Last Friday was the last day of school for Meredith and the other teachers. To celebrate, we went out to Cheesecake Factory with Zach and Londa. We had not seen them in awhile, so it was good to catch up with them. The meal was excellent, as usual. I had a breakfast sandwich, and in a rare moment of sanity, Mer and I split a piece of cheesecake. We both managed to leave feeling full but not sick.
It was a nice evening, and we had a graduation party to go to, but we had a few minutes we could spare. We said goodbye to Zach and Londa, and then Mer and I went into the Apple Store. Mer quickly fled before the mass of geeks and nerds, but I managed to stick it out and got a new iPod Nano. My old one was acting weird; sometimes the battery would lose its charge, and the Nike Plus system stopped spontaneously during my longer runs.
After we got clear of the Apple Store, we wandered over to a sculpture art gallery that specializes in a couple of artists whom Mer and I like very much. I fell in love with another woman musician (a flautist this time) for a mere $85,000. Meredith fell in love with a Frederick Hart bronze of the creation for a mere $135,000. Ahhh, the joys of having high-class tastes on teacher incomes.
We then headed off to the graduation party. The party was nice; we saw a bunch of students we know and another faculty member. The food looked very good, but since I was full, I “only” nibbled on two cookies. We hung out for about an hour, and then headed home.
Saturday was spent mostly at graduation parties. We had three that day. We did manage to get a very quick visit in to University Hospitals, where our friend Ami (“Dubbs”) was recovering from ear surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor. We did not stay long, as we did not want to tire her, and we had the grad parties to go to. The parties were fine, and culminated in a party that featured two of my kids in Fools (Faith and Steve). We spent about an hour and a half at that party chatting with folks. It was a good time.
Sunday was CVCA’s graduation ceremony at The Chapel in Green. We have had graduation there for a few years now, and it is a good facility. It can hold everyone comfortably, and the graduates get to sit in the front rows instead of being up on stage as they were in the older Chapel in Akron. The graduation ceremony has a drop-by gathering beforehand with some munchies (mint brownies! Yum!). We also go to hang out with some of our students before the actual ceremony.
The ceremony went off well; the only slight hitch is that the orchestra playing “Pomp and Circumstance” stopped slightly early, so the last ten or so girls quickly slid into their seats as opposed to marching in. The president of CVCA smiled and welcomed them to graduation, and everyone chuckled. The rest of the ceremony went well, and Mer and I took off pretty quickly afterwards – the picture-taking in the lobby is a bit of a zoo. We ran into our friend Eric Ling out by our car, and we talked for a bit. We were joined by Matt Akers, and we laughed a lot. That helped break the weirdness that happens for me every year when the students I know graduate. I will certainly miss this class – if they are not the closest class I have known, they are certainly in the top two.