Wake up in Charlotte at 5 a.m. (4 a.m. Houston time), to the airport, get on a plane, land in Houston, drive to work. When I do all that and have been at my desk for an hour and it’s still not even 10:30, my brain starts to get muddled. Was it really just this morning that I was at home? Was it really just two hours ago that I was getting off the airplane?
I had a lovely weekend at home in good ol’ North Carolina, and all members of my family now officially are college graduates. Hooray, we’re edjimacated!
Saturday night we went to the Sigma Chi graduation party (because Brian is a Sigma Chi, of course) at the Carolina Inn. It was a little strange, mostly because there was no official program, a 15-minute slideshow of pictures I probably wouldn’t have shown my parents, hors d’oeuvres but no actual dinner, and bartenders who were annoyed because people wanted water. But it was nice to have the family together.
We all split up for the night — Katie and Joel at Aunt Nancy’s, Brian at his place, and the rest of us with Grandmother — then met up again yesterday morning to take the shuttle to the stadium. The traffic was bad and the bus planning wasn’t great, but we got there just in the nick of time to see Brian march in.
The UNC graduation ceremony was short and sweet, in direct contrast to the long GT ceremony. (To each school it’s own, I suppose.) All the undergrads wore Carolina blue gowns and filled the whole end of Kenan Stadium, which was neat to see. The graduate students wore black gowns with the colored hoods. The graduation speaker was Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes from Harvard, and prior to graduation he’d been somewhat of a controversial choice, according to Brian. The seniors had been led to believe that they’d get a say in choosing the speaker, but they didn’t, and were upset by it. But Gomes was surprisingly good — funny, thoughtful, and didn’t take himself too seriously. Brian even admitted as much!
My favorite factoid from his bio: in 1999 he was named one of “The Best Talkers in America: Fifty Big Mouths We Hope Will Never Shut Up” by Talk magazine. I just think that’s an awesome headline.
After the ceremony we walked around campus a bit (even David, despite his hurt foot — he’d hobbled around Atlanta last weekend and then went to the doctor this past week, and it turns out he broke the fifth “toe” bone, so he had a boot to wear) and took pictures of Brian with all the UNC landmarks. I have Brian with the Old Well, Brian with the Davie Poplar, Brian at the Bell Tower, etc. And photos of both Brian and Katie’s graduations will be posted soon, so my mom doesn’t kill me!!
We had lunch at Brixx and visited with Grandmother some more, then headed back to Charlotte exhausted after two graduation weekends but happy that everyone is happy and graduated. I think Brian was more excited to be graduating and to have us there than he let on.
So it was a great weekend. Charlotte and North Carolina are beautiful places and I miss all the spring green trees and grass that I don’t see in Houston. And my family is cool.
Oh, and my dog had a fine weekend here or so I hear. A couple potty mistakes in the house, and apparently he is very possessive of his food, and he can jump 4 feet in the air, and he had fleas (he brought them home from the shelter, I noticed them on Thursday), and he may have a bruise or something on his leg because he didn’t like Becca petting him there…BUT he is good. He goes to the vet this afternoon for the first time with me.
I still am getting used to the idea that I have a dog!
OH! And my grandmother saw the photos I posted here of Leo and pulled out four photos of her and my grandfather from the late 40s or early 50s with their dog Skip — who looked JUST LIKE LEO. My grandparents had the SAME dog! I had no idea!
