Senior Projects

I listed the Ferrari for an online auction. I have my fingers crossed, hoping that it sells for $80,000. That will be very cool. I love this Ferrari and to a non-car person this could be a Testarossa for all they know. This is the first gated-manual I have driven. Today we had some high school students come in on a field trip. I got to move some cars to stage them. I took inventory photos of a Rolls Royce Dawn. Despite it being broken, it is cool because it looks like it’s lowered. It sits just like the one in the Migo’s music video.

Details are key. The market is crazy right now and you have to be aggressive to get a house. We had an aggressive deal , which was only contingent on financing. Someone put information in the seller’s disclosure that was false. We are in a contract and there’s no turning back. The McCausland flip is going well. The mobile home park is what it is. The agent I am shadowing evicted like five people last week.

Week two was filled up with a big variety of projects. I remodeled some tables for a costumer. This included sanding it down, taping, and painting. While in the office I did some market research, filling, and other computer work. One market I researched was the surrounding Denver area. A client wanted a house in the $300,000 to $700,000 range that they could renovate and flip. I also continued to write invoice’s and estimates for projects they were working on. The rest of the time was filled up driving to clients houses to check on the work being done and meeting trades men there. We also went to some furniture and bedding stores to look for some items for a room in process.

This week, I cleaned up the pages of the first chapter of the Arlys stories. I decided to redraw a couple pages, which set me back a few days. When I was cleaning up, I would catch any mistakes I’d made, fix a panel’s composition, and add the speech bubbles. I tried a different method this time, which was writing the words on a separate piece of paper, cutting them out, and sticking them into the panels with washi tape. This way, I can play a bit with how the speech bubbles are arranged. So far, I’ve filled up at least a third of my sketchbook with just drawings from the first chapter, and I’m happy with how far I’ve come with it.

I kept going out every morning to do live sketches, and I went to the Saint Louis Zoo on Tuesday. The original plan was to revisit the Art Museum, but I decided at the last minute to go to the zoo instead. I had a lot more luck there than I’d have had at the art museum, I think. A lot of the animals were active that day, and even though they were moving, they still stayed in the same general position, so they weren’t too difficult to draw. It was probably the best day I’ve had with live sketches this week.

I worked a lot more on Sonnet 81 this week. I looked for a recording on YouTube, because I wanted to hear it spoken. I found a really good one by Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies (among other things). It really helped me get my bearings, and I understand the language a bit more now. I read through Here and Now by Stephen Dunn, and started Poetry Speaks, which is a huge compilation of poems with audio tracks and artist bios included. It will probably last me until the end of senior projects. In addition to that, next week I’ll start in on When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Further List of Possibilities by Chen Chen.

I kept going with the vocabulary from last week, and this week I’ve been memorizing another new set. I’ve also been reading paragraphs from the book, and seeing how much of it sticks. I’m really enjoying Arabic so far, and I hope to continue with it next year. (Truman unfortunately doesn’t offer classes, but I hope I have enough time to study on my own.)

I have been put I charge of listing a Ferrari 348 GTS. This car is awesome despite being from 1991. It has a 5 speed transmission 1st gear is where 2nd normally is at and the clutch is super easy to use. My favorite thing besides the transmission is that you don’t have to wait for the check engine light to turn off. It’s also a convertible. I put the reserve at $70k. If it sells and we make a ton of money, that’s good because then we can discuss about this becoming a summer job. If not, then it’s onto the next. We just got another Performante in and a Rolls Royce Dawn. Today I filmed the Huracan. Tomorrow I get to take photos of the Ferrari and finish listing it.

Today was another shorter day. I was again given a new task, which was to go around to each bunker on one of the courses and rake out and spots that needed it. This could mean anything form animals tracks to water marks or just bad rake jobs from golfers (which was mostly what it was). There is a very specific way he had me do the raking so that it would look good, remain soft, and not leave any mounds of built up sand in the bunker. After I finished that up I went to the parking lot of the clubhouse and picked the weeds from some of the gardens around the area. After that I went back for lunch and headed home.

Today the guys had a new task for me that I had not done yet. They had me operating one of the push mowers, and I mowed a portion of the greens called the collar or fringe. This is a specific cut of grass that surrounds the greens and acts as a barrier between the longer fairway and rough grasses and the short firm green grass. This grass had its own specific height that it needed to be cut at, so I was given a specific mower for the job. I spent the next three hours cutting all of the fringes for one of the courses. After I was finished I spent the rest of my work day going around the course emptying trash cans and filling the water coolers with ice. Below is an image of the mower I used today.

Today they again had me out on the course using the fly mowers to cut the grass around the bunkers. Me and two other guys went out and cut the grass around all of the bunkers on the back nine holes of one of the courses. All in all it took us about 3.5 hours to get done which was right before lunch. Before I went to lunch, the head guy wanted me to blow off some of the dirty greens for a tournament, the school tournament, that was happening in just a couple of minutes. I was able to get one green blown off, but then there was a huge blast of lightning and thunder and the siren went off, so we all returned to the maintenance shed, and I was let off early.

Today was a shorter day as it was pretty rainy and they didn’t have a whole lot for me to do. I spent the entire morning driving around the course on a cart going to each tee box and changing the location of the tee markers. This needs to be done because after a day or two of use the spots where the markers are get pretty worn out and cut up, so in order to preserve the grass we move them around. It also changes the yardages of the holes which changes things up a little for golfers. In addition to moving the markers I also spent time cleaning up the tee boxes and picking up trash and broken tees along the way. I also emptied out the trash for all of the trash cans along the course. After I finished all of that they let me go home for the day.

Today the guys had me helping with mowing the grass around the sand bunkers. This grass requires a specific height of cut, as all of the grass does, but it often on a very steep slope and is almost impossible to get a normal grass mower onto. So to complete this task we used something called a fly mower, which as one of the guys described, is like a hybrid between a normal grass mower and a weed whacker. Its basically a small, light weight machine that looks kind of like a normal mower, but doesn’t have wheels, but instead hovers above the ground, and has a blade underneath. We cut the grass on nine of the holes and then went back for lunch. After that we continued work for a little while and then I left.

Today was my first day working at the Country Club at Saint Albans. For this internship I will be spending the next three weeks work as a part of the maintenance crew that takes care of the golf courses here in Saint Albans. The work day starts at 6:00AM so I have to wake up at 5:30 everyday which can be a bit tough. For the first day, they had me take a cart and a leaf blower, and blow off all of the greens that had debris and other clutter on them. After that I put out some signs signifying that certain holes were cart path only and that carts were to stay off the grass at certain points due to too much water. After that it I spent the rest of the day helping clear out missing range balls in the tall grass on the sides of the driving range. I actually really enjoyed the work I did and am excited for tomorrow!