Got this pic from Zach last week. His car is looking great!
We did 2 graduation trips the last 2 weekends. First was to CMU in Pittsburgh for Noah's graduation from the school of music (piano). Al Gore gave a good commencement speech. You can guess the topic. He didn't mention it, but I read something interesting recently. The number 2 source of carbon emissions (behind generation of electricity) is not transportation (that is number 3), but rather cows and friends. More than all transportation (planes, ships, cars) combined! In the US alone, we consume 10 billion livestocked guys each year. Stacked head to tail, that is enough to go to the moon and back 5 times. If my meat swallowing disordered had not already turned me into a mostly vegetarian, that probably would.
Sorry, got off topic. Back to graduation, here is Noah with proud mother:
We celebrated with a trip to a famous beer place built in an old church. Here we see Helen's Mom trying to convince us that sour cream can make any beer taste good. Helen thought it did but I thought it made the sour cream taste bad.
Last weekend we went to Oberlin to visit the Nick in his natural habitat. He and his roomies have a large Fresnel lens they like to melt things with. Here Chloe is cooking marshmallows:
They also have one of those not-quite-legal-so-keep-it-a-secret green lasers. Very bright, so we make sure we only point it out into outer space so only aliens get blinded. Here Helen waves it about into some flour dust.
This next procedure is to be done only in wide open spaces without burnables nearby. We discovered burnables includes Helen's hair. Take a chunk of steel wool, wrap in onto a rope, light it on fire, then spin it around. Nick is a master burning-wool-twirler:
We also went to a lovely night time Oberlin orchestra concert in college greens with about 1000 candle lamps floating about. The conductor's mettle was tested when a dancing blue bunny hopped in and delivered him a cream pie to the face during the opening piece. He didn't miss a beat, but did say after that piece he would like to have a talk with the bunny. Something about making him eat the pie backwards.
One of Nick's hobbies is to do unusual art around the campus. In the last few years he has done enough of it that he has formed a club where he and his secret art ninjas sneak out at night and set up fun art thingies. One of their recent ones was to create a bunch of tape people, made with miles of packing tape. Take a volunteer, wrap them in tape, carefully cut the tape off and re-assemble it and dress it with cheap good will cloths.
Early one morning they set up a bunch of these tape people in the lobby of a popular school building. The tape people looked pretty realistic, so students were a little freaked out at first. When they realized they were dummies, they smiled, sat and studied with them, occasionally patted them on the head. But what they didn't realize was that one of them was Nick, well covered so you couldn't see his face. You can imagine the shrieks that ensued when someone would sit next to a dummy tape person, only to have it slowly move its head and stare at her. Or to have one grunt when patted. Nick had a good time and much discussion ensued on the local school chat board about the mysterious sometimes live manikins.
Eventually the students took the tape people and distributed them to various places. We found the bottom half of one of this one thrown up high onto a stairway overhang:
We also played guitar hero, ate Indian food, met with professors from Nick's majors (Math, CS, and Eastern Studies). Oh yeah, we also found Nick at a graduation thingy. This amusing photo shows me admiring Nick's diploma, perched on his head, Nick looking like he needs to pee, and Chloe being the only one who knows how to give a proper smile for the camera.
Yes, Nick did go barefoot thru the whole proceedings. I think he was the only one, but graduation these days is a bit less formal. One guy walked onstage while smoking a cigarette, another while holding a (well behaved) dog, and a woman proudly carried her baby.
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