Yup, why may you be asking is there really a second day of graduation ceremony when the first one was so excellent. It's a thought that will vex me into my twilight years rocking on the front porch of Shady Acres. This time, however, we were headed to Sanford Stadium. The location of all the Bulldog victories and now the place where the graduates will again walk across stage in their black ceremonial attire to again receive their accolades. This is the same stadium that Alexa received here BA in Accounting a couple years ago. This time was the number of students was far far less that that of a full graduating class of Bachelors. We easily found great seating to view the event. There appeared to be about 700 or so students on the field. Ah, we'll be eating breakfast before 11am.
The first batch out was the PhD graduates. There appeared to be 200 of them, and it was a bit of a setback to find them again be walking across stage one-by-one while the Jumbotron places there name, degree, professor. They might as well have mentioned their favorite food, zodiac sign and favorite movies. My back of the envelope calculation now had us bypassing breakfest and straight into lunch. It took 50 minutes to get through 200 doctorates. That left 500+ masters degrees. Surely, with this number of folks, that would do the obligitory "Please stand up class of 2023 and receive recogintion en-mass". Back to the envelope..."Hey! Can they really make us sit here until the Rapture"? Even Alexa, somehere out in section 4, Row 22 was texting us "Hey, I'm hungry. What if we all just snuck out"? Dylan (Alexa's boyfriend) and I were side-eyeing each other thinking that Alexa has a good point. But looking over at Sandra and Karen, we knew that would not play out well. "Nobody leaves"! It eventually became apparent that the Masters students where processing much faster through the stage than the Doctoral ones. Ahh, they left off a bunch of details, and as such it was just the names, and not the other bits of information.
Alexa finally was standing and marching again up to the stage and across. The cool thing was the same Jumbotron that blasted out the TOUCHDOWNS during the bulldog games, was now proudly displaying Alexa. OK, that was worth it. I texted her just before to do a little celebration dance so I can capture it on the Jumobotrron for posterity. I did not get that picture.
Afterwards, we were on our way to a 2pm lunch. The smart people we are; we decided to get in the car and drive to the outskirts of Athens and grab some tacos. Let those other fools stomp around town and fight for tables and scraps. Afterall, the back of the envelope calculations indicated that there where at least 750 hungry graduates out with their families competing for services. In the car we go, drive out along the beltway, drop off the exit and roll into Tago...WHAT?! There's a line out the door. What kind of town is this? A whisper was breiefly uttered that we should go somewhere else. But then, we had less fuel in us than the Chevy Maliboo that some Hertz employee back in Atlanta is likely still looking for in the parking garage. We waited. We ordered. We satiated. We rolled back into Athens fat, happy and able to do a final walk through campus for the memories.
When we got back to the VRBO, we were able to finally, finally kick up our feets and have a couple beers on the back patio area. Tempurature had cooled down, and it was the reward for the two days of hectic running about. There was no leaving for an out-on-the-town after this. We crashed!
Tomorow begins the post graduation. Alexa stays in Athens and begins to pack up her things. Sandra, Karen and I are off to Asheville for a 4 day roadtrip. I don't really know what's in store on this trip. Somebody said botanical gardens, the Vanderbilts and the most per/capita beer breweries--I'm intrigued.