Oh, it's SO good to be back in San Francisco for the weekend. Merced wore the group pretty thin this week. Most of coworkers cope with the boredom and the complete lack of resources by drinking to escape, but I hate drinking during the work week (I don't even like staying up too late during the work week) so I hang out without participating. A new perk though: The R. hands out free vouchers to the Merced Sports Centers, so one of my coworkers and I have been taking advantage of both the feelessness and sheer boredom. They have a lap pool (yes!) and a hot tub, and great elliptical machines, weight rooms, even tennis courts -- and the man who runs the tennis program there has no problem loaning tennis rackets to us for free. (M. and I tried hitting some balls around, but I am WAY out of practice.) The other boredom buster is that I've started reading Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything," which is a pretty darn good History-Lite lesson about the beginning of the world. (Thank you David & Alexandra for the Bryson books -- great Christmas presents!) For example, did you know that if you rested the entire planet Pluto on North America, it would hardly cover the lower 48 states? Yeah, it's REALLY small.

Lexi is here for the weekend to surprise Leslie on her Birthday. It was a wonderful surprise for me, too, since she decided on Thursday to fly down Friday! Leslie, now 27y.o., was so shocked and touched that she wept. Then we all went out to sing Karaoke -- my first time. 5 of us got up and sang "I want it that way" (Backstreet Boys) and later Nikki and I got up and sang "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which is great because it really gets the audience going. The bar we went to was in the Marina and unfortunately filled up quite a lot, so we didn't get to go up as often as we liked, but it was serious fun. This morning James, Lexi, Leslie and I went out to Chinatown for Dim Sum -- delicious. Chinatown is really a world unto itself, and I intend to take Mom, Steve, and 2-Dad on their respective visits, because it's a key experience in San Francisco.

I go through phases of being happy, comfortable and secure here and being jittery, anxious and filled with wanderlust. Right now I'm in the former phase and it's lovely. Here's to sunshine, hills, and Boba tea. (~_-)