The Baccalaureate yesterday morning was long and fairly tiresome, but I think these things are required to at least be one or the other. I hadn’t actually been in the arena at MSG since I saw NIN there in early 2000, and it was a little bizarre that my seat among the undergrads yesterday was almost exactly where my spot against the pit barricade was four years ago. Only this time it was John Sexton center stage instead of Trent Reznor. The bulk of the thing was just waiting - we were told to be there nearly an hour and a half before it actually started, I guess mainly so that they could pressure us into sitting for graduation portraits and then divide us into groups by halves of the alphabet. And of course it takes a surprisingly long time to read the names of each graduating senior in the College of Arts and Science. We had only one person fall down the stairs from the stage, and we also had a young man who turned out to have been wearing nothing at all under his gown, as he demonstrated after his turn on stage (before running immediately away). There was someone who fell during my high school graduation, but we didn’t have a streaker.

Chris and I went out for the folks later for a celebratory dinner, where the champagne was much better than the stuff the University provided for that senior strawberries and champagne thing last week. But that’s to be expected, really. Tonight is Grad Alley and then Commencement on Thursday, and then I can finally turn in the purple tent.