[29 Jul 2007|06:30pm] I realize that it's been an insanely long time since I've updated. Sorry about that. Things have been same ol' same ol' here on the West Coast. That's not to say I'm not having an amazing time, though. Today, however, something exciting did happen. I was just downtown on Figueroa Street downtown, where they're filming a new Will Smith movie called John Hancock. LAPD Bomb Squad. There are "bullet holes" all over this building. Apparently the scenes they were filming today involved a huge bank robbery, complete with explosions and gun shots. After a chase scene. After standing around the set for about twenty minutes, waiting for something to happen... Will Smith started walking toward the small crowd that formed. Everyone RUSHED to the front of the barricade where I was standing when he walked over. They all wanted autographs..... But what was I going to do with some squiggly line on a piece of paper? I opted to be bold and ask for a picture, which totally worked out for me. Enjoy your squiggly line, everyone else! :) He was incredibly nice. When I asked if he had time for a fast picture, he said (out of the corner of his mouth, in true Will Smith style) that there were a lot of people there that he didn't want to disappoint, so naturally I said, "Sure, I totally understand, thanks though." To which he said, "Aw, come on. Sure." and he took my camera and then snapped a picture. I was the only one that he took a picture with, and people were talking about it after the fact. :) I was giddy to be around all of the millions of dollars worth of movie equipment by itself, but the whole meeting Will Smith was pretty exciting also. :) Also, this morning at church, I met a group from Orange Beach. They were from the Christian Life Church, which is literally down the street from "The Beach House". Meeting them was a really cool thing, and getting to talk to the pastor about multimedia things was a really cool thing also. How random to be all the way in LA and meet someone from back home, from literally down the street, like that? Small world. Tomorrow, Megan and I are both off so we're taking surfing lessons down in Huntington Beach. I am SO excited about that. I'll be sure to let ya'll know how it turns out. :) PS- Also, I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last weekend. I had mixed emotions about it. 3 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[07 Jul 2007|11:46pm] I'm back in Los Angeles after an amazing weekend trip to Northern California. (I actually got back to the City on Monday evening, and have been here since.) We had a really awesome time, and it was really nice to see such a dramatic change of scenery. The environment around there is a lot like back home, so it was especially nice that it was familiar. Plus, I can now officially ad Oregon to my "List Of States That I Have Visited". This week was sort of odd, since the July 4th fell on a Wednesday, which left me with one half day and two days off in the middle of the week. It threw off my schedule just a little bit, but I'm not complaining. For the 4th, Megan and I went to Marina Del Rey to a park where hundreds of people were grilling and picnicking and then they had big fireworks over the water. It was pretty fun. Tomorrow is the premiere of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Oh, I am excited. I'll have some pictures up soon! I just wanted to post quickly and let everyone know that I'm still alive and well! 1 Comment || Leave a Comment.

[29 Jun 2007|09:47pm] So, I said that I would be updating more often this past week, but that didn't really happen. Sorry, loyal fan base. I will, however, take the time to do a short recap. Monday, Megan and I went to Hollywood for the premiere of License to Wed with Robin Williams, John Krasinski (from The Office) and Mandy Moore. Long story short, we had planned on just stopping by, taking some pictures at the red carpet, and then calling it a night. Instead, we ended up talking to some DJs from a local radio station who gave us tickets to the actual premiere. So we actually got to go into the screening of the movie and watch it with the people who are in it/made it. (Also, free popcorn and soda!) It was pretty sweet. We were sitting insanely close to Ben Stiller and his wife Christine Taylor. On Wednesday, there was a screening of the upcoming Hairspray movie for New Line employees and theatre exhibitors. Which meant I got to go, and got to take Megan as well. I enjoyed the movie. It's energetic and basically a fun, colorful musical. I feel like I did a ton of stuff this week (which I did, and stayed busy) but I guess the highlights were the movies. Well, that and the fact that I'm in San Francisco right now! Yeah, I left this morning from Los Angeles and arrived to Sacramento to meet Eric! We got a sweet PT Cruiser to rent for the weekend (lamest car ever, by the way) and headed to San Francisco. We're hanging here until Sunday, and then we're driving up to Etna, where JH Ranch is located, which is where Eric is at for the summer. We're living it up and soaking up the Nor Cal life for the weekend (without the wine) and visiting with Amanda and Brandon. I'll be back in SoCal by Monday though, so it's going to be a pretty short trip. Leave a Comment.

[24 Jun 2007|03:27pm] Okay, so here we go. A gigantic entry that I've been procrastinating for a while. Thursday, June 14 -- Melanie, Britney, and Jamie arrived in LA on Thursday afternoon. I went to LAX to pick them up after working at NLC, and we went for dinner at In N' Out. This was followed by a trip to Target for them to pick up some odds and ends and some food for the weekend. After we got home and get FIVE people situated in our small apartment, we went to bed pretty early. Friday, June 15 -- I was doing the internship thing at G4, so had to leave way earlier than any of them even wanted to think about waking up. They did, however, meet me for lunch across the street from my building. Megan came with them and was their escort/tour guide for LA's public transportation system. :) After lunch, they came to see the building I work in. Even though it looks like I'm about to start my first day at a new middle school, I'm actually going back to work after lunch. After I went back to work, they took the Red Line train up to Hollywood to do some sight seeing. They were in for a surprise, as the Daytime Emmy's were going on. They quite literally walked out of the subway stop and walked onto the red carpet. They saw Dr. Phil, Bob Barker, plus a ton of soap stars. I think they were most excited about Ellen being there though. Dr. Phil, probably getting ready to give out some random simile to a bystander in order to solve their life's problems. "See, what you're doin', is makin' a sand castle.. out of mashed potata's. And ya need to stop it." Bob Barker and his Barker Beauties. Ellen! I got back from work around the same time they got back from Hollywood, so we went to dinner at a Mexican placed downtown called Qdoba. Melanie and Britney were excited. After dinner, we went back to Hollywood and saw Ocean's 13 at the Chinese Theatre. I really enjoyed the movie. And it was neat seeing it, after I had just seen all of those people at the premiere just a week or so ago. Saturday, June 16th -- Saturday was to be our "Beverly Hills/Shopping Day". We went to the Beverly Center (where Megan and I saw Seth Green a few weeks ago) and ate lunch/ shopped. Britney, Megan, Jamie enjoying lunch. Melanie and myself doing the same. After the Beverly Center, we went to The Grove, which is basically just an outdoor mall with fancy stores. Famous people shop there all the time, from what I hear. The Grove. Fab Four in front of a TINY Beligio style water show they've got in a pond. We went in and re-lived our elementary school/middle school From the Grove, we went next door to the Farmer's Market, which is an amazing outdoor market place. You can find literally everything there. It's basically a huge, permanent, Farmers Market. Very cool. After we had our fill of that The Grove, we went driving around the mansions in Beverly Hills. Um, wow. That's really the only words to describe these gigantic houses. They're huge, and expensive, and frivolous, as is most of that area anyway. After the house gawking, we went to a little park in BH, and took some Fab Four pictures. Boring, normal picture pose. Slightly better. Getting a little more creative. Getting crazy. That's much more of a usual Fab Four picture. :) It took us a few tries to prefect it. :) From there, we walked to Rodeo Drive, where Jamie almost had a melt down. Her caption for this picture is "I hope heaven is a little something like this." After we had our fill of Rodeo Drive (which we all got bored with a lot faster than Jamie did, I think) we went back to Hollywood so I could show them the famous Hollywood sign, as they hadn't seen it yet. We ended up eating dinner at Hollywood and Highland at the California Pizza Kitchen. Then home, since we had a very long day. Sunday, June 17th -- Sunday was our "Beach Day". Firstly, we went to Venice Beach, which was a really cool place. They've got a huge outdoor marketplace with people selling everything from peanuts and kettle corn to homemade jewelry to t-shirts, kites, skateboards. Just about anything. We watched a basketball game for a little while. And Britney and Melanie got Henna tattoos in the marketplace. (They're very much fake, by the way.) From there, we went up the road a little bit to Santa Monica. We walked around the 3rd Street Promenade, where we looked around the shops and watched some of the street performers. This guy was walking on his hands and catching bowls on his head. From there, we went down the pier. Pier. Beach. And a billion people. Business as usual on the Santa Monica pier. Melanie, Britney, and Jamie decided that they wanted to ride the ferris wheel, and they took this picture of Megan and myself waiting. After they got off the wheel. </center> We ate dinner at a place called Rusty's on the pier, which was generic, touristy sea food. It wasn't bad, but then again, I'm incredibly spoiled when it comes to my sea food. :) Being goofy in the parking garage. Jamie's not very good at jumping in sync. :) After dinner, I took them to Westwood (where UCLA is) and we went to Diddy Riese's. It's a little desert place that has amazing ice cream and cookies. You can pick any two cookies plus any flavor of ice cream, and they'll make an ice cream sandwich for you. Um, yum. I showed them UCLA, and then we called it a night. We came home and went to bed incredibly early, because we were going to be in Burbank by 6am. Monday, June 18th -- This was the biggest, longest, and perhaps most fun day of them all. We got up at 4:00 am to start getting ready to leave by 5:15 to be in Burbank by 6:00. When we got to Burbank, we went to NBC to get in line for tickets to THE TONIGHT SHOW. We were 6th in line, and waited for two hours until they started passing out tickets at 8:00am. It was cold while we were waiting in line at 6:00am. This was the line by 7:30am. We finally got our tickets! Our camp site for two early morning hours. We left after we got our tickets and made a walking dash to an Exxon gas station to pick up some breakfasty items and then continued our walk to the Warner Brothers Studios. We signed up to take a tour of the studios, and it was pretty cool. I've been on a few studio tours before, so none of it was new to me, but the girls LOVED it, so that was awesome. Outside of the Warner Bros studios. ALSO! They had a ton of stuff from FRIENDS, Jamie and Melanie LOVE, so they were excited to see it. (They've got the entire set of Central Perk there, which we got to see and they almost had a stinkin' heart attack when we saw it.) For Britney, they had everything from the Gilmore Girls, which was cool. (I took plenty of pictures for Erin, since she likes GG so much.) The water tower that's at the beginning of every WB movie, ever. Annnnnnd, for ME, they had E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G from the HARRY POTTER MOVIES. I was like a kid in a candy store. Seriously. I was ridiculously giggly and giddy and reverted to acting like a 12 year old and explaining that "THIS was Snape's costume from the first movie when he blah blah.." to every item that they had in the Harry Potter Museum. FURTHERMORE, They had props from the 5th movie that hasn't even come out yet! ALSO, I got sorted! By the real Sorting Hat from the movies!! Naturally, I was Gryffindor. :) Jamie was a Hufflepuff, Britney a Ravenclaw, and Melanie got the short end of the stick and ended up getting Syltherin. Regrettably, because of copyright law, we couldn't take pictures of the HP stuff. :( The girls took a billion pictures of the ER set, Gilmore Girls, and Friends sets, but none of those pictures are particularly exciting. So, I'll skip posting them, since this post is gigantic anyway. After WB, it was time for lunch down the street at Taco Bell, and then going back to NBC to stand in line for The Tonight Show around 1:00p. Me and Melanie being ridiculous at lunch. Standing in line for Leno. (I'm not doing a very good job of looking at the camera because they people that were in line around us were being silly. Roommates! This picture explains a lot about us. :) We're goofy, and catch each other off guard with our randomness. Around 3:00p, they started letting people in. We ended up being somewhere around the 245th people that they let in. The studio holds about 300, so that was cutting it close. After we got through security, we we to the pages, where they walk you to your seats. The pages looked at the 5 of us for a few seconds and said, "Hmm. Would you guys mind being split up?" Of course we knew this meant something good, so we said "of course not." They ended up taking us to the FRONT ROWS of the chairs that sit on the floor, right in front of Jay Leno when he does his monologue. Britney was on the 1st row, I was on the 2nd, and Megan, Jamie, and Melanie were on the 3rd. When Leno came out, we all got to run up to the stage and shake his hand/give him high fives, so that was pretty cool. If you know where to look for us on the June 18th show, you can see us when the show starts. :) I've got a recording of the show, so hopefully soon I can take some screen captures from it and show you all. Robin Williams was one of the guests, along with some girl comedian who was really rude and not funny. Big and Rich were the musical guests, and they performed outside, so we got to see them perform three songs and they sounded awesome. Yes, they played "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy". After the show, we left Burbank and headed back downtown. First though, we stopped at Universal Studios to eat at the Universal City Walk, which is basically another outdoor shopping mall right outside of the studio. We ate at Hard Rock Cafe, and then headed home. Universal Studios. Tuesday, June 19th -- They got up and packed, and I got up and got ready for work at NLC. I took them to the airport and saw them off, and then headed to the Sunset Strip for another day at the internship. Basically, we had an amazing weekend. We saw and did an amazing amount of things for a single weekend. It was awesome to have them come visit. We took literally 598 pictures of the weekend!! I could update with a billion more, but I think I hit the high points with what I posted. :) But now, Megan and I have been enjoying the fact that our apartment is less crowded than it was. :) I'm doing the internship thing, which is still going really well. I work with some really cool people, and it's just a neat experience all around. Megan has been working as an extra for some TV shows (Judge Judy, and a new reality show), and is starting a new job at a smoothie shop downtown starting this week. It's business as usual on the West Coast. I'll be updating much more frequently from now on, in order to avoid posts that are insanely too long, much like this one. 4 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[21 Jun 2007|01:06am] A street in Beverly Hills. I promise, promise, promise I'll be making an update soon. I had a long, amazing weekend with Melanie, Jamie, and Britney (or The Fab Four, as we are called in Florence), which I'll be updating about within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, it's the internship grindstone for me. 2 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[18 Jun 2007|11:26am] So, I realize it's been a while since I last updated everyone on what was going on in Los Angeles. Sorry about that. I haven't forgotten! I promise. I've just been staying really busy. Melanie, Britney and Jamie all got here on Thursday evening. So after a [not-so] quick trip to LAX to pick them up, we've been making the most of LA and letting them see the West Coast sights. Expect a more detailed update [with pictures!] soon. Today, we're going to go to the beaches (Venice and Santa Monica). Tomorrow, we're going to try getting tickets to The Tonight Show and then take a studio tour at Warner Brothers. They're pretty excited about seeing the Friends set. Leave a Comment.

[11 Jun 2007|12:02pm] This is why I like public transportation so much. This is non-rush hour traffic on the 110 Freeway. And also, because I know some people had been wanting to see it... Here are some videos that I did for my Film Production II class at UNA this past spring semester. The first, is a stop-motion piece featuring Jones Soda. I also edited 3 songs together to make the sound work for me. Overall, I'd say 8 or 9 hours went into this project, from beginning to end. This second one is a little longer, but is a video edit of footage from the beach and boardwalk at Santa Monica edited to "Summersong" by The Decemberists. It's a bit longer, running about 3:41. (Thanks to Eric for the footage, by the way.) Give me some feedback. I'm (almost) always looking for criticism. :) 2 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[10 Jun 2007|09:37pm] I want to start off saying thanks to everyone for the comments. It's encouraging to hear from everyone! It really helps me also, if you sign your name to the comment, just so I can keep up with it all. :) Well, Megan got here on Thursday night. After some delays with her flight out of Birmingham, she finally made it. Just as an aside, LAX is a very, very stressful place. I've spent my share of time there (a whopping 23.5 hours in one day circa March 2006, in fact) and can safely say it is an incredibly stressful place to try to pick someone up. Anyway, we tried to find a Wal-Mart for her to pick up some things that she didn't quite have room for, only to discover that the Wal-Mart actually closed. I haven't seen a Wal-Mart that closed in... well, a really long time. We came back to The Flat empty handed, but in high spirits, because a)We are, after all, living in Los Angeles, and B) because we knew Friday was going to be a long day. On Friday, Megan had an job interview at a summer sports camp. She's hoping to get a job as a counselor there, so fingers crossed for that one. I had day two over at G4, which went well, despite the fact that I spent the afternoon playing and capturing a really, really bad game for the show. To balance out the terribly game I played, I got to leave an hour early. I met Megan, and she and I went to Burbank to Ikea and Bed Bath & Beyond to furnish her side of the apartment. But not before we ate dinner at In N' Out. Which is a delicious burger place that we both love. Saturday we slept in a little bit, since we both had to be out the door by 8:00am to catch our buses on Friday morning. We looked on craigslist.org for various items, and Megan found a pretty awesome futon to serve as her bed, and I found a practically new 20 inch television for cheap cheap. Which was good news, because I had gone sort of a long time without a television. We went to retrieve said items, and that evening we went to Beverly Hills to make another trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond, where we had our first celebrity sighting! We totally saw Seth Green shopping with his girlfriend. They were picking out pillows. Just so you can put a face with the name. No, I didn't take this picture. He looked like he was preoccupied with his pillow selection process, so we didn't say anything/try to go all paparazzi on him and take a candid picture. It was random to be shopping along side Seth Green though. Last night, went went to Trader Joe's, which is a really neat chain of grocery stores here on the West Coast. We stocked up on slightly over-priced, but delicious organic foods. Today, Sunday, we went to Mosaic. Mosaic is a church community that meets at four different "campuses" around SoCal, two meetings of which are held in Downtown at the Mayan Theater. I had gone a couple of times last summer, so it was neat to be back. The main speaker is Erwin McManus, who has written a few books and travels as a speaker around the world. Then, tonight, I made use of our apartment's fitness center and tackled the ol' treadmill. It's neat to be jogging along while watching cars zip down the freeaway and see gigantic skyscrapers out of the window. This is the rooftop of my apartment, obviously at nighttime. We're right beside the 110 Freeway in Downtown. I'll be starting my other internship at New Line Cinema on Tuesday! I'm excited, and I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes! 6 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[07 Jun 2007|10:54am] It's been another amazing day on the West Coast. On Monday, I took the better part of the afternoon and went on what turned out to be an 8.5 mile bicycle ride through what's known as "Mid-Wilshire". Wilshire is one of the roads that runs all the way from the coast (Santa Monica) through out the entire city, running east and west. It's also where the Miracle Mile, which was my destination for the bike ride, since that's where one of my internships is at. I wanted to make sure I knew where the place actually was, so I wouldn't get lost on my first day... But we'll get to that in a moment. Yesterday, I took the train up to Hollywood before lunch to see George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt put their hands and feet in cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The pictures that I posted yesterday are from that event. I came back for lunch, and then went back to Hollywood via train for the actual premiere of the movie, where the entire cast and crew shows up on the red carpet in their fancy limousines and various other expensive vehicles. The amount of hoopla over these people doing something as trivial as walking into a movie theatre was almost mind-boggling. There were a group of women who had literally brought camping chairs, coolers, lunch and basically survival gear with them and set up to wait for hours so that they would have a spot up front. (I got there around 3:30, and still got up front.) Another girl who was standing near by had been there since 9:00 that morning. That's either dedication, or insanity. I did get some decent pictures though. George Clooney as the first to arrive. He was really nice to everyone, and walked up and down the entire line of people, which, trust me, was a HUGE line of people. Matt Damon was also amazingly nice. He is a gigantic Red Sox fan. As he was walking in front of me, I happened to yell "Go Sox!", to which he responded with "Yeah! ..... Who said that?" So naturally, I said, "Oh, that was me" and grinned and gave a thumbs up. He smiled back and said "Right on!", and was really sweet to everyone. This one is of Eddie Izzard. He's a hysterical comedian from England who has been around for a long while, and has recently been in a lot of movies. He's currently co-starring with Minnnie Driver in show that airs on FX called "The Riches". The guy on stage with the blue suit is Bearnie Mac, another terribly funny comedian. And finally, a wide shot of the crowd, as I was leaving. I was literally in the middle of all of that. I didn't stay for all of the arrivals, since I wanted to make sure that I got back home before it was dark, since I was taking the train. That, plus I was exhausted from fighting the crowd and standing for quite a long time. I did see a few more people arrive though, like Lee Majors, Andy Garcia, and some of the other "smaller" names. (Honestly, I'm not even sure that half of the cast was there by the time that I left.) Then today, was my first day interning at G4 Media, for one of their original programs that they air, called "X-Play", where they review the latest video games, with some wacky, Saturday Night Live/Conan O'Brien type comedy sketches thrown in the mix. (G4 is a cable network that focuses on technology and media, that's now in 60 million homes across the US and Canada!) Everything went amazingly well, and I met a lot of people. (Including one of the the 2 hosts of the show within 15 minutes of being there.) It's a really neat atmosphere with some cool stuff going on. G4 is actually owned by Comcast, which also owns all of the E! Networks. Thus, I'm working in the same building as E!, and on the same floor as the Style Network. There are quite a few big name media companies all right there within the same few blocks (Variety Magazine, Virgin, CBS, just to name a few), so there's a lot of activity going on. Today, I took the bus to and from my internship. I'm not sure why I feel as though this is significant, but I thought it was fun. By using public transit, I'm helping the environment, seeing new places and people and (mostly) avoiding the stress of driving/finding and paying for parking in the city. :) I'm doing a lot of walking also, which is good too. There are shopping malls, a post office, food places, a franchise drug store... basically anything I could need only a few blocks away. My location is terribly convenient. Tomorrow, I'm going to make use of the convenient location and run errands before heading to LAX to pick up Megan in the afternoon. Then Friday, it's back to the internship grindstone at G4. :) 4 Comments || Leave a Comment.

Star Struck. [05 Jun 2007|03:15pm] George Clooney, anyone? Why yes, that is Matt Damon. My favorite Red Sox fan! But wait, there's more! Why, yes. That IS Brad Pitt. The. Brad. Pitt. Oh how I wish I had been across the street. ;) These three guys got their hands and feet printed in cement in front of Grumman's Chinese Theatre over in Hollywood this morning. Tonight, they're premiering Ocean's 13 at the same place. Which is where I'm heading to right now. I'll update later tonight about how hanging out on the red carpet goes (and hopefully will have even more amazing pictures!) 6 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[03 Jun 2007|08:48pm] Life in Los Angeles is treating me exceptionally well. I'll catch you all up the the present. The Road Trip Sunday, May 27 -- Sunday, departure day, came sooner than I think anyone really expected. Everything was in order and ready to go, though. Erin and I ended up leaving a few hours later than we had planned to, due to some technical difficulties with the car. The problems were solved, however, and we set off. Due to our late start and the fact that we were pretty dang exhausted, we opted to call it a day when we reached Conway, Arkansas (which is just west of Little Rock.) We found a nice hotel and got dinner and looked around at the local shopping mall, before heading back to the hotel to call it an evening. Monday, May 28 -- This was the big, long, exhausting day of driving. We drove from Arkansas all the way to New Mexico. Oklahoma is a very wide state and seems to last forever, just for future reference. Oklahoma rest stop and welcome center. Texas was so flat that it was almost reason enough to deny modern science and go back to the theory that the would must be flat. It was beautiful though, as you could see plains for miles and miles. View from the Texas welcome center. We arrived that night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was our final destination for that day. We had been on the road for almost 12 and a half hours, so we treated ourselves to a dinner at Waffle House to celebrate our day's drive. :) Tuesday, May 29 -- We woke up excited, because we knew we would be in Las Vegas by the end of the day. It was along, mostly boring drive. We passed through Arizona, where we decided to pay tribute to The Eagles and stop in Winslow, AZ for lunch. Sadly, due to massive amounts of road work, there was no corner to be found to stand on, but just outside of the McDonald's where we ate lunch worked fine too. "Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona/Such a fine sight to see...." That afternoon, we finally made it through the vast sandy land that is Arizona/southern Nevada to Las Vegas! We had to stop at the Hoover Dam first though. We decided to stay at The Stratosphere, which was a cool place. As you know, everything in Vegas has to have a gimmick, and theirs is the fact that it's the tallest building West of the Mississippi. We ate at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, which was a trip. It's a loud, crazy atmosphere where people walk around on stilts dressed like pirates and boat captains. It was neat, though somewhat strange to know that a guy from Alabama was responsible for such a huge franchise. Anyway, we went walking around to see the various sights. The Bellagio water show was AMAZING. We watched it at least five times. We went down to New York, New York which was very impressive, and we rode the roller coaster there. It was really awesome to see Las Vegas from 1,447 feet in the air, while traveling 67 miles per hour. :) Viva Las Vegas! We went back to the room, exhausted from driving and walking and the overwhelming atmosphere that is Vegas. The next day, we ate brunch in a diner at the Stratosphere where a waiter who called himself "Hawaiian Dave" sang "Beauty School Dropout". I asked him for some surfing tips and tricks, just in case I decided to give that a go this summer. After all, I am in California! Wednesday, May 30 -- We left Vegas and finished up the drive to Los Angeles. We arrived at my apartment, The Flat, and finished up the paperwork to make the apartment mine for the summer. As you can see from this picture of the lobby, it's a chic, Urban style place that's trying to be like the sleek New York loft style. It's a pretty cool place. We walked a couple of blocks down to a shopping center called 7th + Fig and picked up some food from California Pizza Kitchen (yum) to bring back for dinner. We aired up the air mattresses and tried to sleep off some of the road fatigue. Thursday, May 31 -- Erin and I took the train up to Hollywood and I showed her around. We saw the Walk of Fame, Hollywood and Highland Center, the Kodak Theater, and Grumman's Chinese Theater. We ate lunch at this amazing organic Mexican place called Sharky's, which I had been looking forward to since my last trip to LA the previous August. :) That afternoon we went to Ikea. Let me take a minute and explain Ikea. IT. IS. AMAZING. Seriously. Imagine something, ANYTHING, that could possible go in a house. Ikea has it. And Ikea has a cooler, sleeker, more captivating design for it. Best of all -- it's AMAZINGLY cheap. We spent a long time there, looking around and picking out furniture for our future houses. :) We eventually came back to reality and ended up getting some odds and ends for the apartment. We went to Target to pick up a few more essential goods (toaster over, etc), and then home to go through our loot and set up the apartment. Friday, June 1 -- After a lunch in the apartment, Erin and I went to Santa Monica, which is one of my favorite places in Southern California. We went around to the shops on the Third Street Promenade, which is always fun. We saw a show from MTV called "NEXT" shooting something, which is far less interesting than it sounds. We fought traffic back downtown, and spent the night decorating and painting things for the apartment. It's looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. :) Saturday, June 2 -- Erin's flight left out of Ontario, CA around noon, so we had an early morning of getting ready to make it to the airport on time. We were successful, and she made it back to Alabama safe and sound. I'm so so so glad that she got to come out here with me. We've been friends literally since Kindergarten, and now we're roommates in College. She and I have been through every single journey of life together, so it was really fitting that she went through this huge transition/trip with me. So, there you have it. A gigantic entry, filling you in on what's been going on. I've just been enjoying my time in Los Angeles and getting used to the big city life. I'm doing exceptionally well, and I'm so excited to be here doing some amazing things. This is one of the biggest, most incredible opportunities and I'm so blessed and thankful to have such amazing family and friends in my life that are making it happen and supporting me throughout this. I start my first internship on Wednesday! I'm so excited about it, though also a bit nervous. It's not just any day that you start working for a major television network. I'm going to be updating more regularly from here on out -- I just needed to take some time to get acclimated to LA. :) 1 Comment || Leave a Comment.

Arrival. [31 May 2007|03:00pm] I just wanted to quickly let everyone know that I'm here, safe and sound, in Los Angeles. The drive was long, but Erin and I finally arrived yesterday evening. I'll update later with more details of the road trip, and LA thus far. For now, we're heading to Ikea and Target to buy crucial apartment supplies. 2 Comments || Leave a Comment.

[26 May 2007|01:48pm] Well, here we go. One day away from a trip across the country. Tomorrow, Erin and I start our trek to California. Los Angeles, to be exact, where I'll call "home" for the next three months. This is basically a test post, which accounts for the lack of substance in this particular post. Leave a Comment.

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