Random ruminations
Went over to Josh's in the early evening (where I still am) and set up his new wireless router. It took about half an hour longer than it should have because I accidentally set it as a "router" instead of a "gateway" in the settings. Rather unintuitive choices, wouldn't you think? But he's online on his laptop, I'm online on my laptop -- which is the real benefit for me, since I don't have to put up with his parents' old desktop when I spend the night :P -- and it's just swell.

Let's see. Graduation on Saturday. Woke up all too early (6 in the AM) and did make an honest effort to straighten my hair. I wound up ponytailing it anyway, because the length, in my opinion, makes it look just ridiculous. Josh and the girls, of course, beg to differ, but I think it's good I play overcautious on fashion sense for once. Caleb's valedictorian speech was a good mix of amusing anecdotes and "we're not kids anymore." Waiting for my name to come dragged on...but then, suddenly, I was walking up the ramp to the stage and going across it, on autopilot, mainly conscious of the need to keep walking and shake the right hands. And then I was off. I can't even remember if I did hear the girls yelling for me as they say they did.

Lunch after graduation was okay. We went to Harold's (little diner in Florence), which we've somehow managed to avoid visiting for all 11 years up in this neighborhood. I had a very tasty burger and some excellent coconut cream pie. All four grandparents were there, and a couple of family friends, which made Dad overanxious that nobody was going to get along the whole weekend. For me, the awkward part was the religiosity of said family friends. But, you know, smile and wave.

Sunday evening was Prep's graduation. I got to clock out early from work (good both on that level, and in that it allowed me to escape ahead of some rather muleish customers), but absolutely didn't find the I-80 onramp that's somewhere along Center. I wound up just heading east until I got to 30th and Ames, then taking the freeway downtown. Parking was a bitch but I got inside ten minutes late, just in time for half the lecture on proper decorum, and the opening prayer. :P I was duly proud to see my Prep friends walk across the stage, and Susan, Amanda, and I all screamed for our favorites. (You guys know who you are.) Josh, Steve, and the three of us went out to Ted and Wally's afterward (where I ran into Logan, who I was worried I wasn't gonna get to see), thence to Steve's, where we crammed ourselves into his room and enjoyed the very pleasant company of his mom and her parents.

I have to take some time to admit that I did feel a bit weird, watching all the Prep boys down on stage and not being there with them. The best I can say is that I'm sure I would have been proud to be in that group, but that North was, altogether, the better of two worlds. I did slip into reverie for awhile at Prep's graduation, trying to walk through the hallways and sit in the classrooms and the commons one more time.

For the whole weekend, I got a disposable film camera (whoa, throwback) in the absence of the digital. While I was pretty conservative, 27 shots go by fast. I tried to get pictures of all the people I know well enough to fear forgetting. It was only after I ran out of film that it occurred to me that my (still unactivated) Tracfone has a dinky camera and I could have gotten another dozen shots. Not that they'd be any good.

So now it's past noon and I'm sitting on Josh's couch wondering when the hell he's going to wake up. (Not for awhile yet; he went to bed at 4 and is very insistent on the need for his beauty sleep.) And now, having graduated, attended what would have been my graduation, and picked up my yearbook yesterday afternoon -- I'm out. Wow.