Last night, we went out to Venice to James Beach (a restaurant) for Tony's birthday.  Jamie had the lobster tacos.  I had the bacon cheeseburger.  Mark, you would have been proud.  Just about everybody there was a 'couple'.  Gar and Rebecca, from the Lost in Translation night, were there.  Terence and Elise were there, and they sat across from us, so they were our conversationalists for the most part for the evening.  If I haven't mentioned Terence before, now's a good time to give a little background. 

I first heard about Terence through working on Matt Diffee's short film Walk.  Terence had been the original producer for Walk but had moved to LA, and so he was then only marginally involved.  Terence is also involved with Scott Teems on the short film The Locusts Have No King, which I worked on while still in New York.  Back in April, when Jamie and I were just visiting, we met with Terence, because we were going to be working on this film together.  Then, we moved out here.  So now, the Terence context is at church at Pacific Crossroads.  Also, his goals are very similar to mine producing-wise.  Chances are good that we'll be working together on something in the near future.  Today, Terence and I are going to hang out on the set of Arrested Development, the show that Tony (and Liza) are in.

Well, first let's back up and do Saturday.  Jamie was working last night, so I had to go by myself to have dinner with some friends (Susan, Tony, Martel, Tricia, and Tom) at the house at which Susan is housesitting.  The house is somewhere on the other side of Bel-Air.  I know this because I had never driven near Bel-Air, and well, la-de-da.  Anyway, the house belongs to Michael Chapman, a cinematographer with films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Kindergarten Cop to his credit, and Amy Holden Jones, a screenwriter with films such as Maid To Order, Indecent Proposal, and the Beethoven franchise to hers.  I'm not sure how she knows these people, but the house was really cool, and we had a fun time.  Well, as much fun as could be had without Jamie being there.

Today, we went back to Pacific Crossroads Presbyterian.  The 'lead worshiper' that wasn't there last time was there today, and the music was a little bit better than last time.  There was also a different preacher, who was completely different, but still good.  The best part about today was that Tony brought his love interest from his show to church today.  Since he brought her to church, I figure it's not a big secret that she's going to be on the show or anything.  So, we met Liza Minnelli today.

Hey there.  Hopefully, my day off yesterday gave everybody the chance to catch up on my blog.  Wednesday night, Jamie and I drove down to her parents house where we get to hang out until Saturday morning.  I'm still pretty busy working, even from here.  I got a call today from the sales guy at 24 Hour Fitness.  He wanted to let me know that that they're anniversary is coming up, and they're going to be having a some cRaZy deals!  We'll see.

We had dinner at Clinton and Doug's tonight.  Clinton made tacos.  A tradition he carried over from college called 'Taco Tuesday.'  After dinner, we all went to the ArcLight, and met up with Tony and Martel and their friends Gar and Rebecca.  Yes, Gar.  And yes, Rebecca.  Anyway, we went to see 'Lost In Translation'.  I have to admit I was a little disappointed, but I probably was expecting too much.  I'm going to give it some more thought before I review it here.  Tony also told us about his love interest on his upcoming Fox show 'Arrested Development'.  It's pretty funny, but I'm not going to reveal it here unless Tony gives me the OK.  Hopefully, we're going to get to visit him on set early next week.  After the movie, we went to Mel's Diner, and I got the trusty root beer float.  It was just like having breakfast at Magnolia's all over again.

OK, where was I?  We went back to my sister's house after Freaky Friday.  Jamie and Lauren hung out by the pool, while Luke and I threw the frisbee around the front yard.  My parents came over for the family dinner to celebrate Lauren's birthday.  After dinner, Luke wandered across to a friend's yard to play.  He was climbing over a wooden fence, when all of a sudden, the top portion of the plank that he was leaning on snapped, and he fell through the fence to the ground below.  He was in a lot of pain, so after Grace doped him up, Steve took him up to the emergency room.  I went up to bring them some snacks about an hour later.  Luke was in much better spirits.  Turns out he broke his collarbone.  He has to wear what looks like a backpack without the pack.  It actually doesn't look that uncomfortable.

The next day, we got up early to say goodbye to Lauren, who had to go to school unlike her injured brother.  About lunchtime, we headed down to Austin to connect with Mark.  We had lunch at this gigantic Schlotzcky's that had a really weird menu.  It was good, though.  Then, we dropped Jamie off at the Arboretum, and Mark and I went to Fry's.  That night, Mark, Becky, B-dub, Ben and I all met up at P.F. Chang's downtown for dinner and drinks.  It was all quite tasty.  I tried to talk all of them into moving out to southern California.

After dinner, we went to the Wilson's house to spend the night.  We stayed up for a while talking to B-dub and Jan, trying to talk them into moving out here.  We got to see pictures and video from the wedding.  The next morning, B-dub, Mark and I met for breakfast at Magnolia's to 'talk business'.  They had breakfast food; I had a root beer float.  Am I leaving anything out?

Jamie and I got on the plane around noon after eating Saltlick at the airport.  While Jamie did spot a suspicious person, he didn't try to blow up our plane.  Whew.  We got back just in time to drive from the airport to Jamie's work.  That's right, she had to work the day she got back.  Poor girl.  I came home and did laundry and got the place liveable again.  Thus, endeth our vacationeth.

When it comes to celebrity sightings, we hit the mother lode last night.  Dave, Toni, and the band were all back in town yesterday to do some relaxing L.A. style.  We met them up at Trader Vic's, which is at the Beverly Hilton, which is where they always park their bus.  First of all, Zach, the drummer from Jimmy Eat World joins us at our table, which is pretty cool.  My opinion: Blair Browning = Zach Lind.  Next thing I know, Jamie is punching my leg under the table but then not looking at me when I turn to her.  She's looking at Dave, who is sitting across from pointing behind me with his mouth wide open.  So, I turn around, and it's none other than Warren Beatty.  He gets a table around the corner.  Then, after some time passes, a group comes out of the back room.  This group stops to talk to Warren Beatty.  In this group are Martin Short, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson.  Something big was going down at Trader Vic's last night.

On Tuesday, we slept in and then headed down to Temple for lunch with my folks at El Chico.  My mom was full of stories from her recent Canada trip.  After lunch, we went next door to PDI, my old summer workplace.  We talked to Heath Robinson and Michael Cooper for a while.  Then, we went to Belton to my sister's house, where we arrived in time to take a nap.  We ended up not taking much of a nap as Luke and Lauren arrived home before long.  We all went to Lauren's soccer game, which was a lot of fun.  Lauren played goalie in the second half, and she really made some incredible saves.  Luke spent most of the game jumping or crawling on me.  After the game, we got burgers back at the house, and then Jamie and I went over to Heath & Courtney's house for a little while.  We had a nice chat out on the front porch until Jamie pointed to a HUGE spider that was on the pillar right next to me.  I'm pretty sure this wasn't a tarantula, but it was just as big.  I quickly removed myself from that situation.  Heath tried to kill it with his shoe, but only managed in knocking off one of its huge legs.  Its spider buddies probably will call it "Seven Legs" or "South-Easty".

The next day was for us to spend with the kids, and spend it with them we did.  We got up early (for us) and took the kids to IHOP for a brunch.  Then, we headed to the mall to see when Freaky Friday was playing.  We had a couple hours to kill, so we went over to Tilt and played a bunch of video games.  I'm not sure why Tilt is even open during the day on a school day, but at least we had the place to ourselves.  The kids both traded in their tickets and got tons of little toys and trinkets.  Next we headed over to Petco where the kids could look at the animals.  Luke spotted one of the parrots out of its cage.  Fortunately it was doubly contained by the bird room.  Lauren noticed that only 4 out of the 5 hamsters in the hamster cage were actually alive.  It was pretty gross.  Apparently, hamsters are cannibals.  Movie time.  Freaky Friday was bearable.  The new theater in Temple was quite an improvement over the old ones.  Luke didn't care too much for the sitting still that is typically associated with movie-going, but fortunately there were only two other people in the theater, and they weren't anywhere near us.  All of this, and it's now only 1:45 pm.

Come Monday, it was time to visit a few people on campus.  I went by Casey Computer Center, where I talked to Lynne, Lonnie, Mary, and Mike Pond.  Unfortunately, Larry was out, so I didn't get a chance to have speaks with him.  I also got to visit with Daniel Eady over in Pat Neff, where he has moved out of the closet and into a swanky new office.  He was able to give me some more detail about the brouhaha that has been Baylor for the last several months.  Hopefully, everything will start settling down there now.  I also found Reagan Ramsower with a little time to chat, which was lucky and enjoyable.

Lunch was held at Ninfa's, and what a wonderful occasion it was.  I got chicken fajita queso and a Santa Cruz #2.  Man, I miss that place.  In case you hadn't noticed, much of our vacation was planned around eating at particular places.

After lunch, we went to the church to help prepare for the DCB CD release party.  Dave, however, was not there.  While playing at chapel that morning, which I also went to and forgot to mention before, his heart started doing some weird stuff.  So, he spent most of that day in the hospital getting tested and fixed.  Turns out he was "in afib", and they got him patched back up ("fib"?) about 30 minutes before the show was about to start.  Like a true rock star, he made it to the show, and it started on time.  The place was packed out.  I hear that there were about 1200 people in there.  Before the show started, though, we had dinner with B-dub & Jan & Ben Burch at Rudy's  BBQ.  At the show, I just hung in there for a couple songs, and then went to the backside to hang with Kyle and the Perkins's's's.  I knew that I would be seeing the concert in Hollywood on Saturday, so better to hang with friends that I wouldn't get to see otherwise.  Dave made it through the show, and was signing autographs afterwards.  I remember thinking that if I were him, I would be signing the CDs with "I should be in the hospital right now, but instead I'm standing here writing my name on your CD.  Dave Crowder."

Come to think of it, this was the night we went to Crickets...I think.

I'm trying to put a little time between these entries, so that you can get caught up, but I'm still more than a week behind, and I want to get to the current stuff, so I'm cranking it out.

After the Elite on Saturday, we went up to the church where Jamie helped stuff DCB pre-ordered CDs.  Once that was done we headed up to Crickets for some Guinness and apple pie.  The waitress was terrible.  Our chips and queso came AFTER our apple pie.  Pathetic.  By the way, the night before and this night Ben and I played a little foosball before bedtime.

Sunday we got to go to ubc for church.  We sat on the front row, which was quite a change for me.  Dave was right there in front of me; it was a little awkward.  Kyle preached a great sermon about emotions and transformation, though his incredible hulk bit could have used some sprucing up or trimming down.  After church, we all went to Chili's Too again.  I realize that there is nothing so special about Chili's Too that we would eat there twice on one vacation, but we didn't pick the place, and the company (aka fellowship) was more important.

After lunch, Jamie and I jumped in the Gran Dam, and headed up to Dallas to visit our friends Tawny and Cooper.  We met at their apartment.  They recently got a new dog, which I'm sure Jamie will tell you about.  Tawny's sister and sister's boyfriend were there as well.  It turns out that they live just about 5 blocks north of us here in Hollywood.  Craziness!  The boyfriend, Dan, works in production, and I might get to be involved with a short film he's shooting through the LA film school.  I spent the next couple of hours trying to get Tawny and Cooper to move out here.  I'm hoping they'll be here by my birthday.  We went to dinner at a really trendy cool place called Nikita.  If you are in the Dallas area and like trendy, go.  Back to Waco, I played some foosball before bed.

Saturday, we slept in.  We had lunch at the new Chili's Too located in the new parking garage on the Baylor campus.  It's pretty cool.  You order at the register, then they bring it to your table.  I just hope that they keep that place up.  After lunch, we met up with Ben and Jamie and Jamie's family who were meeting with a builder to discuss the construction of a new apartment building.  We went with them to another apartment complex that the builder had built.  The places were pretty cool, much too cool for a college student to have.  But in time, I guess they'll just become another 'The Centre".  We drove around campus to see the new buildings, and I noticed that Mark Twain is now gone.  Mark Twain, the apartment complex that we lived in our junior year.  I've known about the other Mark Twain being gone for some time now.  We met up with Ben & Jamie's family for dinner at the new Elite Circle Grill.  After years of remodeling, they're back in business.  It's quite a change, from a 50's diner style to an art deco style.  Though the waitress was not so great, the food was.  No, they do not still have those rolls, but they do have a pretty good bread instead.  More later...

While there was a part of me that wanted to blog while we were on our vacation, I knew that if I were to sit at a computer for too long, I would start working, which would defeat the whole purpose of being on vacation.  That's the downside to telecommuting.  Even though you are travelling around the country, the Internet makes your work follow you.  But on to bringing you up to speed.  I'll try to go in chronological order, but I make no promises.

We arrived in Austin last Friday around 2:00 pm.  For once, Jamie didn't find anybody on the plane of whom to be suspicious.  Unfortunately, there was a snorer on the row behind us.  It wasn't just a regular, constant snore.  I think the guy was dreaming about being Seabiscuit because of the sporadic sounds coming from behind us.  He was asleep before we even left the gate.  His wife did nothing to stop him.  When we arrived, we didn't have to go through baggage claim, as this was our first attempt at carrying our luggage on the plane, instead of checking it.  Pretty sweet.  We picked up our Pontiac Grand Am that had 63 miles on it, and headed up to Waco.  We stayed with Ben and Jamie Dudley.  That night we went to Baja Burrito, I think it's called.  It's a Freebird's ripoff in the old Cadillac Jack's building downtown Waco.  It was pretty good, but I would rate Chipotle better.

After dinner, we went up to ubc to get a tour of all the new stuff.  The floors are now all stained concrete, and the sanctuary now looks like a finished room.  The pews are gone and the chairs have come.  The upstairs has exploded since I was there.  The amount of equipment up there has easily doubled in size.  They've got a cool new lighting system and a video-editing station up there, plus they've got wireless internet kicking through the building.  This blog may already be getting too long for some of you, so I'll break it up a little bit.

Jamie and I fly out this morning (Friday) to go to Texas. So, naturally, I went online to print out our boarding passes the night before, which in a way it still it, as it's just after midnight. Anywho, I printed out my boarding pass no problem. Then I logged into Jamie's account to print hers out. Much to my chagrin, her reservation was in there, but it was CANCELED! So, I ended up spending 30-45 minutes talking to three different people at the airline. They were all courteous, but the first two didn't have any power to do anything. Eventually I got to a supervisor, who, upon hearing my situation reinstated Jamie's ticket at the previous fare. Now, all we have to do is have them reassign my seat next to her in the morning, and we're on our way. Thank goodness for online check-in. Otherwise, I would have been stuck at the counter trying to resolve this an hour before departure. Texans, I'll see you soon.