Last year's birthday journal article made reference to the fact that I was at work, furiously attempting to finish my thesis data code by the end of the year. It did not mention what I did once I left work, but I have a distinct memory that Dan and Broxton were over and that we spent a lot of time on the PS2. In fact, this seems to have been the case for the last few years.

Despite the fact that Broxton now lives in California and works for NASA Ames, and Dan lives near Seattle and works for Microsoft, they managed to be here for the big fiesta de la me. Dan and Layla drove down for the holidays to visit various friends and family, and I convinced them to come over last night. Broxton, in typical Mike form, just appeared randomly after about a year of being on the dark side of the moon. We spent the evening playing arcade games, Katamari, and dorking around with the cats. Fun was had by all and it was a nice chill birthday.

Some of the gift highlights include a binary LED clock, a down comforter, an origami book that shows you how to make scale model paper airplanes out of dollar bills ("Another way to throw your money away"), and a book called "How To: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, Fully Illustrated."