We just saw Star Trek

Chelsea and I just watched the new Star Trek movie and I'm not going to spoil anything by telling you our favorite part. Because our favorite part is intrinsically connected to the people we were sitting near.

During the most emotional part of the movie, the part where everyone's quiet because we're all feeling with these characters, the phone of the girl sitting next to us started to make a noise. And not a normal phone noise. Oh, no.

It was a young man's voice (probably her new husband) saying, "Debbie, don't forget your birth control." Over and over. It took her a minute to find her phone, so we heard his reminder about 4 times. I imagine she didn't forget her birth control tonight.

Oh yeah, and Star Trek into Darkness was good. You should see it, if you haven't already.

It's the little things

If you've been to our house, (or even if you haven't) you know that we have a lot of books. It's just what happens when two people with English literature degrees get married and have kids who read voraciously. And like with the Dewey decimal system, our vast number of books are organized thematically, with Pynchon books near the Vonnegut books. Toni Morrison has her own shelf. The business books are all together as are all the poetry books. Dance books are all together, next to the books about gender identity.

Yesterday, I was doing something on the computer and turned toward the shelves next to the computer while I thought about something. I don't remember what I was considering, but when I found this thematic coupling on the shelf, it totally took over what I was thinking about.

The placement of The Fountainhead on the shelf pretty much sums up how we feel about Ayn Rand. It was one of those unintentional, serendipitous things that none of us consciously intended, but is quietly revelatory. And if you're an Ayn Rand fan, I'm so sorry.

Graduation

This weekend was the day we've all been waiting for; a day 3 years in the making. I graduated!

Lest we all lose our heads over it, the events were tempered by the fact that we still have a course to complete in the first block of the summer term. Still, it was great to celebrate all the hard work and sacrifice to reach this goal. There were great speakers and I got to wear my fancy graduation robe and hang out with my friends in a celebration for us. I wasn't planning on going to commencement until I heard who the speaker was going to be and then I decided I needed to go and take Sophie.

We listened to Anousheh Ansari speak about how important it is to have a dream and keep working for it. As a woman, an engineer and an astronaut, I thought she would be a good role model for my little girl who loves math. She told us to get a refund on half of the tuition we've paid the university because the world changes fast enough now that half the things we've learned are already obsolete. And she also mentioned that watching Star Trek is absolutely vital to understanding where the future is going. She's a huge Trekkie.

It was a great talk and it was way better than the one for my undergraduate degree. It was also fun to walk through the university on our processional, through the halls and as a grad student, be at the front of all of the lines.

The next day, Friday, was convocation, so it was just the business school. Again, as a graduate student, I got to walk past all the other graduates to the front of the line, where we all gathered together, rollicking and chatting excitedly. My group was really concerned that James (one of the group members) wasn't there yet and it was getting really close to time for the event to start, but he showed up in the nick of time. We were supposed to carry our hoods folded on our arms and the director seemed to want them a particular way. So I just held mine out and made her fold mine for me. It's called delegating the task to an expert. That's what good managers do.

Convocation was fun because it was much smaller and the business school valedictorian gave a little speech about how now we may think we're done and things will get easier now that we're graduating, but now we have to get real jobs and that's going to be harder than school. It's one thing hearing that from an undergraduate speaker and entirely another to get that from a professor who should know after a whole semester together that you all have full-time jobs in addition to being students.

It was fun to have my parents, my grandparents and Chelsea's family there. Thanks to all of you for being excellent to me. And now for the part you've been waiting patiently for: the pictures.

2013 Group 4: Roger Crist, me, Amy Engh, Brad Plothow, Aaron Johnson, James Hanson

These are the ones that we took that were clear. Now I just need to collect the pictures that other people took. And get Chelsea and my mom some photography lessons or something. Because their pictures looked about the same and this is one of the clearer ones.

Okay, so that one's not too bad.

You can tell that these are people in robes. In any case, I'm glad that they were there. It was a good weekend.