Tradition

Ivy started the day with shoes. We all did. It's just that Columbia has a tradition of a monsoon for graduation week. The tradition continued this year.

It made everything far more casual. Dress clothes were covered with ponchos on class day, the day this was taken. Class day is for departmental graduations. It's when they call out the graduates' names and they cross the stage and receive a class pin. By the time the full university graduation rolled around the next day, I wore black jeans and sneakers and I was not the only one dressed down. Far from it. It was just cold and wet and the graduation is outdoors. There's no room inside for a ceremony that big.

It's a beautiful old university, one that began as Kings College in the pre-revolutionary days. The ceremony itself was upbeat and lighthearted. I think the dean of each school was trying to outdo each other with strings of adjectives describing how wonderful their graduates were. Once again, tradition, an amusing one.

It's a great place in an incredible city. I'm glad Ivy was a part of it.

The food in New York City is amazing. So is the energy. The travel wasn't. It was fraught with delays and every connection we made seemed to be at the far end of the airport. I won't even go into it here except to say that this was the first time we ditched a leg of the trip and caught a ride.

I'd like to go back sometime when we have no events to attend. Just kick around NYC, visit friends and family and go to museums. I did get to meet my youngest cousin's baby for the first time. She will be a year old in June. They live in the city.

Came back to a spring garden heavily impacted by heat. I pulled all the spinach and picked some of the broccoli and snowpeas. Made lots of salads, too. Much as I hate to do it, I may end up blanching and freezing the spinach. I prefer to use stuff fresh from the garden, but two people can't go through food that quickly, especially when one works at night and we were out of town. And since we can't preserve the lettuce, the spinach can get set aside until later.

The lettuce is a mesclun mix. Everything except the arugula is still in the ground (the arugula began to bolt before we left so I made it into a salad and took it to a potluck), but I don't know how much longer it will last.

I did make a nice stir fry yesterday for lunch. It was Kurt's birthday. I offered to take him out but after NY, I don't think either one of us feels like eating out. Too much of a good thing.