Pomp and Circumstance

I spent this weekend in Indiana with nearly my entire family (only missing Pat) to celebrate Jim's graduation. It was a mad-cap weekend to say the least, but it was really great. We had tornado warnings, multiple airport pick ups and drops, belated birthday gift exchanges, and graduation itself. Jim was salutatorian and delivered a fantastic speech at graduation. The twist in the weekend plans was that Jim also qualified for state meet in his individual event in track (800 meters). Graduation started at 4, and his race was at 7:45 in Bloomington (which is 90 minutes away roughly). Crazy timing to say the least. So Jim spoke, grabbed his diploma, changed into his track uniform, and we all piled onto a school bus to Bloomington. His poor track coach was subjected to us on the bus for 3 hours total--poor guy. I have to say that John managed to make the countryside interesting. Jim was quite a star in Crawfordsville to say the least. He kept getting pictures and interviews in the local paper. It really did not get to his head. I capped the weekend off by getting delayed by a day coming home and knocking my brand new cell phone into a cup of coffee (after all, I was in the land of basketball). It still beat getting stuck in Chicago last night! I could have used the dryer Sue demonstrated from the restaurant in Bloomington. It was like drying you hands with a jet engine. I managed to get a shot of Brian's face since he was surrounded by family with cameras and we could get him!