Life is not just a series of parties, though sometimes it does seem like there are quite a few opportunities to eat cake. I spent all day out of the office Thursday and Friday at a market reasarch place, eating m&ms while watching people in focus groups and feeling like I could eat all the m&ms in the bowls they set out. This weekend my extended family, though not my immediate family, had a reunion. They rented an extremely large villa set in a dramatic hillside in Sonoma wine country and we all had a merry old time up there. Although I don't even like cake, I did have slice or two. Then we came back to San Francisco, first stopping for what was supposed to be a quick visit but turned into a two hour interregnum. My beautiful wife who is the pillar of my strength and light of my life, insisted we eat chinese food.

Then I drove around for an hour looking for a parking spot. I let her out so she could do some schoolwork. A friend, Justin, was in town, playing a gig at a venue called the Boom Boom Room, which, I learned, was owned by the late John Lee Hooker. He had been flown in with a bunch of other all star musicians who hadn't met each other, to play an all star gig. I went to his hotel to visit him, and then out to dinner and eventually to his gig. It was kind of surprising that a huge crowd turned out, and the crowd was made up of people arriving in limos and stuff. Surprising only because none of the players in the band were all that famous, though I guess they were famous enough to draw a big crowd.