So Tuesday was my birthday. In my first class my group had our presentation over our marketing plan. There was one group before us and we had to ask them questions. It seemed like most of the success of their product was based on hope. Probably not the best thing.

My group rocked it. We had t-shirts made up with our brand name on the front and the nutritional label on the back. The guys wore suits with the t-shirt and the girls wore dress pants with the t-shirt. We all looked pretty badass. Then I made buttons which we all wore. I was also wearing a second button that had the backside of a naked clipart man and it said "This Is My Birthday Suit" because it was my birthday and I was wearing a suit. I thought it was funny. Anyway, I had made enough buttons for the class so we handed those out when we were talking about promotions. We also had actual bottles with printed out labels that we stuck on them and we colored the liquid inside to look like our product. The labels looked really good and it could have been an actual product. It was pretty cool. On top of all that, our presentation went really well. It seemed like marketing plan was actually well planned out and could be feasible. For our expenses we had reasons for all of our numbers and they made sense. This generally wasn't the case with the other groups. Of course I may be a little biased but my group was definitely the best.

After class I went home so I could finish some homework before my next class. In that next class we had presentations. The project in that class was to pick a product that wasn't currently a market lead and come up with a plan to move them up. Most of the groups kind of sucked. Not so much in their presentation but just the idea. One group picked Sprint/Nextel and their new campaign consisted of going after the business market and emphasizing the walkie talkie feature on their phones. But, Sprint/Nextel already had or has a big campaign consisting of going after the business market and emphasizing the walkie talkie feature on their phones. Another group had the Zune mp3 player. Their main idea was to try and connect it more to the Microsoft name and their slogan was "Everlasting Youth." Um, not so much. I don't think Zune would want to buddy up to the Microsoft name. Of late, especially with Vista, I would want to distance myself from the Microsoft name. And, when I think of "Everlasting Youth" I don't think of Microsoft. If anything that may be attached to Apple but Microsoft, not so much.

Eventually it was time for dinner with my mom, sister, and grandma. My mom wanted to go out and we eventually settled on Valentino's. Turns out it was kids-eat-free night. There were little kids everywhere. They also had a cotton candy machine going which was entirely too loud and it was hard to hear what anyone was saying. It was nice getting out of there. Then we went over to my grandma's for birthday cake.

After that was all over we went home and then I went to pick up my friend so we could hang out. That was good times. We ended up talking and watching TV. She ended up getting me a few things, including the first two seasons of Gilmore Girls. I'm a dude and it's probably rare to find a dude that will admit to liking Gilmore Girls but it's just a good show. There's no denying it. Overall I think she spent way to much considering I didn't want anything in the first place but I really did appreciate it all.

On Wednesday after a group meeting I went to get some Chipotle. Apparently in honor of teacher appreciate week, teachers got a free burrito on Wednesday. I was not aware of this and it took me 45 minutes just to find a parking spot within walking distance. After all of that the burrito pretty much sucked because the dude scraped the rice out of the bottom of the container so it was all overcooked and hard. No me gusto.

On Thursday I had my final group presentation. This was in the class where we took a non-market leading product and tried to make it into one. My group decided to go with Doyle Boston sails. We wanted to position them as a leisure sailing option, not just top-of-the-line racing sails. Anyway, we rocked it. Sort of. This was the group where the me and one other person did most of the work. This became very obvious during the presentation. The opening and closing guy is really good at presentations but his information sucked. To the audience it probably wasn't obvious but most of what he was saying was completely wrong. I had to keep reminding myself that the audience didn't know it was wrong.

Then, the next guy, completely froze. He was talking for maybe a minute and then lost his train of thought and just froze up. Instead of going to the next slide, the guy who did the intro just left it there so there was an awkward silence. Then the teacher tried to save him and said it was because of all the noise from the construction coming in the open windows. So we shut those and in that time the guy didn't advance the slides so there was still some awkwardness before we moved on. It was pretty classic. I know he was my group member and it could have affected my grade but I thought it was hilarious. I had to turn my head away from the audience so they didn't see me smiling. That's what you get when you barely do any work on the project and then don't practice the presentation. He even had note cards. It was great.

Eventually it was my turn. I went kind of fast through talking about the different channels we were going to run our commercials on but I think that was because I was looking forward to showing the storyboards I had drawn. The first commercial seemed to go over well and then we got to the second one. For the first one I had cut and pasted different clip art stuff together. For the second one I drew all of it. All of the people were stick figures but I thought it worked out well. When I got to the stick figure driving I had put the steering wheel too far away so the stick figure became very lanky. So I said "And then we have a shot of the wife driving, looking kind of out of it, off in her own world. And she apparently has extremely long legs.... but good posture." And then it went to the next slide as the class was laughing. I don't think it translates in text but the timing was perfect and it went over well. In my presentations I try to make the audience laugh at least once so mission accomplished.

During the class, as a form of attendance, the class has to write down which presentation they thought was the best. The teacher came up to one of my group members and I, we being the only two that really put an effort into the project, and told us that the class had picked our presentation as the best. Go us.

That night I had my first professional business dinner. The company that donated the money for the scholarships, the reason I got $1000, invited the winners out to dinner. It was a pretty cool experience. I got a chance to talk to both of the company representatives there and my professor. I found out that none of them actually had a real plan as to what they wanted to do when they were in college. The just kind of fell into what they ended up doing. That gave me a little hope considering I still have no clue what I want to do.

Today I earned/won $1000. One of the teachers I have this semester has a deal with a business and they donate a certain amount of money each semester for my teacher to give out as a scholarship. It's our teacher's way of making the environment more like the business world where people get rewarded for doing good work. He mentioned all of this to us at the beginning of the semester but I never thought too much about it because I never figured I would be in the top three of my class. I still don't quite believe it.

We started the class filling out a survey for graduating seniors and then we did the teacher evaluations. After that he said he was going to call the names of the people that had won the money. My name was the first one called. I was kind of shocked and had trouble scooting my chair back in order to go up to the front of the room. Three of us in my class and four people in the other class each got $1000.

One of the other people in my class that got the money is also in my group. The teacher said that he took into account not only what assignments had already been graded, but also what he had seen of our group projects. So, considering two of us in the same group got the money, hopefully that is a good sign for our group as a whole. I've got my fingers crossed.

Speaking of my group, the other day I went to the library and finally got the label to look halfway decent on the 3D bottle that I had drawn in AutoCAD. Today one of the girls in my group showed me the new logo that one of her friends had come up with. We're going to have shirts made with the new logo on them and that'll be pretty cool. The only problem is that now I have to wait for her to send me the new logo and then try to get that onto the bottle. Hopefully I can figure it out in time. I'm also going to make some buttons with the logo on them.

Anyway, after class I went home and called my mom to tell her the good news. Then I called my dad and a couple other people. I'm not really good at showing emotion, especially excitement, but I was pretty excited. It's still unbelievable but I'm sure when I get a check in a couple of weeks I'll believe it.

The only remaining stipulation for the money is that we have to write a thank you letter to the company giving us the money. I'm still not quite sure what I need to write but I've got until next Thursday to figure it out. I also decided that I'm going to draw different panels of a cartoon showing what I could do with the money. I don't know how professional that is but I'm hoping they will find it amusing.

Yesterday was Open House. I got up around 9:00am and got ready. I wasn't supposed to be there until 11:00am but I left the house about 40 minutes early just in case it took me a while to find a parking spot. That turned out to not be necessary because I was able to park where I normally do for class.

I wasn't quite sure where I was actually supposed to go but I had a vague memory of someone saying the rats were set up downstairs by the bookstore. So that's where I went and I got lucky because that's where the rats were.

My partner was there and he already had Ping Pong out so she was warmed up a bit. She performed amazingly. I ran her for awhile and then gave her a rest and used my partner's rat. He never got around to naming her, at least as far as we knew, so when people asked what her name was I just said Number Two (all the rats had numbers before they got names and her number was obviously, two). I ended up running ping pong for most of the day because she seemed to be more into it.

Throughout the day I saw a lot of people I knew. My mom and sister stopped by fairly early on. I let both of them hold her for a bit and they seemed to like her. Then I saw a friend from work. She had to sit at her sorority's table but she had come early to see my rat. Then there was an old friend who I used to work with and then another friend that I currently work with. Then my dad, step-mom, and brother stopped by. It was pretty cool seeing everyone.

Most of the visitors that stopped by were pretty good. All of the kids loved the rats. Some were a little uncertain at first but once we let them pet one or feed one, we had won them over. That happened with a few adults as well but there were still a few that never seemed to get into it.

There were only two really annoying kids throughout the day. The first was a girl that was there in the morning and then came back around in the afternoon. She was obsessed with feeding them and holding them and always wanted to carry them over to the starting platform. I avoided her in the morning but she latched on to Ping Pong when she came back. At one point she dropped her a few inches from the floor. That's when I drew the line and wouldn't let her pick Ping Pong up anymore. She also had a balloon and seemed convinced that the rats were following her balloon so she would keep it in their faces all the way across the rope. It was more of a distraction and just really annoying. The whole time her parents just stood back and let it all happen. They were older so I think that had something to do with it.

The second girl was just dirty. Somewhat close to where we were there was a table set up where kids could make their own pottery. This girl had taken them up on this opportunity and it looked like she went swimming in the wet clay. Her face, shirt, pants, arms, and hands were all covered in wet clay and she came running up wanting to touch all the rats. She managed to get a few fingers on Ping Pong before I could pull her away. Ping Pong got away but I got clay all over my shirt. I put her back in her cage and used some of her water to wash her off. I let her hang out in there for awhile.

After Open House was over I helped load up the rats in a car and then drove over with them to help put them back in the room. When we got into the building I went ahead to look for the elevator. I got turned around because I hadn't been in the basement since I was a really little kid with my grandpa. I ended up walking right by the elevator. I turned around and the guy I was with was standing in front of the elevators and said "Aren't we looking for the elevators?" All I could say was "Wow, I'm retarded."

When we had everything put away I went over to the library to see if I could finish my 3D bottle. That didn't really happen. I got the label part on but I couldn't get the actual label picture on. It was ridiculous. I worked on it for about an hour but couldn't get it right. I ended up giving up for the day and going home.

I wanted to pick Ping Pong up that night so my mom and I went to the pet store to buy a cage. I was going to buy it but my mom said she'd get it for me as an early birthday present. Worked for me. We got it home and got it all set up and then we went over to have dinner with my grandma.

After that we were able to go get Ping Pong. I went up to the lab and found out that the light in the colony room is on a timer and there isn't a switch. The room was pitch black. There was a doorstop but it was too short for the door. I ended up using a latex glove box to prop the door open a crack. It kind of felt like I was stealing her being in a pitch black room and then putting her in a shoe box.

I got her home and got her in her cage and she just kind of hung out at the bottom. It's got tubes and stuff but I think she'll outgrow those fairly soon. She hasn't really tried them so I don't know if she'll even go for them. Luckily she can climb the sides of the cage to get to the different levels.

I let her hang out for awhile but she wasn't really moving around so I got her out and she sat on my shoulder and ran around on my bed for about an hour.

Right now she's hanging out on my bed. She ran around for about an hour going under the pillows and making tunnels. Now she's burrowed in under a blanket and curled up taking a nap. It's pretty freaking cute.

Now she's eating lettuce but she's still up in the blanket. I'll put a piece down and she'll peek out and then drag it up into her hiding place. Rats are pretty cool.

The every day posting thing isn't working. I think I'm going to shoot for every day but I'll be cool with making it once a week.

Yesterday I bought a suit. My first suit. I feel sort of grown up. Just sort of though. Maybe when I actually have it on it'll be slightly more than sort of. I went with an all-black suit because the dude said the all-black jacket would be more versatile. For the price that I paid, which was on the low-end but still quite a bit, I want it to be as versatile as possible.

The guy was really helpful. I went in last week and I had no clue what I needed to look for. He showed me some different stuff and helped me with the size and whatever else. When I went back yesterday he remembered me and the stuff we had talked about. That is some good customer service. I learned that I have an odd body shape. I can't remember if I wrote about this before so I'm just going to continue. I have small shoulders and big hips. So I ended up getting a size 38 jacket and it's being let out a little bit around the hips. Normally, a size 38 jacket goes with size 32 pants. I'm assuming because of the hip thing, I'm a size 34 pants so I had to switch that up. It's pretty cool buying clothes that are tailored to fit me.

The rat training is going well. Ping Pong and my partner's rat are both pretty good at going from one platform to another now. It's pretty cool.

Thursday was a fairly normal day. It was yesterday but I've already forgotten most of it.

As I was finishing up with rat training one of the girls that is also training came in. I was feeling pretty good because I had gotten the rats higher up on the ladder. She pulls out one of her rats, walks over to the other platform, and it runs all the way across the rope to the other platform, down the ladder, and eats the treat. This happens several times and then she pulls out the other rat and it does the same thing. That kind of burst my bubble.

This morning I redeemed my self-esteem though. I got Ping Pong out, weighed her, and then started with the training. I fed her a couple Cocoa Crispies and then put her on the ladder. She came right back down for another treat. I put her a little bit higher on the ladder and she came down again. Then higher. Eventually I put her on the top of the platform and she came down the ladder and got her treat. Then I put her out on the rope and she walked back to the platform, down the ladder, and got her treat. We made it about halfway out on the rope before she kind of got tired of it and didn't want to do it anymore. Then I went and got my partner's rat and did the same thing. I managed to get her all the way to the other platform so she was crossing the whole rope. After awhile of that I got Ping Pong back out and got her to go across the entire rope also. It's ridiculous but seeing her cross the entire rope made me feel really good. I felt like a proud parent.

I only had one class today and it only lasted 20 minutes which was pretty nice. Then I went home and planned on taking a nap. Somehow I got distracted and only got a 30 minute nap. Better than nothing.

Then it was time for work. Three whole hours. I finished a book and continued in another so I guess it was a fairly productive day. I'm reading A Clockwork Orange. I'm a few chapters in and I'm not too sure about it yet. The extensive use of slang is kind of annoying. I'm getting through it though. Baby steps.

After work I had left overs from last nights dinner. I made some rice, tater tots, and then I cooked some seasoned fake chicken in a pan and added in salsa. It was delicious, both last night and tonight. I ate way too much tonight though. My stomach was saying 'no' but it tasted so good.

I've spent my time since dinner playing guitar. I'm still making progress on Hoobastank's "Inside Of You" so that's good. Later tonight my friend might come over to see a movie. If not, I'll probably watch a movie anyway.

I need to try and get back to updating this thing everyday.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty much the same day. When I don't work, my days seem to run together.

On Monday we had a quiz in Persuasion. If we got 11 or more right out of 15 than we would get all fifteen points. If we got less than we'd have to retake it and only have the chance to get ten points. This seemed like a pretty good deal but then I got all fifteen questions right which means I did badass but got the same grade as anyone that missed four questions. Oh well.

Tuesday was uneventful as far as school goes. At least as far as I can remember. After classes I went to a suit shop to get some estimates. I need to get a suit for one of my presentations this semester and it would probably be a good idea for job interviews if I ever get around to that. Anyway, I'll probably end up spending about $400. That is ridiculous. I'm going to need to find a lot of random occasions to wear a suit so I can get my money out of it. I also learned that I either have tiny shoulders or big hips because they're going to have to let out the waist a little on the jacket. That's good to know I guess.

Today (Wednesday) was pretty much the same as the rest of the week. It was Chipotle night. I get a double wrapped burrito with black beans and a little bit of lettuce. I generally ask for extra rice because they tend to skimp on it a lot. I don't think they're trying to cheat me though. I think it's just to leave room for other stuff like meat and cheese and salsa. I don't get that stuff though so if I don't ask for extra rice then I end up with a tiny burrito. But yeah, tonight I got a dude that apparently gives an above average amount of rice to begin with. I was not aware of this. I ended up with a ridiculous amount which lead to a really big burrito. I ate almost seven hours ago and I'm still feeling stuffed.

After dinner I played guitar. I'm getting better at Hoobastank's "Inside Of You." I can play most of it at speed which is pretty freakin' sweet.

Other than having to work, Sunday wasn't too bad. I went a long time without having to work on Sundays but it seems like I've been scheduled for the past several Sundays. In actuality it might have only been the past couple Sundays but it feels like it's been going on for awhile now. I could probably look back at the blog and see for sure but that's too much work.

I think I'm more productive when I work on Sunday because I'm up before noon and I actually get a start on my homework before it gets dark outside. When I'm at home I just sit around and watch TV all day and usually don't start my homework until way after dinner. Now when I work I can spend the majority of my time actually being productive. It's kind of nice. Yesterday I was able to knock out the outline for my part of a paper and read the majority of a chapter that I had a quiz over today.

This was a good thing because right as I was finishing dinner I got a call from my friend. She wanted to know if I wanted to go see Stop-Loss with her and her family. I wasn't really that interested in seeing the movie but I knew I wouldn't be starting my homework for awhile and I wanted to see her so I said okay. The movie actually turned out to be alright. I doubt I would go out of my way to watch it again and it was kind of slow at times but it was a decent movie. I'm glad I saw it.

After getting home I was able to knock out my paper and read a little bit more in my textbook. I could have finished it but I was kind of tired and I figured I would have time in between class on Monday. Which I did.