Weekend in Troy

Karel graduated from RPI on Saturday. Ben and I drove up there on Friday. We left the house at 9:15 in the morning. We stopped to turn in his passport papers (yay for fairly empty passport office in Aspen Hill!) and mail our wedding liscense stuff to the wedding cordinators. Then, we drove. And drove. And paid tolls. And paid more tolls. And drove some more. Then, we finally arrived in Latham, NY at 5:40. We had dinner reservations at Juan O'Flannigans or Jose O'Toole's or some other combination of Mexican and Irish names (because it was a Mexican-Irish restaurant). What, you're probably asking yourself, do they serve at a Mexican-Irish restuarant? Well, lots of alcohol, of course, and regular and interesting Tex-Mex stuff. And then, some really interesting fusion cusine. Ben tried the fusion stuff. He liked it. I can't imagine how a corned beef and cabbage quesadilla would taste. But, his mashed potatoes and carrots were delicious. I had a fun time ordering. At first glance, the menu was full of meatless meals. After ordering for the fourth time, (1. The roasted poblano enchilados couldn't have the mushrooms removed from them, 2. they were out of vegetable tamales, 3. the grilled vegetable empanadas had mushrooms that couldn't be removed from them, and 4. the bean burrito, which I told the waitress to simply order for me if the third option came with unremovable mushrooms instead of having to come back a third time to retake my order) I finally got my food. It was okay.

Friday's weather was nice. Not rainy. Not too shiny. Not too overcast. Perfect weather. Saturday, on the other hand, sucked.

Saturday was cold. Cold and rainy. We had to be at graduation at 8:00 am to get seats together. Really, we could have come in after it started and still been able to sit together. It was raining. A constant, all day rain that wasn't bad enough to have them cancel the ceremony, but was bad enough for them to give us ponchos and plastic bags (to keep the programs from becoming unrecognizably soggy). It was cold. The kindof cold that chills you to the bone and keeps you shivering all day. Well, at least it kept me shivering all day.

The speaker, the guy who wrote The World is Flat, was good. Best graduation speaker I've ever heard. Another point of interest, the doctoral robes for RPI are kickass. They are red with black stripes and their hats look like floppier mountie hats. New consideration for choosing graduate school -- find out what their robes and hats look like in order to end up with kick-ass purple robes and hat or cool blue robes.

So, we finally left graduation after Karel got her diploma around 1. Then Ben and I went back to our hotel and walmart to procure dry clothes. I got pants and velcro shoes. I like my velcro shoes. I sprayed them with waterproofing stuff and they kept my feet dry for the remainder of the day. They were very much worth the $9 Ben spent on them for me.

After getting dry clothes on the replace the wet ones, we returned to Karel's dorm room where they (her roommates) had made way more food than was necessary to feed the entire senior class. Somehow Ben and I got roped into grilling the vegetables under the tent. The tent was just small enough to mean that I had to stand right under the edge and get dripped upon. My dry clothes were now wet again.

I don't think I finally got warm again until I had slept. Well, I don't remember being warm up 3:46 in the morning when some stupid siren went off. Twice. Right outside our window. Fun times.

Ben and I met my parents and sister at a diner for breakfast this morning. It was good. We then hit the road around 9:15 and got home around 4:30. We stopped in Gibson, PA for diesel and snacks. It was like a whole other world. They had a sign on the front of the shop part that had the current terror warning alert. Hello! They're in Gibson, PA! No one knows where that is. You are not a terrorism target! You are a bunch of crazy, hillbillyish white people in a sparsely populated area. On another note, there are a lot of massage places near I81. Most of them cater to truckers. I'm assuming that massages are simply euphamisms for something else. Like hair highlighting. No trucker wants to let their friends know that they highlight their hair. It would be embarassing.

In conclusion, I'm going to make Karel come to one of my future graduations and I will spray her with water and fan her.