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Not quite relaxing
May. 13th, 2012 07:16 pmThis weekend we went to St Louis, MO - not somewhere I'd necessarily choose to go, but M's niece was graduating from Lindenwood University in St Charles and we said we'd go. To be fair to her, to travel almost half way around the world to go to university is not something I'd have been able to do, but she did and all power to her. She's actually staying on for a Masters which gives her another 2 years in the US.
We left Thursday, given there's only one direct flight a day it takes pretty much a day to get there from Seattle. And, I'll be honest, we didn't stop all weekend. Thursday night we went into St Louis for REDACTED, best not discussed really. Then Friday was spent doing prep work for the Graduation, which seemed to basically involve dress shopping while Pat, the proud father, and I went to the pub and grumbled. Saturday brought graduation itself.
Now, my memories of a cold day in December 1991 are pretty foggy but I don't really remember anything like I sat through there. For a start US academic regalia seems to be a tad OTT compared to what I remember from the UK. One of the guys honestly looked like a bumble bee. He wasn't a small gentleman to start with, but with bright yellow stripes on each arm of his gown and two large ones on his back he really did look like a bee. It also lasted forever... well... I lie, 4 hours.
After that the plan was to gather in a local park for a BBQ. That was the plan, of course, such plans don't survive an encounter with an excited 22 year old with a flat phone battery. We soon discovered that a) nobody seemed to know where the park was and b) the address in the Facebook invite was wrong. We would have JFGI except that everybody and their dog was using the new, shiny and pointless '4G' LTE network and essentially there wasn't any data connectivity either. Once we resolved that, and I had beer the rest of the day went swimmingly. I think.
Today we went to look at the Arch thing, which seems to be the only thing of note in St Louis. Frankly, it is pretty cool and from a certain angle with the sun behind it, it does look like you imagine a Bank's Orbital would look. Anyway. Homeward Bound, pretty tired and looking forward to catching up with the Furkids and Game of Thrones and then sleep in my own bed.
We left Thursday, given there's only one direct flight a day it takes pretty much a day to get there from Seattle. And, I'll be honest, we didn't stop all weekend. Thursday night we went into St Louis for REDACTED, best not discussed really. Then Friday was spent doing prep work for the Graduation, which seemed to basically involve dress shopping while Pat, the proud father, and I went to the pub and grumbled. Saturday brought graduation itself.
Now, my memories of a cold day in December 1991 are pretty foggy but I don't really remember anything like I sat through there. For a start US academic regalia seems to be a tad OTT compared to what I remember from the UK. One of the guys honestly looked like a bumble bee. He wasn't a small gentleman to start with, but with bright yellow stripes on each arm of his gown and two large ones on his back he really did look like a bee. It also lasted forever... well... I lie, 4 hours.
After that the plan was to gather in a local park for a BBQ. That was the plan, of course, such plans don't survive an encounter with an excited 22 year old with a flat phone battery. We soon discovered that a) nobody seemed to know where the park was and b) the address in the Facebook invite was wrong. We would have JFGI except that everybody and their dog was using the new, shiny and pointless '4G' LTE network and essentially there wasn't any data connectivity either. Once we resolved that, and I had beer the rest of the day went swimmingly. I think.
Today we went to look at the Arch thing, which seems to be the only thing of note in St Louis. Frankly, it is pretty cool and from a certain angle with the sun behind it, it does look like you imagine a Bank's Orbital would look. Anyway. Homeward Bound, pretty tired and looking forward to catching up with the Furkids and Game of Thrones and then sleep in my own bed.
