Party Over Here!

Our birthday celebration with the Amazing Matt Silver was a success. First, we had a delicious lunch at Burgers & Brew in Sacramento. There were 12 of us in all, which they couldn’t accommodate inside, so we had to dine out on the patio. Luck was on our side, though. The sun managed to break through for the entire time we were there.
After gorging ourselves on meat from heaven, we headed to our friends’ house. Mike and Taryn were gracious enough to let a bunch of us hang out and eat their food, which was phenomenal. Taryn is an amazing baker. She has made some of the most extraordinary cakes I have ever put in my mouth. Matt’s cake was some kind of Italian wonder that I can’t remember the name of (Kortnee, do you remember?) that was had with a mouse-type filling with almonds, a very moist yellow cake that may have been soaked in rum and a chocolate ganache as the frosting. It was amazing.
As an added bonus, Taryn made home-made cheese crackers that were so good, I nearly sent myself to the hospital for stuffing so many in my face. According to Matt, and I'm paraphrasing here, they tasted like a combination of Cheese Nips and the sacrificing of a cheese baby.
The main reason to hole up at Taryn & Mike’s humble mansion was to play a board game that Matt was itching to play called, Arkham Horror. It turns out, that game is pretty f-ing fun. It took about six hours to finish the game, including the hour it took to learn how to play. In the end, we actually won against the main bad guy, which is supposedly near-impossible to do. Matt thinks we played it wrong and that is the only reason we were able to beat it.
All in all, it was an awesome time and I’m glad we were able to spend the day nerding it up with our dear friend Matt.