Life of Wry

What a day, what a day. It lived up to its billing, for the sheer fact: Peter graduated from high school. Not that that was at all in question, but rather: milestone. One of the biggies.

Some shots on the day, and a bit of commentary:

Family came. I have to say, this was nice. I encouraged family to attend family parties–one in the north and one in the south–instead of enduring the reading of 600+ names of strangers under what could have been blazing sun on uncomfortable bleachers, but then again, it was nice that Matt, Michael, Heidi and Manoj were there!

Just for fun, here’s a photo of John’s graduation from South High in 2004.. Chris, John, Peter and Jay. They were a bit more formal than Davis, where most kids wore shorts and flip flops. I remember thinking Chris was so modern.. taking pictures on his flip phone! I also remember thinking, wow… here’s Peter, having just completed kindergarten… one day he will graduate from high school!

And so he did….

Here is our pre-ceremony family dinner:

And here are a couple of fashionistas helping Peter with his mortarboard:

And off he goes:

A ticket snafu (that is, Peter left the tickets in the car and Jim, instead of collecting them at will call, had to hike down to Eureka and Mills to retrieve them) left us scrambling for seats at the last minute and resulted in family cheer squad separation. At least Matt, Mike, Heidi and Manoj sat together. And Jim and I sure needed each other.

Smily on the outside, weepy on the inside…. parents of the graduate:

It was a lovely evening… not the least bit hot. Ceremony was two hours long… with speeches and the ceremonial presentation of diplomas. I couldn’t see the stage, but did have a clear view of the giant projector screen, so most of my photos are taken of those screen images.

The processional. I’m still humming Pomp and Circumstance…

Principal Will Brown:

There were several student speakers. I liked this one, Darya Saberi:

This is why I’m glad I have friends who take and share photos with me…. here is my view…

and my photographic effort…I was trying so hard to get a good one of Peter, but shaky and rushed as he made his brief appearance…

Thank goodness for Marc up in the bleachers, who got these two!

Marc also got shots of the graduating class in their seats… this pano was right side of stage, where I think Peter was:

And this is a great one of the left side of the stage and the ceremonial shifting of tassels, followed by the cap toss…

Damn… gets me every time. Sniff.

And post ceremony photos. We convened on the quad to get out of the crowd a little…Peter and many of his friends got that memo.

Reed, Peter and Daniel:

Peter and Ray, who will both go to UCSD in September:

And the traditional family shot:

And that is that.