I didn't wake up until 11:30 on Thanksgiving Day. Justin, a good friend from college and current Unitarian-Universalist seminarian (and gender role smasher) at the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley (where else?), had invited me to have dinner with a small group at his house (we're both native Midwesterners stranded in California for Thanksgiving by high ticket prices). I finally made it out the door a bit after one and drove up to Berkeley (fitting in the long-overdue call to mom on the way there).

It was such a nice dinner. Justin loves to cook. I hate to cook. The other guests there and I were amazed by the quantity and quality of the food provided. Justin slaved over a hot stove (what does that say about gender roles?) for hours preparing food for us--all I did was bring beer. You can see the full list on his blog. He even made a tofurky for us two vegetarians present. I was then and am now very impressed and grateful.

Justin and I ended up going to see Jarhead that night (my take: pleasantly and surprisingly good) and got back late enough that I decided to crash on a futon rather than make the drive back home.

The next day, I decided that, as long as I was close to the city, I'd take the trans-bay BART train and finally pay a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (my take: thoroughly enjoyable, though, coincidentally, I had already seen the headlining Chuck Close exhibition when it was at the Met when Dave and I visited New York a year and a half ago).

I got a call from a coworker who lives in San Francisco while I was at the museum. (He's not a blogger, and I don't like to use real names for non-bloggers. We'll call him "Juanito.") Justin went back across the bay to meet friends for dinner. I entertained myself before meeting Juanito for dinner by hanging out at the downtown shops during the Black Friday bustle (it was packed). I, of course, didn't buy anything there, as it was Buy Nothing Day.

Full disclosure: I confess to buying a latte, coffee cake, a museum ticket, a train fare, a movie ticket, dinner, and beer at other points during the day. Oops, sorry. I think a personal boycott of chain-store shopping frenzies is doing my little part, at least.

Juanito and I had dinner with some other Googlers at an Ethiopian restaurant right off of Haight-Ashbury, saw 24 Hours on Craigslist (my take: charming), and then went out for a few beers. It was again too late to drive home (my car was in Berkeley at the time), so I ended up crashing on Juanito's bedroom floor.

The next day, we had breakfast with other Googlers at another Googler's house, went to Golden Gate park for a few hours of frisbee, wandered The Castro for a bit (my take: delightfully flamboyant), and then headed back to Market Street for a little shopping (one discounted shirt at the Banana Republic--yeah, sorry--and two others at H&M). We had dinner at a vegetarian Asian restaurant, and then (yet another) Googler and I took BART back to pick up my car and drove back to Mountain View, getting back around midnight on Saturday night.

All and all, a very fun unplanned trip. I left my house at 1 PM on Thursday afternoon and had expected to get back perhaps six hours later. It probably would have been smart to pack a change of clothes. I spent most of my weekend in a holiday sweater.