24
No, not with Jack Bauer. The birthday for my sisters and I! In grade school I’d often get asked if my family celebrated Christmas. With the whole society stacked in that direction, it’s hard to avoid the ‘holiday season’. We put lights up on the house, Sachi is obsessed with decorating Christmas trees and putting up stockings. But seeing as our birthday likes between Christmas and New Year’s, it’s an alltogether festive time of year and we get presents to swap stories about at school (like who got a better NERF gun or Lego set).
This year there’s been an overall disinterest in receiving gifts, particular with the cruise at all. This was refreshing, and people took the time instead to still go and get things. Oh yeah, our family also finally upgraded the TV (hadn’t got a new one for 9 years).
Fortunately, Greg and Kelly were back in the Triangle for the 28th, so we invited them over for dinner. I was really excited to hear about Greg’s quick promotion to Director of Engineering and to learn more about what Kyma is doing. We also talked about where Kelly might go for summer research, whether to a REU at Stanford or take up the standing invite back to Cambridge. She also said that there is a conference at Cal Poly this spring, but I think it’s a bit too far out of the way for me to come visit.
After dinner, more friends started to arrive. Like I’ve said before, what I value most now is time spent with friends, and this was a good opportunity for our different friend circles to mix. Naman, Pavak, and Mike (with distraction provided by Nader) made a cake.
Jordan came on by and got to meet my parents, sisters, and a lot of my other friends for the first time too. He did a review of our (admittedly meager) wine collection and gave some suggestions to my mom for sweet(er) red wines.
A wonderful birthday, couldn’t ask for anything more.