so i'm in san francisco for the weekend for andrew's birthday. he turns 25 or something. my flight from houston to denver is late by an hour so when i get to denver my flight to sf has been taken off the departures board. i'm not able to make the flight but somehow my luggage makes it on the plane. i get booked on a later flight to oakland so at least i get into the bay area thursday night. after neo picks me up from oakland we trek on over to sfo to pick up my luggage.

after we get back to neo's place we play a mini hold 'em tournament between me, neo, and x (christine, neo's gf). $10 buy-in, winner take all. i knock mr. tao out first, then take out mrs. tao. sooo sad.

friday morning the three of us take the day off and play a round of golf at alameda. we used to play there a lot back in the day, it's cheap and wide open. since we haven't played much lately we decide to play a best ball format, less pressure on each of us to strike the ball well. x plays pretty well for a beginner. after a relatively relaxing round we decide to grab a bite in the east bay. chicken and waffles is the call but we don't know how to get there. did you know you can text "chicken and waffles oakland" to the numerical equivalent of "google" and you'll get a few text messages back with an address and a phone number? it's pretty awesome! the funny thing is the address wasn't enuf. i call, get directions, and we promptly go the wrong way. then x calls and we finally get there, altho we almost made neo call as well.

so this place is or was a franchise of the famous roscoe's chicken and waffles house from la. the side dishes were really good but the chicken was a little dry. i had a chicken breast with candied yams and mac and cheese (pic above). the latter two were da tza dan!

i'm a little drowsy right now so i'll speed thru the rest of the weekend:

friday nite: andrew's bday dinner at delfina in the mission. italian, different, tasty! there were bone marrow chunks in our steak frittes.

saturday am: vb at the oval with me, neo, paul, frank, jack, and byron (pic above). euge showed up to watch as well! we all joked about nicole kim's bday party.

saturday pm: x makes cold soba noodles and sashimi for dinner (pic above). real decent! afterwards we drop by whisper to say hello to steve and jamie chen.

sunday am: meet vanessa, pp, and mia for dumplings at 34th and balboa (pic above). mia is a real cutie with a lot of personality at 2.5 years of age. then neo and i head to blue bottle for coffee (pic of dog above) and the transformers movie. both were really good, megan fox is a, well, fox. beard papas after that.