Indiana, Graduations, and Phones
We had an adventure this weekend, which is not unusual for us. I am a Farkas, after all. We are rather known for that. At any rate, my sister-in-law graduated, as many people did, this weekend from Grace College, so naturally we had to go out and see her. Thus our second trip to Indiana was planned and taken and ended with only minor casualties.
Lauren is an art major, she makes pretty things. This last semester she took a street art class during which she and her fellow students were enlisted to paint murals around the town, which they were unveiling on Friday. This meant that if we wanted to see the unveiling, which we did, we had to be out there before 5. Not a problem, except that, you know, 7-8 hour drive. An early start was our only option. So we packed up the day before, went to see Captain America: Civil War Thursday night and got up at 5:30 am to drive out to Indiana. Because we’re brilliant.
The drive out wasn’t so bad, actually. It seemed to go rather quicker than the last time we drove out. Maybe because we were starting fresh and had lots of coffee and I may have gotten a nap in there, who knows? Regardless, it was smooth sailing out to Indiana on a rather lovely spring day. We packed up my in-laws’ car when we arrived to cut down on the amount of packing to be done after graduation and then headed to the book store to stock up on Grace paraphernalia. It was very important as we don’t intend to go back any time soon. My husband got a shirt in the appropriate size and we all got coffee, which was lovely. After we were fully stocked up and had visited the studio where Lauren paints we were ready to hit to hit the town. Literally, with sticks.
Actually we stopped by Walgreens to get sunblock and other things before heading into town to park and wait around in the hot sun for the ceremony to start. It wasn’t that hot really, it just felt like it in the sun. As soon as we were in the shade with a bit of a breeze it was almost chilly. Weird how that works. Anyway, we got to hear about the project they did to raise awareness about storm drains and keeping them clean and then went on a tour of all the murals they’d done. After our tour we went to a lovely Mexican place for dinner and then to an ice cream social with the president of Grace College. While I knew he was from our area I learned that he’d actually gone to my family’s church while I was growing up. Crazy how that works. We had a nice chat with him and looked at the nice desserts, though none of us super felt like eating just then, and the called it a night.
Again we got up at 5:30, this time to grab coffee and breakfast on our way to the Graduation. We picked up Molly at the dorm, as she stayed in Lauren’s apartment for the night, and then went over to the stadium to get our seats, half an hour before doors opened. There was already a rather impressive line, so I guess that was a good move. At least they have fancy stadium seating instead of just bleachers. That was nice. The ceremony was actually really good. The students had voted for a faculty member and chosen a speech professor as the commencement speaker, fittingly enough. He was really great, actually and the whole thing was quite enjoyable. I mean all graduations are exceedingly boring, regardless of the speaker, just by virtue of being a list of names that you don’t know with one or two that you recognize. But other than that, I think it was my favorite thus far.
After graduation pictures had to be taken, of course, and then it was off to finish packing. I would like to pause here and say 1, how proud I am of Lauren, graduating with high honors and a double major, and 2, how thankful I am that she had such an awesome experience at Grace. I mean, I think she’s a pretty awesome kid, but being backed up by all her professors was kind of nice. It’s no wonder it took us a while to get back to her apartment to finish emptying it out. Thankfully the school provided all the furniture for them so we didn’t have to move any of that. Moving her out of the apartment was the easy part. Moving her out of the studio, proved to be annoying, only because someone thought it’d be a good idea to lock the building with the art studio in on graduation day when all the seniors were trying to get their stuff out. A rather cranky security guy had to come suspiciously open the door for us, but he didn’t unlock it, so we loaded our trunk in constant fear of being locked out again. It was very unfortunate. After that whole ordeal we ate lunch with Lauren’s roommate’s family and friend and then were on our way back home to PA.
And of course, because I can’t make it out of any adventure without some sort of casualty, here’s where that comes in. My poor husband got next to no sleep that night as we were at a hotel and no one sleeps well in a hotel. Okay, I slept pretty alright, but he just tossed and turned most of the night and was exhausted after such a long day. So after maybe an hour of driving he just couldn’t handle it anymore and asked to switch. Well, I offered to switch, the fact that he accepted is a testament to how truly tired he must have been. So we pulled over and I hopped out, tossing some socks and stuff back in that escaped with me. It never occurred to me, even though my phone has a history of tumbling from the car, to check and make sure I still had my phone on me. I didn’t. Which I discovered about an hour later when we stopped at a gas station for a stretch. My phone is now laying somewhere along the highway in Ohio. Thankfully we have some super cool friends who were willing to give us an old phone of theirs to use, which happens to be the same as my phone. God is good.
So that was our adventure to Indiana. We got back home nearly at midnight and went to bed sometime after feeding our cats and convincing my husband that we didn’t need to sleep with the door open. We try that every once in a while, to see if the kittens can handle just snuggling with us, and they never can. Except now when they’re both piled on top of me, quite content. Weird cats. Anyway, that’s why there wasn’t a post last Friday, sorry about that. I hope your weekend was casualty free, and I hope you have a lovely day, my friends.
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