I'm Your Candy Man

Partly in protest over our ridiculous robes and partly in protest of the MAC program in general, I decided to try and have as much fun as possible at this year's commencement ceremony. This year our wonderful fashion designers envisioned a glorious black garment with an absurd(ly hard to configure) hood clad in black with brown suede trim and a light blue and white striped interior which would be turned partly inside out to reveal a nightmarish kaleidoscope.

However, the best part of the outfit involved the sleeves. Hanging from the end of the sleeves of our all black robes were what I can best describe as "fabric tubes" sewn together at the end to create a whimsical "flipper" effect. To be more descriptive, if one were to slide one's hands to the bottom of said tubes you would look strikingly like a penguin.

So what purpose do these "fabric tubes" serve? Absolutely none... for everyone else. However, I felt that the best course of action was to fill said tube/flippers with candy: chocolate candies in the left, fruit candies in the right. Because I mean, hey... who doesn't love candy?

Needless to say I spent the better part of the afternoon prior to the ceremony passing out candy to the siblings/cousins/kids of the graduates as well as my fellow graduates themselves. After the first round most people came back for another "fix." It was awesome having people come up and say, "what do ya got?" And in a hush-hush voice responding, "everything baby, chocolate or fruit, what's your pleasure?"

Thankfully all of the chocolate candy got eaten before it got too hot and turned my left tube/flipper into a saggy dripping sac of sugar and cocoa. The highlight was David's cousins referring to me as "Candy Man." I suppose that was really what I was going for all along. But after the candy-sleeves, the rest of the ceremony was pretty much a let down... albeit the old-timey bluegrass band was quite hilarious and the fountain of liquid chocolate was gloriously excessive.

Here here to being done with school forever!

No Nippon Q Queue

I'm devastated at the recent news that I won't be going to Japan after all. Even after booking the airline tickets, hotel rooms, (nearly) non-refundable Japan rail passes, and buying a bunch of camera equipment, my traveling counterpart has backed out of the trip due to academic reasons.

Not that I don't understand his reasons, I do, and I wish him the best of luck in the coming summer and semester finishing up school and hopefully moving to LA to pursue his dream. But I guess I just really wanted to see Japan before it's too late (i.e. I start working) and the rest of my summer is pretty booked up with other trips and the CPA exam. The chances of me being able to take two and a half weeks off to tour Japan once I've started work are about as good as getting signed as the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls.

But it's not the end of the world. He's gonna pay me back for the parts that I couldn't get refunded and in return I'm going to help him write some scripts and shoot some skits for STV this summer. In all, things will work out. Now the question just becomes... what the hell do I do with the next 2.5 weeks that are suddenly void of activities?

The answer: run. Run my ass off. Because of finals and an increasingly hectic schedule leading up to graduation I have totally neglected the gym. Today's mile and a half was nearly murder. To think that less than 2 months ago I was running 4.5 miles a day with no problem and now I can barely manage a third of that... Well, that just speaks to the effects of Bo'jangles, pizza and alcohol.

Good news though. About 3 weeks ago Paradeez and I put our townhouse up for sale and as of yesterday we signed the offer papers to sell it. Our first offer came in at $500 more than the assign price. Ummm... that's called a no-brainer. My favorite part of my first jaunt into real estate: not paying any closing costs at purchase OR at sale. BOOM! Tough actin' Tinactin.

Graduation is Thursday and I'm leaving Hillsborough forever Friday morning. Back in the dirty dirty till October. Gotta love it.