Well, it’s been quite a weekend, to say the least. I decided to have my weekend start a little early by taking Friday off. I thought that I should at least take the day off since my Dad was coming into town on Thursday night. But, that night was only the beginning of a whirlwind weekend of fun stuff to do.
Thursday night started out with myself and my Dad. He arrived late in the afternoon and then we headed out to dinner at Azteca. We tried to go to the Ram, but we thought that an hour and a half wait was a bit too long for our liking. Plus, we were pretty hungry. After dinner we called it a night. He’s still on central time and it was getting to be about that time.
On Friday, we got up early and got breakfast at Mom’s in U-Village. I got my usual and we just sat and talked over breakfast about tons of random stuff. From there it was off to find a phone charger for my Dad’s newly acquired phone. After a couple trips to various stores we found the charger at a Sprint store in Northgate. From there it was off to Anacortes.
Now, this probably seems random that we’d go to Anacortes, but my Dad loves boats. Not just any kind of boats, but sailboats. So, we made the trek up to the port at Anacortes to check out some of the boats. There were tons of them there, but we just walked around for an hour or so and looked at boats. Just relaxing and enjoying the day.
Once the early afternoon rolled around we decided that we needed to head back to Seattle. We had a dinner reservation that night that would include Jamie, so we needed to get back so that we could get to dinner on time. Well, as you all know I am a huge stickler for getting things done/being places/arriving on time. Well, the streets in downtown Seattle, which I walk every day, still seem to baffle me when in my car. I guess it’s the luxury of walking on either side of the street going either direction you want that is deiceving when driving. So, needless to say, I drove around “the block” a few times to get parking. Just as we’re on our last time around I get a call from my Dad. I hand my phone to Jamie and she talks to him.
Dad: Where are you?
Jamie: Finding parking, we’ve been having issues.
Dad: Well, valet it, I’ll pay for it.
Me: *sigh*
This call comes right as I pull into the lot to park. I found a $5 lot crammed between two $8 ones only to find out that my Dad would pay for it to be valet parked at the hotel. Oh, well, at least we were parked.
Finally, at dinner, I wasn’t too hungry. I was stressed out about the whole parking fiasco that I started and I just was like, ugh. However, the meal was good and after dinner it was off to UW for the iSchool Convocation.
The little reception that the iSchool had was pretty cool. We got to mingle amongst our faculty and peers and just relax and have a good time. It’s strange celebrating your graduation three months after it happens, but it was still nice to be amongst friends and family.
The ceremony, much like last year, was short and sweet. I say that it was short since I graduated from high school with 700 other people and a ceremony that seemed to last like three and a half hours.
It was nice to hear the Dean speak as well as Bob Boiko. Both are stepping away from their positions at the end of this year and it was nice to hear from them one last time. Now, the Dean will be back, but as a lecturer instead.
Of the two awards that were handed out, Jamie won the IUGA lead Excellence in Informatics Award and C.A. won the Faculty Award for Excellence in Informatics. So, congrats again to both! You are now certified info pimps. Rawr!
Overall, Cris and the iSchool staff did a great job with the event and I really enjoyed it. After I dropped my Dad off at the hotel it was off to bed, Saturday would be an early day since we would be playing golf at the TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge.
After getting up a little bit earlier than usual it was off to the golf course. The drive was much shorter than I thought it would be, but that was fine with me! So, with this extra time we had we decided to venture out to Snoqualmie Falls. I had never seen it before and it was pretty cool. Since my Dad is a little bit afraid of heights he stayed back in the observation deck, but it was still really cool to see. I’d go back there to take some shots sometime when the weather is a little bit nicer out.
Now it was finally time to head out to the course. We got some breakfast, took a little tour of the clubhouse, which is very nice BTW, and we warmed up at the range.
From the 1st tee to the 18th green it was tons of fun to play golf. Now, the round was pretty slow at 5 hours (not your 3 hour Hazeltine rounds), but still very enjoyable. I don’t know exactly what I shot, but it had to be around 90 to 100. So, for not playing for over a year it was great to get out and play. I took a crazy amount of pictures on the course which I have put up on my Flickr account.
It was quite a nice treat to play 18 holes of golf and just relax and hang out. I wasn’t too pumped about the huge ceremony at UW, but I felt really bad when Jamie texted me about the rain.
Later that night…
We went to Trevor’s for a graduation after party! Again, we were a little late, but I had to clean up from golfing and David and Jamie were drying out from the graduation ceremony. Trevor put on quite the show of food, drinks, music, and good times. There were the usual suspects with the addition of our west side boy C.A. in attendance. I was pretty tired by the end of the night and after dropping of some of the crew it was finally off to get some rest.
Now, we’ve finally reached Sunday, the bestest day for eating so much food you will hate yourself when you are done. To do this, we headed to Port Orchard to partake in Jamie’s graduation open house. Trevor, Jamie, David, Teresa, Jules, Casey, Greg, and myself made the trip over to enjoy all that is delicious and good. We ate so much food that we had to walk it off in the forest and then sit and watch Jamie, Trevor, and Jamie’s Mom sing us songs. Oh, yea, and David owned at karaoke. Again, lots to eat, good company, and a good final chapter to the weekend of graduation celebration.
So, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations! Heck, who knows, if I decide to go back to school, I might have another one of these… right?
Flickr: Graduation Weekend Photoset