We're all Hufflepuffs here

         This weekend, Ben and I actually did something worth writing about. We started off with pizza from EXTREME PIZZA, which puts cilantro on all their pizza. Whoever thought of that deserves a medal. While we were waiting for our food to show up, we met Jono Nathan, one of our acquaintances from Bethel who is now living in the city. I hadn't seen him since he graduated almost four years ago, so it was cool to see what he was up to. Afterwards, we went to the H.E.R. House (Hannah, Emma, Rosanna) to hang out with friends. Both Hannah and Emma had had birthdays in the last week or so, so that was the excuse.   

Little bit of kitchen dancing

Bro-ing out. 

 The next morning, we went back to their house for brunch. Scrambled eggs, pancakes, vegan sausage, fruit, stuff like that.

Midway through the morning, some sort of religious recruiter stopped by with this gem of a pamphlet. Ben is a dead ringer for Jesus. We also spent a lot of time talking about Harry Potter and arguing about the colors of the respective houses.    

 Later, Ben took me around to some of the houses that his boss is flipping. For someone who read and re-read house-restoration magazines as a kid, it was really cool to see the process. And yes, that really did happen. For years I had a stack of “Old House Journal” next to my bed, and spent time re-creating the blueprints in the back with Legos. True story.
          We'd also been wanting to go to Tilden Park for awhile, since it's near Ben's house. So we finally were able to do that. It's a regional park that is in the Berkeley hills overlooking the Bay, and it is full of nature.  It's actually really high in the hills, so maybe we shouldn't have taken the road that went directly perpendicular to the ridgeline - it was a pretty steep grade, and the brakes on Ben's car were starting to smell REALLY hot by the time we finally hit flatter ground!

I love poppies.  They are unapologetically gaudy.

Looks like the koalas have been doing some work on
the eucalyptus trees out here.  

             We tried to get to church on time on Sunday, but that didn't happen. So we were 20 minutes late, but at least we didn't miss any good hymns this time. Afterwards we went to Duboce Park to see the dogs. Australian-shepherd spotting count – 3. It was a good day.

Border collie or something.  He was a very good dog.

These two Aussies are owned by the same lady.  I am jealous. 

 Also there was this guy with bubbles. It looked so fun.

 On our way to the BART station, we stopped at Burger Meister for a spur-of-the-moment mint chocolate chip shake. It was delicious.

         Also on the way to the BART station, we ran into this little parade for Hugo Chavez. Or at least, it was based on Hugo Chavez, but it seemed to be more like “Hey, Hugo Chavez did this stuff for Venezuela, but also let's get excited about Che Guevarra, Cesar Chavez, FMLN, and all of the workers-rights, left-wing things in Latin America!”    

          Finally, Ben picked up a DVD about John Deere from the church free table, after I came back from work, so we had some popcorn and watched that. I thought it was cool, but Ben said it would be like him talking to me about sports for an hour and a half.