It's a lovely day in Los Angeles.  Woke up this morning to find that my horse won a tournament last night while I was watching television as my girlfriend played with my hair.  Fantastic icing on the cake of a great weekend.  I spent about an hour working online at UB, small winner, and spent a lot of hours in front of a kick ass Weber grill.  At Garth Brooks' beach house.  Generally barefoot and shirtless sipping a cocktail.  It was an okay weekend.  

Turns out that Karri has known Garth and Trisha for a while.  She has a really cute picture with Garth on her bookshelf in her home office.  It's one of the pictures that Garth throws in the fire in his music video for "More Than a Memory."  He needed a girl for the video, she became that girl.  Lol so surreal but neat for this kid who has lived in the shadow of Hollywood most of his young life and remained completely oblivious to it.  Somehow or another she helped them pick out the house and trades keeping it awesome for using it whenever she wants while they're away.  If they're anything like she describes them, which I buy based on her personality and character, then they're amazing people.  

I've learned over the last couple of years on the charity poker circuit the similarity of personalities that merge when poker people and clebrities get together.  Intelligent, personable people who generally want to do things their way.  The similarities between the two professions is quite remarkable, all the way down to the swings and emotions involved in the work.  Schedules that range from sixteen hour days to sixteen days of nothing, liberal travel to lounging barefoot, general disdain for the dollars and appreciation for living well.  Poker has certainly seeped into the entertainment industry in the last seven years, really becoming it's own facet thanks to WPT and ESPN, and actors have always had a place in the gambling world.  I never expected to find myself dating one though, and as wide eyed as she was in the wilderness is how I feel sitting on this couch in Hollywoodland.  

She loves Jesus too.  Our stories on that front are very similar, hers going back to Oral Robert's University, mine going back to working in the church, both of us having a desire for communion with a God that we know and love, lost in a religious church that is more business than temple, struggling to figure out how to make it all work with our careers.  It's been a long time since I've prayed with a girl, or read the Bible with one, and it feels really good to do so.  

I wrote all that while she was getting ready for an audition for a small role on "Modern Family."  It was a neat process for me to see on the real end, not something inside of the tournament room at the Bike.  We drove onto the Fox studios in Century City, parked, walked across the place between stages 6 and 8, signed in, chatted with the casting assistant who she plays poker with, and then waited a few minutes.  There were three others who they zipped through, she spent less than two minutes in the casting director's office, and we were done.  Lunch, home, and I packed up and took off heading back to Vegas.  Ten minutes into the drive she calls to tell me that she's gotten a callback and has the next step tomorrow, basically where she comes back to audition for the directors, writers, editors, etc.  Hooooray atta girl!  

Hit enough traffic to end up driving past my mother as she is getting off work, same with a childhood friend of mine that I haven't hung out with since junior year of high school.  We're going to do some dinner and then I intend on continuing the trek across the desert, chasing the remnants of summer before it's all gone South.

Peace and good luck,

Devo