stay hungry, stay foolish

to the tune of: Better off Alone by Alice Deejay

Commencement Weekend #2 was still fun, even if I didn't get any diplomas out of it. I went to the Night Before Party, which I missed last year, and got to see Ben's final Harmonics performance (well, until the alumni song at spring show next year) and Dave and Meg's swing solo. Then came karaoke. There's a reason why the folks who invented karaoke have private booths for small groups of singers instead of a large performance hall. We had to sit through performances by people we didn't know that alternated between incredible (the Harmonics stacked a few singers on deck...not fair!) and truly saddening (sorry, three teenage girls do not do Garth Brooks justice). But we got in a fun group performance of Greased Lightning and a stirring rendition of Oklahoma!, a tribute to Dave and Joe Fairbanks' home state.

The actual Commencement Day was much cooler than last year, thankfully. Wacky Dance didn't seem to work as well as last year, but it was still a great time for photo-ops. Steve Jobs gave a pretty good Commencement address, thankfully not rubbing in too much the fact that he never graduated from college and still has more money than all of us put together. Maybe his best line was:

...you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I spent the next week saying goodbyes and helping people moved. Then my family flew out to meet me on what turned out to be the only rainy weekend this month. Aside from getting rear-ended in SF by a careless teenager who was busy flirting with her boyfriend, we had a great time touring Sonoma wineries. I did my first wine tasting--maybe I just don't know anything about wine or maybe I was just stuffed up from the cold I had, but I had a hard time telling the difference between, say, a 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2003 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

It's amazing how many "microclimates" the Bay Area has: while we were getting rained on in Sonoma, it was apparently clear and sunny in San Jose. But fortunately that meant that the clouds on Saturday stayed north of the Golden Gate Bridge (maybe to avoid paying the toll), which meant that for once it was sunny in San Francisco! I never thought this possible, but indeed we were able to get great views of the Bridge in Golden Gate Park. (Note: Let me know if you have trouble with that link and what browser you're using... some rogue browser seems to like turning %20s into +s for some reason.) The Palace of Fine Arts also looks much cooler in bright daylight.

This week is going to be exciting: Kat comes back from Paris, Irish dancing in Berkeley, Friday Night Waltz, a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy concert, and a Fourth of July barbecue are all in the works.

holy crap, i think he updated

to the tune of: Drumbone by Blue Man Group

Whoa. OK, so it's been a month. In my defense, it's been a busy month. And I've got the pictures to prove it...

The last month flew by. Ben's last Harmonics spring show, Dave's Swingtime spring show, and Becky and Kendra's first Decadance spring show all were awesome. Ben was a scorned mime; Dave danced to Dragostea Din Tei.

In the midst of finals I thought it was a good idea to begin my quest for a new car. So far it's been foiled at every turn: every car out there either is really old, has too many miles, is ridiculously expensive, or gets snapped up by someone immediately. You snooze, you lose on su.market. One guy had me wait around at the econ building for half an hour before eventually telling me he sold the car to someone else while I was there. Like vultures these people are. But...I have a date with a '97 Altima tonight so it'll be OK.

Guy and Stewart both had the misfortune of having birthdays during finals week. Helen really wanted to surprise Guy, and was really excited about blindfolding him for some reason. So we hatched a plan for after finals: we'd abduct Guy, put him in the car, and start driving. Instead of pulling up at a restaurant, he'd emerge at a beach near Santa Cruz. And that's what we did. Well, almost. Since Dave's convertible didn't have enough room for us all I wound up in Stewart's car. We were supposed to go ahead and set things up for when Guy got there. And Dave was supposed to get the food ahead of time so I could put it in Stewart's SUV. Turns out on the big day Dave found out he had to work and help Kate move out, so he couldn't get to Safeway early. So Stewart's car makes a rendezvous with him at Safeway to pick up the food and we set off, thinking Dave was going to head back home to abduct Guy, and they'd give us a 15 minute head start but still arrive by sundown. But an hour later when we got to Santa Cruz we found out they hadn't left yet. Turns out he got suckered into more moving, while Helen was desperately trying to distract Guy from thinking about dinner by making him help her with her paper.

Dave returned home and they're all set to blindfold Guy when Helen slammed Ben's finger in a door. So they took time out trying to ice his finger and keep the swelling down. Eventually they did blindfold Guy and put him in the car and take off--going the wrong way on 280. They almost got to Half Moon Bay before they realized what was going on and turned around. Helen was talking about bringing her notebook to work on her paper when someone blurted out, "How are you going to write your paper on the beach?", giving Guy a big hint. Then Dave's car started making strange noises so they pulled over to investigate. Then they needed to stop for gas and Guy needed to use the restroom. But Helen insisted on leaving the blindfold on, so she and Ben had to guide Guy to the bathroom. Of course, Ben had a Safeway bag of ice on his right hand, which looked somewhat suspicious placed against the small of a blindfolded man's back. So they were drawing weird looks and when the attendant started making a phone call they decided to get out quickly. Dave called and told me they were in Scotts Valley, giving Guy another clue. By the time they arrived, the sun had gone down and we had made camp. But we still grilled some burgers on our campfire and a good time was had by all.

By the way, this is why you don't want to be the last one up when it's time to take down the tents. Ben awoke to find his tent collapsed on him.