Fine...

Now you obsessives can have your damn comments. Not that anybody reads this swill.

Dan

All both of my readers are aware that the guy I call my college roommate, Chickenboy, blogs at the Chicken-Blog. Well, I had one roommate for one semester after that. He was a dumbass, and his name was Dan. Good fellow, just not all that quick on the uptake. Among the valuable things Dan did were... create a sign for our room dubbing it "The Swamp", and only spend one semester as my roommate, taking the Spring semester to co-op. Single occupancy, bitches!

So Dan and the Pooh-Bear (and the fish I called John-John, that they called Woman) are in Iraq, or at least they're meant to work in Iraq. Dan's doing the world traveler thing, and finally decided to blog rather than email all his friends and relatives (with pictures) every week or so. He's pretty compulsive about the details and actually pretty entertaining to read, and he's got some REAL good pictures, and frequent mentions of a minx he calls Property Girl that he's too much of a wuss to talk to.

So go see Dan's blog (this means you too, Chickenboy) at OMD-World Traveler.

Write Your Own Valedictory Speech

In keeping with today's theme, I figured I'd throw together a template valedictory speech. This is presumptuous of me, as it seems there is already one (ONE.) and I may be breaking a copyright. Given a couple of hours, I guess I could throw together a whole big overblown Mad Libs valedictory speech, but Mad Libs are supposed to be fun, not repetitive and dull and cliched.

So here goes.

Friends, faculty, and guests, I was thinking about what to write today. For the past four years we've [vague positive memory], [vague negative memory], [humorous memory bordering on in-joke]. [pause for polite laugh] And I realized today that this may be the last time we see each other. After all these years of supporting each other through [sentimental situation] and [feeling], [negative feeling] and [cliched sentimental situation].

I remember the time I [thing that overachieving nerds do] and I [problem that overachieving nerds have]. With the help of [teacher's name] and a lot of hard work, [positive resolution to overachieving nerd problem]. I couldn't help but be over whelmed by [something or other].

[required sentence] This is not an ending, but a beginning. Some of us will go to college, some of us will [job the valedictorian would never do], or [other job the valedictorian would never do], or even [different job the valedictorian would never do]. But we will always remember our friends in the [high school name] class of [year].

As [someone] once said, "[quote from someone]". Thank you.

If any of you people has additions, let me know. Feel free to email since I won't do comments. Will be reflected in the post.

Bobofication

So on my way to a graduation this weekend, after passing through Darkest Austin and its repulsive denizens that don't even like Texas all that much, I got to pass through the more attractive parts of Texas. We're talking oldish, small towns, where the main roads still go through recognizable downtowns chock full of businesses working in old, old buildings. Really very cool.

Went through one town called Rockdale, somewhere on Hwy 79, that was obviously on its way to Bobofication. It was very nice. I wanted to live there almost instantly. Rockdale has a sister city (in my mind it's a sister city; they may have formed independently) called Thorndale. I wondered if there's also a Fire Antdale or Intense Heatdale.

And I passed through...


Thrall! I was in Thrall! Something just possessed me to... okay, there's only so many jokes you can make about it and my family didn't get ANY of them.

Graduation Hell

I'm back, for a while at least. Lots of info to spew forth.

I had to attend two graduations this weekend. I've got lots of cousins, and two of them graduated high school this weekend. I don't generally attend cousin-graduations because there's lots of them and I'm not their grandma, but these two are both special cases. I wish I could name the high schools, but I'm still awfully paranoid about my identity. So I'll play little headgames in this preamble.

Graduation #1 was in Smalltown, TX. It's in "Central Texas" twixt Houston and Waco, a short drive from College Station. Single-A school, graduating class of around 30. And for some reason lots of those kids end up going to Texas A&M (the real one). There is a heavy Polish presence in the area.

Graduation #2 was in Largetown, TX. It's outside of San Antonio, pretty big, but not monstrous. The kids there think they live in a small town because they've never been to Smalltown, TX. Kinda like how the Aggies from Houston (population millions) think they went to college in a small town (Bryan-College Station, population 200,000?) because they didn't go to WhereRupeIsFrom, TX (population 3000).

So Smalltown's a 4-hour drive for me, through Darkest Austin. While driving through Austin I imagine that every traffic slowdown is due to a protest. It keeps me grinning, but I never see a hint of tie-dyed t-shirt or red stars. More on the drive in a later post, possibly with pictures.

Both graduations took 1.5 hours. Do that math.
Largetown was quick, quick, quick. The Summa Cum Laude (heh) students actually sit up on the dais with the school board! That shocked me the first time (this cousin's sister's graduation; she was up on the dais). And man they roll those kids through. The class song (more on these in a later post--Yes, all the traveling gave me much writing fodder!) was actually sung, well, by two students. The Star Spangled banner was sung by graduating members of the choir! Well! One guy did a cartwheel! But more on graduation antics later.

Smalltown was like pulling teeth. Smalltown carefully records, with speeches from awarding organizations, each scholarship. Graduation speaker, in this heavily Republican, heavily Aggie town, is some sort of UT Regent Emeritus, a devoted Democrat. More on that speech in a later post. No graduation antics. Lots of talking. On their walk, the students receive their diploma and a bouquet of flowers. The parents (remember, there's not that many of them) are also seated on the football field, and the students deliver the bouquet to the parents, then take their seats. So there's a system, and it really only makes the Walk slightly longer, and it's sweet.

But like my grandpa said, "well, all those people came a long way to see that graduation--gotta stretch it out somehow."