As With All Knowledge, Once You Knew It, You Couldn't Imagine How It Was That You Hadn't Known It Before

Even though it is already the weekend, I'm still recovering from the momentous weekend we just had last weekend.  Not only was my birthday on Saturday, but Taylor graduated from college!!  Mom, Dad, and I drove to Kansas City/Lawrence on Friday after a quick Starbucks wake-up run.  And because I was going to be off work for a few days, I painted my nails in a bright, happy, birthday, graduating, springtime pink!

It's actually called Lush Berry, or something like that.  I ended up driving separately because it worked out that we would all be driving back at different times.  The drive was quite lovely; not too much traffic and peaceful midwest farmscapes out the windows.

The reason we drove over on Friday was because KU is such a big school that they do not have the traditional graduation ceremony with the walk, and the whole class walking across the stage for their diplomas.  Instead, each school has its own ceremony, and the School of Architecture's happened to be on Friday evening.  We dropped our bags off at the hotel in KC, condensed motor vehicles, and drove the forty minutes to Lawrence.  After arriving on campus, we went straight to the reception at the architecture building, where Taylor showed us around and we met a few of his friends.

They had this really cool lecture room, recently re-done, that had a growing wall and these awesome accordion seats.  You can see them folded up in the first picture above, and Dad and Taylor are sitting on them folded down.  They're like movie theater seats, except clean and futuristic!  After a quick tour of the building, it was time to head across campus to the auditorium building.

The ceremony followed the traditional graduation order, except unlike at my graduation, they hooded each architecture student receiving a masters degree.  It added quite a bit of time to the event.  Oh well, to each school his own.  I was in charge of Taylor's fancy camera so I didn't get any pics of him walking across on my phone, although we got a few good ones outside when we found Taylor afterwards.

It was pretty late at this point, and we had dinner reservations to make, so we left pretty soon after to head back to KC.  We got there around 9:15 and ordered drinks and a couple appetizers because we were all starving.  The restaurant was called Seasons 52, and changed their menu throughout the year to include special seasonal fare.  Everything was delicious.  We had a really nice waiter too, and after including him in a conversation about the so-called "new" Star Wars movie, we learned that he was born to be a true Star Wars fan.  His name was Lucas, and he told us his parents named him after George Lucas himself!

We thought about taking a walk around the Plaza after dinner, but when we walked outside it was freezing; the temperature must have dropped about thirty degrees!  So we went back to the hotel, had another beer or two while Taylor opened a couple graduation gifts, and then it was bedtime.  Congratulations Taylor!!

(photos by e.hunt, r.hunt, and g.hunt)