Note: Been in the oddly busy part of the end of break and that means I guess I decided that Friday was a hiatus.

The only exciting thing that’s happened recently is our youngest started 7th grade today.

This involved her, after all these years, finally getting a uniform and being more obviously segregated by gender.

They marched in with girls on the left and boys on the right.

There was the usual round of introductions in which every new student (71 in total) was introduced by name. There was some excitement as a student in a higher grade fainted or had an epileptic seizure and was escorted out.

Eventually, our youngest gave a speech on behalf of her class of new students. I still do not understand how she was chosen to do this, but she rocked. The speech was good and she read it like an old pro. She has clearly inherited speech-making genes from both me and She Who Must Be Obeyed, who also has been known to make impressive speeches.

Eventually the students left and we parents suddenly found ourselves being held hostage. It is tradition to observe the first homeroom, which was happening as we sat there. However we were assured we couldn’t get to the homerooms before they ended unless five people volunteered to serve on the PTA. As I was holding down SWMBO’s hands she couldn’t volunteer.

Eventually volunteers were drafted and we got to see the homeroom and run home.

I ended up having to go to work, but that ‘s a story for another day.

Lately I’ve been reverting to university summer time. Either that or I’ve become a vampire.

Because it’s a holiday/house arrest time, I’ve been staying up later and getting up later. This is something I haven’t done much since summer time during university. In those days, I’d invert time to the point I was staying up all night and sleeping a good portion of the day.

This doesn’t help me remember what day it is but eventually I get up and do the “work” required of my house arrest.

The funny part is, I’m actually doing actual work as I’ve foolishly decided to change things next year. Sigh. Perhaps it’s not too late to change my mind.

Our youngest graduated from elementary school today in a ceremony that was kind of mixed.

First, in order to reduce crowd size, there is a farewell ceremony for the sixth graders with all the first through fourth grade classes. The lower classmen were then sent home and only the fifth grade and the graduating class remained. (Note: She Who Must Be Obeyed and I accidentally crashed the farewell for the lower classmen. Long story.)

This means that not only did all the parents of graduating students get seats, there were also a lot of good seats to be had.

However, after that things get kind of odd.

The entire ceremony took two hours which, I’m pretty sure, is longer than both my high school and university graduations. In both of those cases the goal was 1) give me the damned diploma and 2) where’s the beer? (Note: I was technically of drinking age when I graduated high school although I wasn’t when I got to university. Another long story.)

What made the sixth grade graduation go on so long was the 50 minutes of speeches from various adults. Diploma presentation for 60 students took 25 minutes. Speeches a bit longer.

There was also a 15 minute section where all the 30+ VIPs (a few of whom gave the long speeches) were introduced individually.

After that was a final performance that took 30 minutes and tested my arm strength (as I was running the video camera). The sixth grade gave a speech that involved each student speaking part of the speech and, occasionally, all of them speaking in unison. That was followed by a song and the fifth graders repeating the process. This was all kind of cool and lots of people cried.

After that, the graduates marched out and I got to escape. She Who Must Be Obeyed remained behind.

Spent the day doing nothing. Spent the evening with old friends. Because of that, this post will be only filler. (I may throw out an extra on Saturday, if I can only be bothered.)

The last time this friend was here I was working hither and thither and we couldn’t arrange a meeting. This means we haven’t seen each other for 14 years. We met a thousand years ago in the last millennium. (1999, which was in the last millennium, which was 1,000 years ago. More or less.)

A lot has changed during that time, including spouses and the number of children. She’s met our oldest but our youngest didn’t exist. Also, my hair didn’t look as gray back then because the lighting was better back then. (Yes, my hair isn’t turning white; it’s just bad lighting. No. Really. There’s bad lighting everywhere. It follows me. Something like that.)

Hopefully we won’t have to wait 14 years for the next meeting.