Sophia organized a surprise birthday party for Eric this evening at Buca di Beppo’s in Palo Alto. Safe from the howling wind and the driving rain, Mike, Emile, Zhenya, Sophia, Benjamin, Rae, Mandy, Elliot, and I celebrated the newest entrant into the late twenties in grand style, downing plates of linguine, vegetarian pizzas, “porketarian” sausages, fried calamari, and 1.5 litres of Chianti.

The only thing that seems to stop me from updating this web site are power outages. We had a large one the other day from 10:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the morning of the next day. There’s a hum, an electrical one, that permeates through every house (unless you’re the Unabomber). When it’s gone, the sound is replaced by an eerie quiet sound, a feeling of peacefulness. To pass the time, one might read a book or clean out the closet instead of browsing the web, watching TV, or nuking some food in the microwave. Granted, power outages can be inconvenient, but one every now and then never hurt anyone or anything… so as long as you’ve invested in a good UPS!

And now for some pictures from Eric’s birthday party! Happy Birthday, Eric!

Yesterday, Eric hosted a concert by Vienna Teng for online journalists from the Rice Bowl Journals. There’s plenty of coverage of that event on Eric’s site and every attendant’s site, so I’ll just leave you with some pictures.