(re)cap, or mortar board wearing

It's been somewhat eventful the last few days. I'm still in slo-mo from the trip and the not-having-anywhere-to-be thing, so have been lazy about posting and such. Hopefully I can catch up a little soon or can wait long enough that people forget that I'm supposed to write about stuff.

Convocation was not particularly exciting, but it provided some closure to the last couple of years. I met up with Sam and we took the bus to UBC to collect our gowns and hoods at 9:30am. After lots of standing around, we finally marched into the Chan and wound up front row centre, slightly obscured from those sitting on the stage by a bushy row of plastic flowers. Tacky. At some point the band played "Fame" and I couldn't believe that someone thought that was either contemporary or good for a convocation ceremony. The chancellors or masters of the universe or whatever they are wandered onto the stage in ridiculous velvety gowns with velvet hats or other such topical nonsense, needlessly adding time to the ceremony. Michael J. Fox was about 15 feet from me and looked pretty good since they warned us his health has declined. He couldn't walk the aisle of the Chan, but neither could a lot of the undergrad Arts students and they didn't have his excuse (I don't know why anyone would think 3" heels would be an appropriate option for 11am). Grad students get their congratulations first, so we spent a long time being pretty bored in the front row while streams of undergrads got their degrees. By the time we got out of the theatre it wasn't hard to convince my friends to have a couple swigs of whisky. But it's done and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's done.

Friday I went out drinking after friends finished work. Because of circumstances the previous night that left me feeling slightly unwell, I decided to drink lighter and started with gin. By the time I had a caesar I was feeling significantly better (those things are magic) and headed off to a graduation party at my guybrarian friend's house. It's weird going to librarian parties; people tend to be pretty reserved until they hit that particular level of drunk that makes them anything but reserved.

Saturday my parents came to town to drop off a hutch so I can store my china. We walked to the Eat Vancouver thing at BC Place and tried to get as many samples as possible. I'm sort of a dork because I bought soy milk (soy milk!) instead of other exciting things like seafood or Boylan's. Large gatherings can be a bit overwhelming to all of us, so we headed home after a couple hours. My parents are Catholic, so we went to mass at Holy Rosary and discovered a visiting choir was singing the mass. The priest said the choir would sing some songs at the end of the service, so after a quick discussion with my parents, we decided to stick around and listen. They were a policeman's choir from Cologne, Germany and the acoustics in the cathedral are pretty spectacular. Our tummies started getting grumbly after about 6 songs, so we headed home. After dinner we went to Chinatown for the night market and wandered around for a bit with Anita. In hindsight, it would have been better to just have dinner there, but vegetables are hard to come by at the night market.

Anita took Mom and Dad yesterday so I could do the Walk for Rape Relief. The weather was so fantastic and I kind of wished I had either kept my flood pants on or condoned wearing shorts in public. The walk is through Stanley Park and ends in Ceperley Park where a big salmon lunch awaits. We served food for a while, watching some of the foods/drinks dwindle and then empty, and were relieved (and starving!) when we were replaced by other servers. I left shortly after hearing they'd raised $30,000 for the rape crisis line and women's shelter. Now that I'm not really working I can't get my holds at the library on a daily basis. I stopped off and picked up the 7 things I had requested, some of which were extremely textbook-like and heavy (thanks a lot, Frank Gehry). I was hoping to have a nap before my parents returned from their day out, but they were already at my house. I had a nap anyway and Mom woke me up at 5 to say we should probably get ready for dinner. It took me all of 5 minutes to get ready (dress on, hair brushed) and out the door to a Thai restaurant for a congratulatory dinner for me and my sister's birthday in June. We decided to go for gelato for dessert and sat outside Mario's until it got chilly.

Generally, nice weekend. Nothing too out of hand or anything; just nice and well-packed. I even got a decent night sleep a couple of nights.