mini-vacations seem like the way to go. it’s hard to carve out a 7-10 day chunk and organize travel to some far-off destination. it’s expensive and stressful to visit foreign shores, as rewarding and mind-expanding as that may be. but taking a few extra bonus weekend days and driving up to san francisco to hang out with college buddies i don’t see often enough — that’s easy, affordable, and wonderful.

possibly to our discredit, we didn’t even do much on this trip, but even so it was still great. we did go to a respectable birthday dinner for mike on thursday night at least, at beretta, which i would say is delicious but maybe not the best choice for very large parties.

friday was almost gloriously low-key though. we got lunch, we came home to play ping pong and beer pong (oh man, hungarian rules… a full contact form where you can run after your own missed balls that was goddamn fun if draining and at times dangerous, and which oddly i can find no reference to on the internet, at least under that name.) burgermeister for dinner, chilling with some kegbot in the evening.

saturday was just plain great though. lazy afternoon resting up for the night of SC football game and then huge dance party. mike, ted and kyla had reserved the basement of the li po, which they then preceded to destroy with their killer music. i drank quite a bit, i’ll admit, but that meant i had a great time dancing the night away before some less fortunate repercussions kicked in, or the eventual passing out with my clothes on back at mike’s.

the drive home was a bit unfortunate, and monday was not my friend, but overall, lovely times. i think my mission, since i can never seem to effectively use the vacation time allowed because of time or budgetary restraints, should be to take more long weekends for pure relaxation and enjoyment.