This weekend my brother, sister-in-law, and Cutest Ever niece were in town. Saturday they came and picked me up, and we all went down to Monterey so we could take my niece to the aquarium. She really liked the otters as well as the Outer Bay tank (she would occasionally exclaim "Wow!"). While in the jellyfish exhibit, I had an encounter with a rude lady, and had to work hard not to dwell on it for the rest of the visit. Afterwards we had lunch at a diner down the street, where I witnessed firsthand the intense look of concentration my niece gets when she's watching Sesame Street episodes on her video iPod.

That night it was back to the south bay for a surprise birthday celebration for Sanders and Manish (each of them though the party was for the other) that involved jumping them, saran wrapping them together, and taking them to dinner. Afterwards we went to Manish's place for cake. When I left, I decided to go get gas, since I had been very low on gas for a couple days. The joke was on me, though, when my car died about a mile down the road. I called up Eric, and he and Manish came to my rescue with a can of gas. It ended up that the nozzle for the gas can was too big for my tank, so we had to use a very convoluted system that, at various points in time, involved a pen, a funnel, and a plastic cup. It resulted in a whole lot of spilled gas, but did get enough in the tank to get me to the gas station. I believe this goes on my list of Top Ten Stupidest Car Troubles, right after blowing out my tire by hitting the curb. But let this be a lesson to you, boys and girls: don't ignore your gas light for three days.

Sunday morning I went up to the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay to join my brother & fam for a most ridiculous brunch. This wasn't no HoJo continental breakfast. This brunch had caviar, prime rib, sushi, roast lamb, lots of desserts, and lots of other yummy stuff. My niece quite literally stuffed her face with roast lamb before falling asleep at the table. My brother, being mired in the financial world, immediately tried to figure out how to maximize his brunch value. He eventually discovered that the paddlefish caviar was about $150/tin, so he zoned in on that. As we can see in the following graphic, brunch value increases with paddlefish caviar consumption:

Not satisfied with using the small blini to consume the caviar, we began to brainstorm other ways of maximizing caviar consumption. These included:

• Using a full-size pancake, topping it with caviar, then rolling it up and eating it. Paddlefish burrito!
• Using one of the Belgian waffles at brunch, and filling up each little pocket with caviar.
• Pouring out my nieces juice cup, filling it to the brim with caviar, and sucking it through the little plastic straw.

You'll be relieved to know we didn't actually implement any of these harebrained schemes.

After leaving brunch, it was off to the usual Sunday sports. Having only shortly before stuffed myself full of food, I had to sit out for a bit while we were playing ultimate, so as not to give my friends an unwelcome look at paddlefish caviar. Sports was followed by dinner at Maru Ichi, then Buddy came over and we watched Mad Hot Ballroom. I also went grocery shopping for the first time in several weeks, so my fridge isn't completely empty. Just mostly.

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