Jersey tagged me on his 5 people lunch meme, and as a good blogger, I feel compelled to answer.

My first answer would be to have lunch with five geographically-distant friends, as having lunch with famous people (who, let’s face it, would be complete strangers) would be an awkward situation for both me and the other party. Furthermore, I’m not a fan of this question because it begs you to impress everyone by naming a lesser-known, non-celebrity-but-famous-for-a-reason answer. I might as well be out tutoring some bartender on how to make “my” drink.

Since the friend answer defeats the fun of this question, I’ve answered below (in no particular order). I wasn’t sure if dead people were acceptable (otherwise it’d be Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed FTW), so I kept it with the living.

1. Shigeru Miyamoto. The Walt Disney of the video game industry deserves my thanks for a happy childhood.
2. Steve Jobs. The Willy Wonka of our generation can’t be off this list.
3. Bill Watterson. Of anyone who could tell me the joys and pitfalls of creating comics, this is the man.
4. Warren Buffett. Last year, Zhao Danyang paid $2.1 million to have lunch with the Oracle of Omaha. If offered, why turn down something so valuable for free?
5. Gordon Ramsay. Someone has to cook the meal!

My sister and my brother-in-law were obviously trying to one-up my wife for my birthday party, so they showed up with a chessboard they painstakingly made out of chocolate.

The two of them are known for coming up with pretty wild pet projects, though I think they’ve trumped me on anything remotely cool for their birthdays. The board itself is made of Matangos candies, while I’m told the pieces were made of melted chocolate and peanut butter fudge 1/2 molds.

Hauck Interactive recently launched a new Website for Events, Etc., the catering company from the folks over at the Hershey Pantry. The new site features some of my photography–and had me running out to all of the really nice wedding venues in Hershey and Dauphin county. Check it out.

I made sure to make it back from a grad school reunion in NYC to attend Harrisburg’s first Cupcake Cup. Kudos to Erica Streisfeld for organizing the event, which took place at the Midtown Scholar bookstore and raised a few hundred dollars for the Central PA Food Bank. Sadly, the cupcakes weren’t documented thoroughly, so I’m not even sure which delicious one I had. I guess I’ll just have to wait for next year.

My company just relaunched HersheyPantry.com,  making the site the second of four targeted to launch this month (the first being Broadway Video Digital Media, which provided a nice HII mention here).

I was pretty eager to redo the Hershey Pantry’s site because they have one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had. Fortunately, they were very receptive to my recommendation of adding pictures of food to their site, so I did a number of photo shoots to provide all of the photographs. What I learned: Don’t take pictures of food on an empty stomach.

Okay, the kerning is off, but it’s still pretty cool.

I was at a bar the other day where someone shared with me the opportunity to purchase Trappist Westvleteren 12. If you’re wondering what that is, it’s a rather elusive Belgian ale that has sat atop of Beer Advocate’s Top Beers on Planet Earth for a few years now. It’s not technically available in the U.S. (See this USA Today article on Westvleteren for background), but this offer made it available for a mere $110 per six pack, or $600 per case (don’t ask me why the pricing doesn’t make sense).

Now, I have a limit on how much I’d be willing to spend on a food and beverage, and this definitely exceeds that limit (and if it didn’t, you better bet it would exceed my wife’s!).

Overall, it got me thinking about just what is the price of happiness, and if I’d truly be happy if I ended up loving the beer and not being able to try (or afford) it again. Regardless, I caught this pretty cool TED video that does a good job of summing the topic up: