I still have yet to catch up on my sleep debt, but this past weekend was SO worth it! After the long day at Disneyland, I headed back home to sleep for a bit, and woke up at 3:30 AM to get ready and start driving up to Mountain View to see Tyler and the many, many other CMU interns up there for the summer (sadness, I'm all alone in SoCal). I survived! Isn't that a bit surprising? Haha. The drive took a little under six hours (good thing I left early and avoided all sorts of traffic), taking a couple of stops for gas, Starbucks, and looking really weird jogging in place and doing jumping jacks to stay awake before driving again.

I arrived at at Tyler's a little before before 10 AM, and even though I don't think it's even been a month since classes ended, I was SO excited to see him again! I literally took about 15 minutes to settle all my stuff down before we were off again, first to Neto Cafe and then to the Caltrain to head to San Francisco. We didn't really have any goals for the trip except to explore and eventually make it to Ghirardelli Square because who doesn't want amazing chocolate and ice cream?!

Walking from the Caltrain station, through Union Square, Chinatown, Ghirardelli Square (finally!), and Fisherman's Wharf, Tyler and I definitely walked about, or over, eight miles! Before Ghirardelli Square, we met up with Vincent, Donald, and Tomin, and then eventually my sister and her friends as well. Later (after parting from my sister), the lot of us met up with Tyler's roommate at Osha Thai for dinner. When we eventually got back home, I was surprised I was still functioning and awake (barely, though), and we ended up playing Monopoly Deal and Egyptian Rat Screw until around 3 AM (a.k.a. I stayed up for 24 hours! Thanks CMU, for the preparation, haha).

Love you, Tyler! Us taking a break at Washington Square Park.

Group picture at Ghirardelli Square. (From left to right: Donald, Tomin, Vincent, me, Tyler)

Finally found the sign. And chocolate.

Post at Fisherman's Wharf.

Pad thai and lychee martini (they were the same price... what...)

The next day, woke up early again and Tyler and I headed to Facebook headquarters to meet up with my sister and her friends again to get a tour of Facebook! We then headed to Palo Alto to meet up with Amanda and Alan. We decided to lunch at a place called Patxi's Pizza after a quick search through Yelp. And Yelp did not fail us! The Chicago-style pizza was amazing, and we also got free drinks for checking in on Yelp.

After lunch, Tyler, Amanda, and I explored Stanford's campus... as in, we really wanted to see their Gates building (maybe they wanted to see more, but I was still hot, tired and lazy, heh oops). Tyler and I found handouts from some courses, and proceeded to look through and compare them to problems we've had to solve... go ahead, judge us.

It was getting late (still had another six hour drive ahead of me, and work the next day), but before I left the Bay Area, we stopped at Brenda's! I wish I could have seen her more this weekend! Next time... (will there be a next time? Probably... I have a lackluster life here).

Tyler, Amanda, and me in downtown Palo Alto.

Spinach and mushroom pizza from Patxi's.

Stanford's Gates building.

Panorama of Brenda's sweet apartment.

I managed the drive back down in a little more than five hours, I love how the speed limit for ninety percent of I-5 is 70 MPH (as in going 10 MPH above the speed limit is always acceptable, right?...) And then slept five hours before waking up for work. Wait, since when did this become like CMU? Twelve hours over three nights? Sigh.