Bruce's Birthday Weekend

I don't know about you, but when I get back from being away on a vacation, I tend to want to be with the people I vacationed with after I get home. This weekend has been a perfect example of this. Since getting home on Wednesday, I've seen very few of my friends here in San Francisco. Maybe its because spending time with the people you vacationed with makes you feel like you're still on vacation. Just an easier way to ease back into reality I guess.
On with the story.

Friday, a few of us got together for Bruce's birthday at a great restaurant called Nola's. Its in downtown Palo Alto and I definitely recommend going if you haven't been. Awesome atmosphere and the food was great. Dont' tell my coworkers this, but I think that Nola's is better than the real New Orleans. Ouch. Sad, but true. The waiter was told that it was Bruce's birthday, and this is what they brought out to him while we were singing Happy Birthday. Honestly, we all were all laughing so hard that we couldn't even finish the song. Not quite what we were expecting his birthday ice cream to look like. We had a good laugh and then we ate it.

Since Bruce's birthday was really today, Saturday, and he's a soccer fanatic, he organized a group to go to the USA vs. China soccer game in San Jose.
I'd never been to a professional soccer game before, so it was fun and though Bruce warned me that we'd be sitting in the hard-core section, I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Here are some pictures of just a few of the fans that I saw:

I guess we won or something because the section we were sitting in just kept getting louder and louder and the people were getting drunker and drunker. Ah, good times. The best chant I heard at the game was "Stick with Ping Pong, clap clap clapclapclap." Unfortunately I couldn't see much of the game because this is all I could see during the game.Super annoying, but luckily the person next to me was tall enough that he could see over it and was able to tell me what was going on. After the game a few of us went to dinner and when we got home, Dittmer had a family-appropriate birthday cake all ready for him. Here's Bruce deciding what he wanted to wish for for this next year. And here's a closeup of the amazing cake that Dittmer made for Bruce. Seriously...what an awesome roommate. I feel the love; don't you? Chocolate chips in cursive? Whoa! Who does that?

Bruce, I hope you had a great birthday. Thanks for being such an awesome friend. May more of my boyfriends be connected to you in some weird way so that we can keep on being friends for a long time to come. Lets roadtrip some time again soon. Heart ya. For real.