My birthday festivities began a week early as i had a premature brainwave about a good present for myself. With gas prices rising unchecked ($6 a gallon by the end of the summer is my guess), i began contemplating ways to reduce my consumption. My daily commute could potentially be reworked to include Caltrain, but i thought a more health-promoting strategy might be to begin biking to Stanford. So i dragged Veronica over to the bike store to watch me eye bicycles from afar and sheepishly avoid salespeople for fear of being exposed as severely cycle-ignorant. Thanks to some polite shoving by V and Naomi i finally had a pseudo-conversation with a clerk at Mike's Bikes on El Camino, which gave me some further ideas as to what i should get. Some cyber-investigation the following day found me a nice candidate bike, a Gary Fisher "hybrid" (basically, a mountain bike with road tires, or a road bike with a suspension). I went back and bought it after work, but my well-laid plans were thwarted when i found, after 15 minutes of embarassing attempts in front of the store, that my new toy would not fit in my car. Hrm. I thought of waiting for Veronica to get home from work, but then realized that if the bike didn't fit in a Jetta, it definitely wasn't going in a Mini. Only one solution here ... ride the thing home. Luckily i had my workout clothes in the car, and had just bought a helmet. So i got a nice 6 mile test ride, which supported my choice of bike and proved to me my atrophying muscles are still sufficiently functional to handle riding a bike. I haven't worked out the logistics of commuting yet (transporting clothes and computer, showering, etc), but i did do a test ride to Stanford last weekend. The trip up Woodside, along Alameda de las Pulgas, and down Sand Hill has a few hills, but nothing problematic. If i turn in my parking permit i'll earn a bevvy of prizes from Stanford's Parking and Transportation Office, but we'll take things one step at a time. As my boy Danny said, don't go being an idiot thinking you're going to ride every day right from the start.

The weekend prior to my birthday we drove up to Napa for the wedding of Jeremy Popscene to his longtime girlfriend Jennifer. Our departure on Friday was delayed a bit as i'd fetched our Xbox 360, just returned from a trip to the Microsoft Repair Center to rectify its recent descent into the "red rings of death", from the UPS delivery center. We had to revisit Rock Band for at least a few songs, then hit the road. A brief wrong turn-induced detour to Sonoma aside, we made it to Napa in the sweltering heat and checked into the Hilton Garden Inn around 6pm. We made last minute dinner reservations at Celadon downtown, which turned out to be quite good. V then relaxed for the evening in our in-room whirlpool tub. After sleeping in and watching a little Euro 2008 on Saturday morning, we got into our finer duds and rode off with Gary to St. Helena for the ceremony. Britpop kingpin Jeremy lived up to his billing, with his bride walking down the aisle to a string quartet version of the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony". Their quirky Irish minister gave an entertaining ceremony, then the couple absconded for three hours of photos. The revelers passed the time in different ways, with our clique driving a few miles down the road for root beer floats at the local A & W. At 7pm we reconvened at Tra Vigne for a wedding reception that was up there with Bill and Elizabeth's as the most lavish i've ever attended. We had two hours of cocktails, featuring excellent prosecco mojitos and a variety of lovely appetizers. I had to stop grabbing pancetta-wrapped shrimp for fear of spoiling my dinner. We then took our seats at our table, and had a look at the menu. While i figured the list implied the standard "pick one of these, and one of these, and one of those", everything was instead served family style. Meaning we were therefore buffeted by a continuing onslaught of food. After dinner we got a few more rounds of drinks, and i was tempted to buy a cigar in the cantinetta. The evening's entertainment came in several forms: the couple's favorite movie Philadelphia Story played on a film reel downstairs (complete with freshly popped popcorn), while a photo booth got the guests inventing amusing poses. And of course dancing, with Live 105's Miles the intern spinning a collection of old Popscene favorites. The evening ended at 1am as the crowd made their way to collapse at their respective hotels. However on Sunday morning the couple had arranged a 9am brunch, meaning most of us got a scant few hours of sleep. Coffee was the order of the morning. Bidding the couple a final congratulations, we headed to Healdsburg to fetch some wine from our favorite Rafanelli winery. Little did i know that Healdsburg is more than a hop, skip, and a jump from Napa. We were 5 minutes late from our 12:45pm appointment, and opted to just grab our already-purchased dozen bottles and leave without tasting anything. Then all the way down to Fremont, where Tara had been spending the weekend. On the way we picked up a father's day present for my dad and a birthday gift for my sister, both of which were time in the newly constructed skydiving wind tunnel in Union City. That ought to be interesting. Our epic weekend concluded with dinner with my fam at BBQ favorite Emil Villa's in Hayward.

Unfortunately despite a plethora of great presents, my birthday week was not the most enjoyable seven days. Between oppressive heat, our DirecTV losing satellite signal and ultimately crapping out, a one day trip to L.A. that was anything but relaxing, missing performances by both Darker My Love and These New Puritans at Popscene, and V picking up a nasty cold/flu on the weekend that ruled out attending a couple of SF barbecues, it was not a week to remember.

Back to happier topics ... my parents got me a Delonghi coffee and espresso maker, equipped with a timer to make me my morning cup o' joe before i even get out of bed. I tried it out over the weekend and particularly liked this feature, and set out to use it this week. Unfortunately shortly before making its third pot of coffee, the unit went kaput. There's something wrong with the power supply to the machine, so now i'm contacting Delonghi about a repair and debating sending it back to Amazon. Doh! I hadn't even gotten to try my hand at making espresso yet. My sister got me a lovely Chelsea fleece blanketm while V's family sent a couple of books on Cocoa and Objective C programming for my Mac, as well as a shiny new copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3. I'm just a few missions shy of completing Grand Theft Auto IV, so i haven't given that a whirl yet.

Until our DirecTV was repaired on Sunday morning (our tree had once more grown in front of the dish, so the repairmen moved it to another spot on the roof where our foliage won't cause a problem), we spent our time playing Packrat and GTA (to each their own), and watching movies. Netflix provided us with the underappreciated Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and we finally got around to checking out the blu-ray copy of Ratatouille that Kevin and Shioko bought us a while back. I thought the animation was stellar, but i've just about had it with Pixar making the same story over and over again with different characters. First the toy who thinks he's an astronaut. Then the bug who wants to an inventor. Then the monster who doesn't want to scare children. The fish with the overprotective father. The proud racecar who gets a lesson in life. And most recenty, the rat who wants to be a chef. There's a pattern here. Any other Joseph Campbell-esque hero journeys to be had? Dare i predict Wall-E is about a robot yearning for something other than his lot in life? Don't get my wrong, Pixar has always been waaaaaay ahead of the curve in terms of animation, i just find their writing somewhat repetitive. But i guess the classic Disney films could be similarly accused.

This week hasn't improved much ... i spent Monday afternoon at UCSF at a memorial service for one of my grad school mentors, who tragically passed away a few weeks ago. Bruce Hasegawa was an academic role model, a true gentleman and scholar. I'm also rolling with the news that my longtime postdoc Ivana will be leaving my lab shortly to return to her hometown of Vancouver, where she got a job with a biomarker company. She's been looking for that next job for a while so i can't fault her ultimate success in her quest, but it will be an abrupt shock to lose my molecular biology jack-of-all-trades. Our department also recently received some distressing news concerning two of our former residents, that left us all deeply saddened.

And Italy just got knocked out of Euro 2008. God damn it. Well, that doesn't bother me so much. But it doesn't help.