Today (zondag/Sunday) is my college’s graduation. Since I am an administrator, I am expected to go. Not only go, but walk, and wear a cap and gown, and. . .

Anyway, I thought you would enjoy a picture of (some of) it, though keep in mind I generally don’t pull it out of its bag to get the wrinkles out. It doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference to me.

The cap and gown I will wear, with the rules for properly showing off the academic hood (the part that hangs behind you).

The red is for Rutgers University, where I got my Masters. The yellow is for the type of Masters I received (Library science). I don’t have a PhD or doctorate, so I do not have the fancy robes you might see.

Also today was the soap box derby trials, where you race little cars down a big hill. Over and over and over. They block off the main road every year for this. I took a few pictures:

The hill they ride down. You can barely see it, but where the guy is standing is where the finish line is. The rest of the space is just for you to slow down (though the cars should have brakes).

A view of the soap box derby cars themselves, with a new race about to begin.

I don’t have any experience or knowledge of these. My brother raced mini cars in the pine wood derby when he was in Boy Scouts, though.

Again it was an eventful morning, mostly considering I live in a rather rural area. Apparently they were repaving the main road around the entrance to the psychiatric center. Since traffic in both directions only had one lane available, there was one construction worker on our side with a “slow” sign and another at the end of the construction with a “stop” sign to prevent oncoming traffic.

It was a bit… interesting getting past the construction, since there isn’t much room for both them to do their work and us to squeeze past. At one point the bus stopped and backed up, getting dangerously close to the construction equipment. Just picture me staring out the edge of the window, wondering when I should speak up that we were about to smash into it.

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This morning began in an interesting way. I had a second weekend trip to make to the grocery store (usually I can’t carry everything in one go as it’s a long walk to and from). I was approaching a nearby Catholic church, and happened to see about 5-6 people get out of a car carrying signs. I thought it was it was pretty strange to bring signs into church, but I figured it was related to some type of sale after church ended (plants, cookies, etc).

As I came closer, however, I quickly realized that this was not the case at all.  One of the signs had the name of the priest on it, and underneath “come clean”. Another sign had “God doesn’t have any any statue of limitations on sexual abuse”. They weren’t really there to partake in the service.

To their credit, they waited at the end of the parking lot for people to come out, about 75 feet from the main entrance of the church. They merely smiled, said hello, and passed me a piece of paper as I walked passed. I read most of the paper on the way to the grocery store, though it still wasn’t clear what it had to do with the local priest or why they were at this church. (Later Googling revealed that it had nothing to do with this town, except that the priest now works here. He wasn’t the abuser, but he dismissed claims that another priest in a Bronx school had abused a child, basically insinuating that the child was lying when the mother confronted him).

The group was still there as I returned about an hour later. They remembered me, and asked where I was going. They were somewhat shocked about how far I walk to the grocery store (it’s not that bad, just hilly). They were peaceful – not shouting or anything. Of course I was not there when the majority of the churchgoers were getting in their cars and driving past them to leave. But it was definitely surreal, from a neutral standpoint.

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In other news, Marco spent about an hour dissecting my Dutch, which was mostly okay except for a few blatant Google Translate inspired errors. Even I knew it was not right, but I had no idea how to say what I wanted to say.

It’s going to be so nice to work a normal 8 hour shift this week… I can’t wait. We also have a catered all-faculty/administrator meeting on Wednesday, where they usually go all out and serve a large lunch. It’s been a pretty decent weekend, except I wish it had been longer (of course!).

One of the more random places that Marco, Roger and I went to last month was the New York Citystore. This is a touristy type of store, with official memorabilia. The store itself is on the ground floor of the Manhattan municipal building (pictured below).

I was excited because the website said: “Available at this location: Our complete collection of gift & collectibles, Including NYC Taxi, NYC Subway, NYC Parks”.

Complete collection… sounds like a huge store!

exterior of the Manhattan municipal building

Hardly… it was a tiny little store that barely had any room to move around in. They sold some interesting stuff, but nothing that jumped off the wall and said “buy me!”. The closest was a NYTimes crossword themed glass for a coworker, though in the end I refrained.

Still, the planning on how to fit it into our day’s activities and route was a lot of fun!