Saket Vora

What a glorious day! Woke up early and over coffee whipped up a five avocado bowl of guacamole while watching part of the Georgia Tech vs Duke game with Troy. By 11am, I was over at Stanford picking up Nader, Amit, and Catherine (my TA for EE 414) and we headed over to a John’s house in Sunnyvale for some grilling and game-watching: Stanford at USC. John is a friend of Rong’s (an EPM down the hall from me) whom I met at Tony’s housewarming party a few weekends ago. By the time the game started, there was a dozen of us there, including several colleagues from work.

This was going to be a huge game for Stanford, coming off a huge upset win over #8 Oregon. Winning this game would not only knock out #9 USC’s BCS hopes, but would put the rest of the football world on notice: Stanford is real and you better watch out! And what a game! Our whole team clicking — Heisman-deserving running back Toby Gerhart dropped 175+ yards and 3 touchdowns on USC, while our defense came up with 3 interceptions, all which ended up in touchdowns. Redshirt freshman quarterback Andrew Luck outplayed the freshman USC quarterback. The result, a 55-21 demolition,  was the most points ever allowed by USC at home. The last time anyone had gotten close to do this to USC was Notre Dame putting up 51 points…in 1966. In the last 49 games at home, USC has lost twice. Both to Stanford. And this was USC’s homecoming game.With 91,000 fans in attendance. Glorious. Hail, Stanford, Hail.

Chrissy broke out her Stanford cupcakes and immediately after our cornerback Richard Sherman picked off USC’s QB in the 4th quarter for a touchdown. Go Cardinal!

After savoring the victory, I dropped off my friends back at Stanford, perused the shopping mall a bit, then headed back home to watching some more football with Troy. Saturdays = college football!

At night, I had my experience of Settlers of Catan, a game I heard a lot about from friends back home. The Nicks were hosting a game night, and for the next several hours Bill, Sarah, Alex, Cindy, and I were engrossed in our game while the Nicks and others played other board games.

While some delicious homemade chocolate bourbon pecan pie (heavy on the bourbon…) was enjoyed, a lack of isopropyl alcohol stymied the wielding of Alex’s flaming throwing knives, but that’ll be for another night (some months ago, the Nicks and Alex launched some flaming projectiles with their trebuchet, captured to great effect with long-exposure photography). It also looks like the group will be headed up to see the Books play in San Francisco over Thanksgiving weekend.

And to top it off, I got an email late at night saying that my $25 Kiva loan has been fully repaid, so I lent it out again to another worthy entrepreneur; this time in the Philippines. Nice!