6/13/16 in 750 Words

So, I’m writing today from my desk at work.

It’s almost 3:00 (started this at 2:45) and I’ve finally gotten a few minutes to myself… but only because I carved it out. :)

So, the graduation… I understand now why Jen apologized over and over and over again about me having to ride with her mother to get there. She picked me up at 7:00am, right after I got done with yesterday’s post. I hopped into the jeep, said “hello” and directed her to the interstate. First bit of time was fun, we talked, caught up, she told me about how her father wasn’t feeling well so it would be just the two of us driving. Then we got on the freeway, where I heard one of the scariest phrases ever; “Keep an eye out for cops, I don’t want another speeding ticket.” We went 75 to 80 mph (interstate speed limit was 60, with parts being up at 70) the whole way down there. Then when we got down to Portland, we got lost. She handed me her phone to use for a GPS, but couldn’t take directions worth crap. It didn’t help that we were zooming along faster than the GPS could compute a route and yeaaaahhh…

We ended up getting there only 30 to 45 minutes early, instead of the 60 to 75 minutes early we wanted to get there. So no breakfast. We had a fun time trying to figure out how to meet up with Stephie (Jen’s sis) – Jen’s Mom is very… well… self absorbed, to the point of not listening to more than a third of what anyone else says to her, and then getting pissed off when she couldn’t figure out what was going on. So I called Stephie, told her exactly where we were, she met us and walked us to our seats.

It was a good turn out for Jen – Her mom, me, her other best friend Heeri, her sis Steph, Steph’s wife Nike, Jen’s Dad, and Jen’s boyfriend Adam.

The commencement took a lot less time than I expected it to… there were around 2,000 or so people getting their degrees, and I expected to be there all day. But apparently, that was only half of the people (if not less) who were getting their diploma from the school that day, so they went as fast as they could (while still giving everyone their due) so they could empty the place and prepare it for the other half of the graduates and their family.

Jen got named under the Latin Honors stuff… Summa Cum Laude. I was sooo proud of her (once Heeri explained to me what it meant :) ).

After the commencement, we met up with Jen and I gave her the money lei that I had finished up last night for her. The look on her face was priceless! She looked at it and said something like, “Oh, this is neat!” Then she looked at it a little longer and then looked over at me and said, “You didn’t use real money, did you?” When I told her I did, she gave me one of those “WTF?!” looks. “What?! You used real money?! Whyyy?” I told her that I took a collection up and my family and Bob worked on it for her. She loved it. ^-^

Pictures were taken, and then we went to the Rose and Thistle – it’s a Scottish pub on Broadway. It was really yummy – I had the Highland Fling, which reminds me of a cottage pie, only wrapped in a bit of flaky puff pastry. The Fling was yummy, but after looking at Heeri’s plate, I almost wished that I got the bangers and mash. Those looked really good. Jen’s Mom about drove everyone on our end of the table nuts during the dinner too… she was told that she couldn’t smoke / vape at the table (we were outside) and she had a 5 minute tirade about how she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t, and then when she saw someone else on the other side of the patio smoking, she went off even more. Didn’t even take into account the fact that Heeri is allergic to cigarette smoke. Then she and Jen got into an almost fight over the fact that Mom wanted to have a couple beers with lunch/dinner, and Jen asked her to keep it down to one beer (we figured we’d sit and talk for about two hours or so, so the beer would have time to work itself out of her bloodstream or whatnot) but her Mom insisted that she was a better driver while drunk than sober and blah blah blah. Jen’s sister got into it and basicly used the “Mom, it’s Jen’s day, don’t fight with her” argument to end the fight.

I’m glad that she did, if Jen’s Mom had drank any more than the one beer that she had, I would have discretely looked up train tickets and found my own way back up. I don’t do the whole driving with drunken people thing.

At dinner I got to talk to Adam and I made plans with Jen and Heeri to meet up down there again at my next show in that area. Just chatted and the like, and then it was time to go. We said goodbyes, got hugs and the like, and then I was in the car with Mom again. All I have to say about the ride home is that I was awake as far as the border between WA and OR, and I curled up and slept the rest of the ride home. I woke up right before home to find out that she’d been playing “tag” with a Mustang the whole way and had been going about 90 or so the whole way up the interstate. o.o

I curled up and slept early last night in order to decompress from her, and still woke up late. :) It was fun, scary, but fun.