Watashi no Tanjoubi

Today was a beautiful day. It was one of those days that reminds me why I love living in California. Bay Area weather is never the same two days in a row, and it's been raining in alternating spurts of 2-3 days. I guess it takes after bipolar Mother Earth ;)

But what this means is that on the good days, it's really really nice:

Look closely, you can even see the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance. Okay, it's hard to tell in the picture, so here's a zoomed-in version of the center of that picture:

Hmm...the pixelation that happened because of my zoom-less phone camera actually looks kind of cool. Like a painting, almost.

I was baked a cake by one of the people in my lab. She's been making different kinds of cakes for her sister's (I think) wedding and testing them out on us. We, of course, have no complaints. This one, however, was a delicious birthday cake. Chocolate with an orange zest, topped with candied orange peels:

And to top it all off, I got a lovely little present from my roommate. Apparently she's been planning this since almost last year. Isn't he cute?