God has blessed me with many good friends and it was pretty evident last Friday (Sep 20th, my birthday) as I received many different well-wishes which were unexpected. Typically, my birthdays are pretty bad. Last year, I had to cancel my own birthday dinner at the last minute because my Dad checked into the ER at UCSF that evening. The year before that I had to cancel because of an unexpected business trip and the years prior to that during college...let's just say that I never celebrated my birthday. So as usual, I looked upon my birthday with dread again this year knowing that if the pattern would hold true, I would have another bad birthday. But, I have to say God smiled upon me this year as my birhtday was pretty good. Granted, I spent the whole day closing escrow on our new home by going from one bank to another bank to another bank picking up checks and then proceeding to the title insurance company to finalize everything. Anyone who has ever bought/sold a home can relate to having to sign 50+ documents to close out the process. And I got a parking ticket to boot. But during the day, I got various cute e-Cards (thanks KH, EY!), actual cards (thanks DS, JL!), and phone calls from near and afar (thanks KL, AO!). Additionally, at night, I had dinner at LuLu restaurant with a bunch of friends (mostly non-believers) which included GC and MI (a cute couple and great friends), RH (my childhood friend of 20 years...), PL (a UCLA friend who drove all the way up from San Jose just for dinner), CW and B (another couple, I know CW pretty well), AP (my current roomate of one week and bro in Christ), and AL (my friend of 9 years who, I must say, looked just stunning Friday evening). We got there around 8'ish and we didn't leave LuLu until 11:30ish. Afterwords we hung out at the XYZ bar at the W Hotel which was an interesting experience. As my friend GC put it, "There are a whole lot of posers in here." I happened to agree but still it was great to hang out and chat with many of my long-time friends.