were little funny looking japanese cars, and I did not like Japanese auto design. The more I learned about Mazda and the companies foray into motorsports, the more I respected them. They're the only Japanese car company to win at Le Mans. With a car so fast (powerful rather) it was banned the next year!

Now I own one and I absolutely love it. I still don't really like Japanese cars, and I cannot stand JDM/Boy Racer body kits people put on Miata's because it takes away from the old British influence, but thats their car, and they can do whatever they want. It's a good car.

The combination of being curious about a sports car that drives like how I wish my car would drive, and having a pretty stressful change in my life really acted as a catalyst for me to sell my beloved Jetta and dive into this investment. I was fired from my first real design job, and I broke up with my girlfriend that I lived with. I found a new job in a month and then I needed something to change that was mine to work on and obsess over. And even though the new job was MY job, its not my company, and its not my life, its not relaxing and an escape - I don't take it home with me, even though I love what I do. This was something to meditate on. It just so happened that it was something small and sporty.

I am still amazed by how easy it happened. I needed something easy to happen.

I ended last year with friends, I actually got to hear my dads voice, and a text message to Jenn.

My first night of 2007 is being spent alone, well with the cats.

Yesterday I woke up with Jenn at the house shes sitting in Martinez. Came home and ate a little bit, I think the tomato sauce I used is bad, so i didn't finish, and I threw out the sauce. I played some video games, tried to work on a logo for a friend who is also a client since he's paying me now. I've since scrapped that logo, because it looks too much like Cisco's. Damn! I really liked it, but now I can't not see it. I didn't like the font though. Anyways, I've started over on something simpler, that might actually be cooler. I just need to nail the font.

Anyways, new years eve was fun, I saw a lot of friends, and enjoyed myself a lot, without really exhausting myself. We woke up around 11 and got denny's (6 of us). Then I hung out with Erik and Amber and helped clean up. Watched Tony Bourdain on TV for an hour or and then came home before dark.

The way home was mostly nice. I took a side road until Sunol and then 680. I experienced some road rage (which I could have, and should have avoided) from a very large SUV, but I made it, humility is everywhere.

Anyways, I'm home, lucky and safe. I decided to make some bacon and the last ear of corn...The bacon was great (I've never made it before) but the corn was tough, Jenn called and asked if I wanted to get dinner. She came over with KFC and we watched House. Now It's midnight again, I need to shower, I want to play video games, I want to finish this logo. Tomorrow I should take the tree down (thank you tree) and throw it away. Then go to work.

Doing freelance is a lot more fun than my day job. I'm home, my (2) clients are nice and smart, and if need to I can call them idiots and get away with it (no, this design is GREAT, you're an idiot!). But the nice thing about work is that its excersizing. I'm doing a lot of different things in different ways. Even if its not glamorous and fantastic. Its the meat and potatoes (or chicken strips and fries?).