My name is Pete.  Welcome to my blog.  July has been quite busy.  It all started when Jason came out from the east coast back on July 2nd.  He came to visit his girlfriend out here, and Clinton took advantage of his presence to shoot a video.  We all met up at the Siebers (including Doug and Jeff and Lindsay) and started shooting.  Clinton rented a Panasonic DVX-100, which is an awesome camera that Mark can tell you all about.  I called Mark and got a plethora of operational advice.  We shot a few scenes and learned how to use the camera as we went along.  It really is amazing how good this camera makes our production values seem.  Anywho, we shot for awhile then went to a restaurant who tried to overcharge us by $100.  Took several go rounds with the owner to straighten that out.  We shot some more the next day, then on the 4th, most of us went to the Padres game at Petco Park followed by a cookout at the Wonders hosted by Jamie's cousin Aaron.  What a fantastic day!  There was a jerk at the park during fireworks, but we weren't going to let him spoil our day.

The following week, my sister and her family came out to visit for a few days.  They stayed down in Anaheim, which was pretty central to all the activities we had planned.  We met them at Downtown Disney for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe.  The next morning we headed down to Carlsbad to go to Legoland.  We had a good time, in spite of the fact that the rides were definitely aimed at young kids.  Afterwards, we met up with the Siebers at Ruby's on the pier in Oceanside.  That was a very enjoyable experience, and I recommend it to those visiting the area.  On Saturday, the Theodores met us out at the construction site to check out our new digs.  The kids couldn't go inside and for some reason had the hardest time figuring out that we didn't actually live there yet.  The finish date has been pushed to mid-February, but hopefully they'll finish early.  We then introduced the Theodores to In-N-Out, which is really near our new place.  That night we ate at CPK at Hollywood & Highland where I'm sure we saw Robert Downey, Jr.  We just missed Hillary Duff at her premiere of The Cinderella Story.  My niece, Lauren, was anxious to try to catch a glimpse of her.  The kids spent the night with us that night to give Grace and Steve a much-needed break.  The next morning we took the kids down to the La Brea tar pits where you can actually watch them excavating some fossils amidst the tar-y ground.

After the Theodores left, we had a couple of days to catch up on work and housecleaning and such.  But then on Tuesday, we drove back down to Laguna Beach to see the Pageant of the Masters, where they recreate life-size works of art.  It really is amazing how they can make the 3-dimensional live people look like they are a part of the 2-dimensional painting.  We had a couple more days of normalcy before the Siebers came up this weekend for their anniversary.  We saw The Clearing and Napoleon Dynamite with them.  Yes, I did enjoy ND for the 3rd time.

Amongst all of this, I actually did get some work done.  I'm finishing up my first big project with my newest client, and I meet with the producers of CSI this week to discuss my next big project.  Jamie got booked yesterday for a 16-day straight job starting today.  She'll be quite busy, but the pay is good, and she's getting to work for a new stylist, so her experience and connections are growing by leaps and bounds.  OK, exhale.

Clinton's mom and several other of his female relatives came through town this week.  We went and met them for dinner on Sunday night down at El Cholo in Santa Monica after church.  The next day, while I worked, Jamie went with Clinton and his mom down to Playa Vista, as part of our plot to get our LA friends all to move to the same community.  She really liked Tapestry, so who knows?

Last night, Jamie and I went to see The Terminal at the ArcLight.  In spite of my initial reservations, I quite enjoyed it.  It was a great mix of humor and story and love and sadness.  Plus, there seemed to be a tribute to Wes Anderson there in the middle, in which I laughed out loud quite a bit.  Thanks, Ben Dudley, for your recommendation.  When I went out to get popcorn and a soda, Harland Williams was in line in front of me.  After he left, the concessionaires and myself tried to recall the stuff he's been in.  My first recollection was from The Whole Nine Yards.

I hate it when I go for more than a week without blogging.  Alas, I've been pretty busy this past week working on a project for a new client out in Santa Clarita.  It's a pretty cool company that provides IT infrastructure to film and television productions.

I'm happy to say that I finally completed Everything Or Nothing, the latest PS2 Bond game.  I raked in my last platinum during my last break.  I don't what I'm going to do on my breaks now.

Last night we had Guacamole Wednesday at Clinton's.  It wasn't the same as Taco Tuesday somehow, but it will have to do.  Clinton has rehearsal on Tuesday nights for a pilot that he's been selected for that shoots in September.  Pretty cool, but it would be cooler if it weren't on Tuesday.

We saw Judge Reinhold at church on Sunday.  He's been in tons of stuff, but I remembered him only as the close talker on Seinfeld.  Coincidentally, that episode was on last night at Guacamole Wednesday.

Jamie and I (and Clinton) bought tickets for a matinee of Harry Potter tomorrow.  She's “super-excited”, while I am merely “looking forward to it”.  I watched Bjork's Dancer In The Darktoday.  It was quite sad, but somehow not depressing.  It was sad enough though that I was still sad an hour after watching it.  Jamie would probably have found it depressing as well, but the enormous personal sacrifice that Bjork's character willingly makes in spite of everything kept it from dipping to depressing for me.  The musical numbers also kept the spirits up.

On another note, Tony & Martel have decided to rent an apartment across the park from us in Playa Vista, so we'll be neighbors.  It's already turning into a little community for us.  Hopefully, we can get Clinton to get a place over there as well.

As I was checking off the categories, I saw 'Celebrity Sightings', and I thought of a couple that I may have forgotten to mention.  You know the dorky looking guy with the spiked red hair in the new Burger King commercials set in an office?  We saw him at Anthropologie.  OK, not really a celebrity, but still.  The other actually happened months ago now.  We were at church at Bel Air Pres, and we were exiting out to the courtyard after the service.  That's when we saw the Hoff.  That's right, David Hasselhoff, in all his Germans-love-him glory.

That's enough categories for one night.

Clinton and I went up to the ArcLight to catch a special AFI presentation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest last night.  It was quite pleasant.  The audience was full of film buffs.  The popcorn was free.  And the film we were watching was the producer's (Saul Zaentz) personal print.  Which made me think that I want to have my own personal print of a movie I produced some day.  After the movie was over, everyone headed to the restroom, where Clinton spotted Luke from The O.C.  Pretty exciting.

I ventured out today to try to track down some Big Red (soda) in order to make some awesome ice cream.  Jamie had already checked at Ralph's, so I went down to the Target to check it out.  They had nothing.  In the same shopping center, there's a store called BevMo that has Beverages and More!  While they did have a lot of exotic carbonated beverages, they had no Big Red.  They did have IBC Cream Soda, so I thought I'd give that a try.  Now I needed to get some sweetened condensed milk, so off to Ralph's I went.  I grabbed the Eagle Brand (which is what some people's rap is filled with), and got in line.  There at the check out counter about 4 people in front of me was none other than Julian Sark.  For you non-Alias fans, this means nothing to you.  However, for me, I would really have liked to talk to the guy.  I thought about doing the cell phone camera, but I didn't think I could get a good shot.  Usually, when I see celebrities, I think “That's cool.  There's so-and-so.”  This time, though, I think that I would have enjoyed engaging in conversation with him.  One, because Alias is one of my top shows.  Two, because he's just a supporting character, I feel like I could have a normal conversation with him without a bunch of people swarming.  And three, because it was in our neighborhood Ralph's, I felt like he was on my turf.

Off to Texas tomorrow!

I got an ice cream freezer for my birthday, and it got its first use at our place for Taco Tuesday.  I made vanilla ice cream, then added chopped up chocolate chip cookies to the mix during the last 5 minutes.  It was quite tasty.  The freezer is really cool, too, because no ice or rock salt is necessary.  You keep the freezer bowl in the freezer.  It has some sort of liquid in its lining that freezes.  Then, you put your ingredients in the bowl, and turn on the mixer.  Twenty minutes later, you've got cream.  I'm really looking forward to trying out my favorite homemade ice cream flavor: Big Red Peppermint.  I would have made it first, but we haven't found Big Red (the soda, not the gum) out here in California yet.  Boo.

In an unrelated story, we saw David Spade once again at The Grove last night.  This time we saw him at the theatre where we watched The Whole Ten Yards.  I didn't notice, but Jamie said that he was laughing really loudly and then left halfway through.  As for the movie, it wasn't as good as the first one, but it wasn't too bad.

I haven't been real motivated to blog.  Sorry.  I'm not sick anymore, which is good.  I have picked up working out again regularly, and my abs hate me for it.  Just one more workout, and I'll surpass Don's two week prediction.  A celebrity sighting that I forgot to mention happened last week.  Clinton and I were making some transactions at our local Bank of America, and who did we see at the teller window but Emilio Estevez!  To Clinton, he sounded exactly like Jason Jenkins.  I'm not sure what the best part was about his exchange with the teller.  I'll tell you the top two, and you can vote for you favorite.

A)  Teller: “I haven't seen you in anything lately.”

B)  Emilio: “Is a roll of quarters ten dollars?”

I imagine Emilio doing his laundry at the local laundromat.  Anywho, I'll try to be a better blogger.

It's a little bit blurry, because I was taking the pic on the sly.  I was at In-N-Out tonight, and in comes Dominic Monaghan (Merry from Lord of the Rings), and yes I did have to look his name up.  He was unaccompanied, and I was quite surprised to see that no one approached him.  Wish the pic was better quality.

On our way to Chipotle for lunch today with Clinton, we saw up ahead on Beverly Drive that some sort of film shoot was going on.  As we drove by, there was none other than John Travolta and James Woods sitting on two chairs side by side on the sidewalk.

I got the email about the Elliptical machine shipping yesterday.  It is scheduled to arrive on the Ides of March.  Should I beware?