my 27th

From Tom:

Happy Birthday!! Your brother sends his love from afar.

By `your brother`, I mean me. Unless, of course, I was really picked up out of a trashcan. Oh horrors!

Hee hee. Tom knows I like inside jokes, so he has jam-packed them. When I was 10 and he was 3, I liked to make fun that we found him as a baby in a trash can, hence the trashcan allusion. :(

The "Oh horrors!" is from when we played the video game Pikmin in 2002, and I accidentally killed a third of our pikmin population. Pikmin has a video game diary. That day's auto-generated entry read, "Oh horrors!", and Tom giggled and giggled in delight.



I have 3 birthday resolutions this year (in the same vein as New Year's Resolutions):

1. Listen to people intently, without interrupting. Pay attention even when tempted by distracting thoughts.
   
2. Be punctual.
   
3. Sleep enough.
   

I decided this year not to have a big hullabaloo, and instead do a small, intimate, lovely dinner. We went to 71 Saint Peter:



Mingjing came over beforehand and brought me 3 presents. One of them was ... gummies!!



Thank you Mingjing! You know me so well!

Ode to Mingjing

O Mingjing, bringer of candies!
You've fulfilled my gummy dream.
You knew I wanted them so,
To share them with my team.

Away you drove to Cupertino,
To find the ichiban store.
At last I can slumber in peace,
for I yearn for gummies no more!