My Resume

I'm looking for a new job. I thought I'd post my "resume" here in case any of you can think of anywhere that might like to hire someone like I am... Suggestions welcome!

EMPLOYMENT
July 2009-Present
Worked at Del Taco #93 as a cashier and server

September 2005-February 2009
Worked as an assistant instructor and office manager for the Glendale branch of Fred Villari’s Studios of Self-Defense

June 2005-September 2006
Worked at the Wherehouse (#1376) on Foothill Blvd. as a sales associate

October 2004
Worked in the kitchen/catered for Mrs. Thais Herrington’s scrap-booking event.

June 2004-November 2004
Worked for the Montrose Village Newsstand running the cashier and taking care of inventory.

November 2003-June 2004
Worked for the Rice Garden in La Canada as a cashier and server

October 2003
Worked in the kitchen for Mrs. Thais Herrington’s scrap-booking event.

Oct. 2000-June 2003
Worked in the BBQ Room at Anderson W. Clark Magnet High School as a cashier and server

February 2003
Modeled tiaras for R & M Bridal’s annual catalog

HONORS/ACHIEVEMENTS

• October 2009, sold a piece of artwork in order to raise money for Children's Hospital in LA.
  

• June 2009, had my paintings up on a wall at the Gallery at the End of the World.

• February 2009, worked as an illustrator for Charles Barlow Inc. for the book Scary Man.

• June 2008, achieved the rank of second-degree black belt.

• October 2007, had my paintings up on a wall at the Gallery at the End of the World.
  

• August 2007, started a new autobiographical online comic strip, The Greener Side

• July 2006, wrote several articles for The Pulse magazine.

• June 2006, achieved the rank of first-degree black belt.
  

• September 2005, became an assistant instructor at Fred Villari’s Studio of Self-Defense.

• August 2005, was chosen to be included in the International Library of Poetry’s collection book, The Best Poets of 2005.

• Early 2005, I had my picture published in the English Journal as part of an article about reading to children in elementary schools (I had made a children’s book as part of a project in 2000 and read it to some students).

• Was given a Perfect Attendance Award for my time spent at Bryman College in 2004.
  

• Summer 2004, obtained awards for various completed "modules" in Bryman College's Dental Assisting program.
  

• Summer 2004, obtained an X-Ray and Coronal Polishing License from Bryman College when I was there studying as a Dental Assistant.

• Summer 2004, obtained a CPR and AED license.

• May 2004, was chosen to be one of 33 poets featured in the International Library of Poetry’s book on audio CD, The Sound Of Poetry

• May 2004, received the Editor’s Choice Award from poetry.com and the International Library of Poetry

• March 2004, started up my own online comic strip, Unlucky In A Tin Can

• Winter of 2004, had my poem “Another Degree of Nine” chosen for publication in the International Library of Poetry’s annual book.

• May 2003, received a scholarship from Lincoln Elementary School

• October 2003 “Story of the Month” on Teen Magazine’s website

• Head writer for the Clark Chronicle (school newspaper) 2002-03

• PTSA Service Award (for making my school “an all-around better place to be”) 2003

• Student Service Award for excellent service as a student worker in the cafeteria at Clark Magnet High School 2003

• Member of Clark Magnet’s Principal’s Advisory Committee (PAC) 2000-03

• June 2002 “Story of the Month” on Teen Magazine’s website

• March 2002 “Story of the Month” on Teen Magazine’s website

• Award for Outstanding Achievement (best in my class) in American Literature 2002

• Golden Sate Academic Excellence Award in Written Composition 2002

• Golden State Academic Excellence Award in Biology 2002

• Student Service Award for excellent service as a student worker in the cafeteria at Clark Magnet High School 2001

• Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of volunteer work at Lincoln Elementary School 2000

I guess that's about it... Education-wise, I graduated from Anderson W. Clark Magnet High School in 2003, attended Bryman College for Dental Assisting in 2004, and was taking various classes at Glendale Community College off and on from 2006-2009.

I type an average of about 70WPM.

I've been applying to places in my area and would prefer not to work at a "food" job again, but I'm open to trying new things. Let me know if you have any suggestions/ideas. Thanks!

--Lauren*

Halloween & Such

This is sort of a companion piece to Ramiro's wonderful LiveJournal entry about Halloween weekend. (Mostly I just wanted to show off my EC comics too...). For more details about how I spent the weekend, you can just read his entry (it has lots of pics too!).

Halloween weekend was a blast. My "little brother," Vincent, was having a show with his band Corpse Candy on the 30th and I finally got to see them perform! It was very exciting (and LOUD) and I was very proud. :3
I went to the Corpse Candy show with Ramiro (who did their amazing album cover). We got to go to IHOP after the show. Scrumptious!

(I got my hair cut a few weeks ago by Jaz at VOUS Hair...)

One of the very best things about Halloween and Halloween weekend was going to House of Secrets and Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee. I love those places. Especially HoS (EBSM can honestly be a bit overwhelming). If you're in the area, you simply must stop by!

At House of Secrets, Ramiro was able to add to his collection of EC comics. I was very excited by this because I'm a huge fan too. Actually, my stack of comics used to be even larger than his but I ended up giving the bulk of my collection to Vincent (of Corpse Candy) when he was a small child (obviously warping him--in the best way!--for life).

Here's what I have left of my EC horror comics:(Those Tales From The Crypt TV show DVDs were fun to watch over the weekend, too!)

I also have a few EC oddities that aren't in the horror genre:(That's right, EC Piracy comics weren't just made up by Alan Moore. They're real!).

Halloween itself was very chillaxed. Lots of trick-or-treaters at my parents' house (over 50!) and Ramiro & I came over and helped carve pumpkins...

(You can click on that to make it bigger)

And that's pretty much it. Good times.

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I got a note from Children's Hospital today saying that they received the money I donated. :)That's all for now.

Until next time...

--Lauren*

Donation Time!

Omigosh, you guys! I'm super excited about this!

Before I went to bed, I couldn't resist checking my bank account one last time and--YES!!--the PayPal transfer went through!! :D

I immediately filled out all the forms and whatnot to donate to Childrens Hospital. (I'm donating to the Los Angeles branch since that's the one that took care of me as a wee one). I'm so excited! People have made donations to various causes in my name before and I've donated spare change here and there, but this is the first "big" donation I've ever made. And it's something that means a lot to me.

Anyway, as promised, here are the pics of the check and everything:
Yay!

I'm so grateful to have the ability to walk.

Much thanks to all of you for supporting me & my endeavor!

I pass by a mailbox on my way to work. I'll drop this in first thing in the morning. I'm so excited! I want to do this again next year!! (Maybe I'll be able to afford to donate more by then!)

--Lauren*

The Box Sold!

The box I decorated with Fan Art (see entry directly below this one) sold!

My original intent was to keep $50 for myself in order to open a Savings Account (or at least to get by on... I was shorted 2 days pay on my last paycheck and I hate borrowing from my parents) and give the rest to Children's Hospital. But since the box sold for $55, I thought it would be pretty lame to only give $5 to the hospital... So I'm giving the whole thing to the hospital and keeping none for myself.

As soon as the money from PayPal gets transferred to my bank account (should be another 4 days), I'll make out the check and send it to Children's Hospital. I'll be sure to take a pic so you guys can see too. :)

I was originally hoping to go down to the hospital in person and drop off the check (and get a receipt...), but it's a bit far away and I'd probably end up wasting as much on gas as I'm donating. haha. Sadness.

Anyway! On to THANK YOUS!

Special thanks to:

• Sanjay of Cowbirds In Love for his (very funny/cute) news post about my box

• Zach of SMBC for his news post about my box (which is actually what ended up leading the buyer to my auction!)

• Tom of Gunnerkrigg Court for writing me a very lovely letter about my box (he saw it a bit late and couldn't help promote it, but he took time out of his busy schedule to write to me how much he liked it)

and, of course,

• David from Austria for liking my box enough to actually BUY it! Thank you!!>

More updates soon!

--Lauren*

FAN ART BOX FOR SALE (MONEY WILL GO TO GOOD CAUSE!)

Okay, so here's the deal... My goal for this year was to open a Savings Account for myself. And I was hoping to do it before the end of October because my bank is having a deal where they'll toss in an extra $25 (good deal!), buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...I've done the math and I'm probably going to be about $50 short to meet the deadline. So...I'd like $50.

I've also been doing a lot of thinking about my health lately. And, although I've got some troubles (as you may have read about in my other entries), at least I can walk.

Now, this wasn't always the case. Here's me circa 1986:
I was born with a birth defect. Ya know how you're supposed to have a ball & socket on your leg/hip? I didn't have that. So, I ended up needing to have extremely extensive hip surgery that included all sorts of bone grafting and whatnot. This, of course, was very expensive. And my parents had both been laid off from their jobs at the time...

Children's Hospital and Crippled Children's Services came to the rescue. They paid for my surgery in full. That's the only reason that I'm able to walk now.

I'd really like to repay them.

That's where the title of this entry comes in. I've made a piece of fan art and I'm selling it on eBay. I want to keep $50 for myself (to fulfill my dream of finally having a Savings Account!) and then I want to give the rest to Children's Hospital!! So... If I get $150 for my art, I'll keep $50 and give $100 to the Hospital. If I get $1,000,000 for it, I'll keep $50 and give $999,950 to the Hospital! Get it? :)

I will post pictures of the check (and probably me going to the hospital and giving it to them) after the item sells.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd...without further ado, here's what I'm selling:
It's a wooden box. It's eight (8) inches long, four & a half (4.5) inches wide, and one & a half (1.5) inches deep. I used acrylic paints and black ink pens to decorate it. The bottom (not shown) is black with little pieces of felt glued on so that it won't scuff up anyone's furniture. There are fourteen (14) different comic strip/book/characters represented on the box's top. These are all artists/comics/characters that have changed my life in some way or simply make me smile. I hope that some (or all!) have done the same for you at some point!

They are:
1.) Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner
2.) Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell
3.) Uncle Scrooge & Donald Duck by Don Rosa (Carl Barks is the original guy, of course, but I adore Rosa's work)
4.) Archie Comics (my fave is Jughead!) by Samm Shwartz (there are a lot of artists that've done Archie comics, but he's my personal favourite)
5.) The Farside by Gary Larson
6.) Questionable Content by Jeph Jaques
7.) Batman (I chose to draw him in the style of the animated series--which was also the comic series I enjoyed most)
8.) Rachel The Great by Rachel Nabors
9.) Cowbirds In Love by Sanjay Kulkarni
10.) Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai
11.) Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
12.) Serenity by RealBuzz Studios
13.) SKINCUBE by Ramiro Roman, Jr.
14.) EC Comics (the "Old Witch" from the Haunt of Fear series is featured here)

Here's the listing on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170386715476

HAPPY BIDDING!!! and THANK YOU!!!!!

--Lauren*
PS: This is my first eBay listing, but I used to list things in high school under my parents' eBay name (zotzcoin). So please don't be nervous about my non-existant Feedback rating on my own account at the moment. :) I also sell things on Amazon under the "littlezotz" seller name as well and I have 100% positive feedback on there!