CONgraduation much better than a Graduation

When I opened the mailbox on Monday I discovered that Br's Master's diploma had finally arrived. Yes, we both finished our graduate work like 3 years ago unfortunately Br's adviser wasn't very motivated to approve Br's thesis. My observation of grad school is that it is a lot of jumping through hoops and it seems at times that advisers get a lot of joy watching you jump so they put up hoop after hoop and you have no other option but to jump. You work hard on writing a thesis and then you give it to them and they turn around and make you change it. Then you give them the revised version and they want to change it again. And this process goes over and over until you finally change everything you've changed back to how it was before. In the end you find that the last hoop you jump through looks a whole lot like the first one you jumped though.

In any event Br's professor finally let him defend his thesis this past semester and now he has officially graduated. Since the end was a little anti-climatic (seeing as we've already moved on in our life), Br didn't go to graduation. When the diploma surprised me in the mail I decided to surprise Br with a CONgraduation when he got home from work. I put up some balloons and a banner, turned our outdoor kitchen into a podium and stage, and invited out friends over. We played pomp and circumstance on kazoos. I made Br give the commencement address. His friend Derek hooded him (with a hood made of tissue paper and aplastic table cloth). Then E presented him with his diploma. After we went and got some pizza. I think every graduation should be this short and sweet.