A very happy Thanksgiving to all and a very happy birthday today to my sister Erica who turned 33 at 3:47 this morning. We spent the evening together over a dinner of my rendition of our dad's lime chicken and a special chocolate birthday cake that my nieces helped me make. Nicole is 11 now and Jessica, 7. Since coming home in August, I've watched in awed wonder at what amazing little people they are growing into. Jessica is playing the piano, is the most finicky eater on earth and can't get her hands on enough books to read. Nicole is rapidly becoming a teenager, is obsessed with cooking shows and makes me laugh often. They are both angels and I am thankful to be back in their lives.

We spent Thanksgiving together with old friends north of San Francisco and I reveled in the feast that was unlike any I've seen in two years. Last Thanksgiving I spent watching Kill Bill and eating tofu red curry and Laotian beef stew with sticky rice so this Thanksgiving I savored the food all the more until I slipped quietly into comfortable food coma.

Yesterday was a glorious crisp fall day and I borrowed my roommate's bike, helmet and padded biker shorts and went for a four-hour bike ride. I rode from my house, along the coast up to and across the Golden Gate Bridge and back, down to the Marina Green, back up to the bridge and home again along the coast. I used to be a real wimp on hills but it seems all those warrior poses I've been doing have toughened up my quads. San Francisco never seemed like a very bike-friendly city considering all the hills, but I'm starting to look at it like a big bike playground.

It's late. Jai heads back to India tomorrow and we'll spend his last day in San Francisco hiking in the hills for old time's sake. I will be sad to see him go but am excited to see him off into his next adventure.