Recently we had a birthday around these parts.

There was strawberry rhubarb pie to be eaten!

And wishes to be made

birthday cards with corgis on them!! (from e’s mom… lol!)

I made breakfast in bed which consisted of baked eggs with Irish bangers from this chowhound recipe

We went to the computer history museum in Mountainview, where E contemplated some logarithms.
nerdlove contemplates some logarithms
This is the calculating machine designed by Charles Babbage in 1845. It is one of two in the world- on lend to the museum from one of the first executives at microsoft.

Watch the hand-cranked machine in action- extremely beautiful. Truly a work of art.

The world’s first computer mouse! A block of wood with a button :D

This is one of the first computers in existence, from the 1950s. Check out the “monitor” (giant thing on right) and the “printer” (typewriter!) in the middle:

Here’s the first computer game ever invented. Looks fun ;)

There was an entire section on computer chess, where I could have happily hung around for a few days. You could play other people at the museum, various versions of chess computer games, and people over the internet.

After the museum, we went to “Weird Stuff” which is a computer part supply warehouse. It’s basically a museum in and of itself. Aisles and aisles of old computer parts!

Mid day pizza refueling

And then we went scotch tasting. I treated Earl to “whatever bottle of scotch he desired” in the store. Thankfully, he did not chose one of these two (yiesh!):

I don’t know if you can see it, but I love how the label on those bottles underneath the 8k price tag reads “Everyday Low Prices.” heh.

We whiled away the afternoon and into the evening sipping coffee and reading at a cafe (one of E’s very favorite activities) and then caught a late dinner at The Mountain House, which was romantic and wonderful. We had a candlelit corner table overlooking the redwoods- it was so gorgeous!