Week of July 23: Happy Birthday Fergal. Your wiener looks great by the way!

After 2 consecutive weekends of traveling out of town, Andrea and I got to spend a weekend at home (I think our dog Kodi was beginning to wonder if we were seeing other dogs). That is not to say that we stayed home all weekend. After a week of blistering heat, the temperature finally fell to about 80 degrees. Perfect weather for a backyard BBQ!

On Sunday, our friend Fergal, celebrated his birthday. His girlfriend, Carol, decided to take advantage of the great weather and threw a smashing BBQ party at their flat in San Francisco.

Carol's daughter made this super-sized birthday card for Fergal!

(Left pic) There were lots of these flowers in Fergal's backyard. According to Fergal (who heard it from his landlord), these flowers were poisonous. (Right pic) We were all hungry and waiting for the food. Andrea is holding onto her empty plate all ready to go. We found out a few days later that Todd and Leslie had gotten engaged! Congratulations!

Look at the delicious kebabs and hot links! Nothing but silence as we all stuff ourselves. These two pictures were taken with my camera phone. Not too bad for this little thing.

Here is Fergal blowing out the candles on his cake. I'm not going to tell you how old he is but there should be a lot more candles on that cake!

While everyone ate their small piece of the birthday cake and sheepishly contemplated the banana cream pie while counting their caloric intake of the afternoon, I decided to take matters into my own hands. After I dug into this pie, everyone followed. Calories? What Calories? I swear... this was the best banana cream pie I ever had. Even better than the ones from Tartine Bakery. And where did this delicious pie come from? Nation's Giant Hamburger restaurant!!! After the slice of pie, I also had a slice of a key lime pie as well... but it was a small slice.