I still think I'm one of the luckiest people I know and it was underscored again yesterday. As a pleasant change, convo was one of the best I've been to with seemed like a vocal quartet (I couldn't see past the heads, I'm too short ) singing the national anthem and a the honourary doctorate that was an electric speaker - Dr. Nancy Olivieri, who in 1998 exposed a case of a pharmaceutical company attempting to suppress results that were critical to a drug they were developing.

Of course that luck has a sense of humour. I found that my blue folder that was supposed to contain my degree parchment had a letter instead, informing me that I owed the university some money. I checked my account, nothing. Checked my library fines: 1$. So good job, they're going to spend more money sending me the parchment in the mail. (Ok, yes, there's privacy issues and most of it's automatic... but still)

When I crossed the stage, I do believe I recall some cheering and also some laughter. I don't know for sure since... eek, omg, thousand? more? people staring at you while I'm trying to get the shot that will document this event is just wee bit o' pressure. (was told that the graduate shooting images of the audience went over well though. Though, I'm sure anyone that knows anything of me will be totally unsurprised)

Paul came and took some lovely shots of me crossing the stage and we had a bit of a camera battle. rissdemeanour> showed up too and we took some more posed silly pictures of me chewing on sculptures and climbing things. The shots in LCD review looked great . Thanks for that!

A small stab at the pics of my convocation/gradumakation.

The evening was spent paddling around the Indian Arm. My circles of friends were brought together with a tiny worry that things would implode (I've been warned about this in the past) but it was postively fantastic. The pissing weather from the last couple of days just cleared up and became a perfect night for the moonlight paddle. blaue_libelle wrote a bit more about it. After dark, we cracked the glowsticks attached to our paddles and from a distance, it looked like will o'wisps flitting about the water. Gotta love the serenity.

A couple of quotes from the night (there were so many more):

paddy_cakes: ass shaft!!
(He realized that our paddles had the word "fibreglass shaft" written on them in a way that almost all paddles ended up with the "L" worn off"
kissmitten: such a beautiful night and all you can think of is your ass

Thanks everyone to made it out (and really, too bad to those that didn't it was wonderful)