Long weekends are the new awesome

Since living in San Francisco I've spent every Thanksgiving weekend in town. And I love it. It's become my own personal tradition. The thing I love most is the neighborhoods in the city empty out over the holidays. Everyone goes home. And the few of us that remain enjoy a quiet weekend of less noise, fewer sirens, ample parking...I'm pretty sure it's what heaven will be like.

Before Rebecca and all our other friends took off for home we had an amazing pre-Thanksgiving dinner at Steve and Marshall's house. Dan and Steve made me carve the turkey then stood there heckling me the whole time.


Here's Rebecca and I with Steve, Dan and Rick...look at our creations!


There were so many people that those of us at the end of the line had to eat our pre-Thanksgiving feast with spoons. No big deal.


Rebecca should have told Marshall this was going to be an open mouth picture.


On real Thanksgiving day I was invited over to the home of Milo Beckstead.


I think my family thought I was sad that I wasn't with them on Thanksgiving. Not the case for two reasons:

1) The meal. It was amazing.



2) The company (Wayne, Heather, Alex, Milo and Heather's parents). Also amazing.


Dear Family,
I really did miss you.
Love,
Betsy

In keeping with Beckstead Thanksgiving tradition we took a lovely walk through Golden Gate Park after we ate our meal.





On the way home we passed right by the global headquarters for craigslist.org.


I love San Francisco because it's cutting edge. I had no idea large stuffed cats as Christmas tree toppers were going to be huge this year. I think Rebecca will be really into this trend.


The next day Courtney, Nate and I decided to find out if a particular urban legend we'd heard of really existed. On the way to find the urban legend, we stopped at the Exploratorium. I'm much taller than Courtney.


After a long walk along the coast in the Marina, we finally found what we were looking for. The Wave Organ!


It wasn't really making any noise which made it a little bit boring so Courtney and I decided it would be more fun to have Nate take pictures of us.


Eventually he told us to leave him alone so he could get serious about sticking his ear up against one of the organ pipes.


In the end, the best part of the Wave Organ was the view of the city it provided.


I grew up in Sunnyvale which is about 30 minutes south of SF. Another treat that happens on Thanksgiving weekend is all my friends come home to visit their families which means they'll come up to SF at least once to hang out! This is how happy everyone was after eating dinner at Blue Fin Sushi.


Then it was time for dancing. But not this kind of dancing.


Dave, Keith and Steve needed to stretch.


Because this kind of dancing was about to happen.


Courtney schooled Robyn.


Dave and Shawn were freaking out.


Additional DDR footage here.

This is a very standard pose for the three of us.


And a most pleasant way to end the long weekend was with Shawn, Robyn and Steve. We saw a movie downtown and then checked out the huge new fancy mall. We took this picture of ourselves at Bloomies and then were immediately escorted out by security.