Feats of strength

The first feat of course is graduating! I really have one class left, but that will end on June 6 and then I will be officially done. I got to walk at convocation though (I skipped the big university-wide graduation at the Carrier Dome).

Kris, Brad, and Ed all came. It was so great to have them there. I was very sad when they left -- and I won't get to see Ed again until June 2. I'm returning home late this Friday night, at which point he will have already departed for the Sloan Fellows international trip. He'll be in India and South Africa.

Here are some pics from graduation:





The lei was thoughtfully provided by Brad M., my BIL. We'll have to take pics of Kris, Brad, and Ed wearing it at their graduations as well. ;)

After convocation, we attended the opening of the new iSchool building. We enjoyed some "knowledge-enhanced beverages."



The food was yummy and I was so lucky to meet many of my professors in person. My econ professor in particular was so much fun to talk to. I think we really miss out on personalities sometimes online. My enterprise architecture professor invited me to visit him in DC (his agency is implementing SharePoint) and said my paper for his class, on enterprise information architecture, will be appearing in the August issue of the Journal of Enterprise Architecture. :)

Last night, I got to go out to dinner with Chris (we've taken many classes together) and her family at Dinosaur BBQ. I'm not particularly into BBQ, but the New York strip steak was charred to perfection (I ate every last morsel of my 14 ounces). The mac-n-cheese, featuring five cheeses and jalapenos, was the most amazing mac-n-cheese I've ever had in my whole life. The honey-soaked cornbread was divine. It was a fitting celebration!

This afternoon, I had to move from the "commencement dorm" to the "summer dorm." This turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated; the taxi took forever to arrive and I made a stupid mistake and asked to be taken to last year's summer dorm and not this year's summer dorm. Once I figured out what had happened, I decided I needed to walk. Getting another cab would have taken forever. But in addition to my clothes and computer bag, I also had what felt like 300 lbs of food from Trader Joe's in EarthTotes. My second feat of strength was to carry all this stuff 2 blocks (halfway to the new dorm) before mercifully being rescued by a phone call from Rory, a guy with whom I've taken many classes who lives in Juneau. He picked me up. Whew.

After that we got together with two more classmates from econ and we had a blast hanging out on Marshall St and chatting. Online courses certainly have their weaknesses, but the great thing about them is that they make it possible for a systems analyst from Nicaragua, a technology analyst from New Jersey, a consultant from Alaska, and an info systems engineer from Massachusetts to become friends and grab a non-virtual drink together at the end of the semester.