Monday, I flew out to Pennsylvania. This was mostly uneventful, except for the last leg of the flight (from Cincinnati to State College). Two-thirds of the way through the flight, the captain came on the PA system and announced that we were having some kind of engine trouble and were being rerouted to Columbus. There, they deplaned all of us. For twenty minutes (this was between 9:30 and 10 pm) we waited in the mostly empty lobby to find out our fate: we knew they had another plane for us, we just weren't sure we had a crew. Finally, to my great relief, they boarded us on the other plane and we set off, arriving a mere two hours after our scheduled arrival time (and five minutes after the car rental place closed; luckily, my generous host, Lauren Christensen, was willing to come pick me up even though it was nearly midnight). I have to admit that frantic thoughts of renting a car and driving to PA from Ohio flew through my head while I waited in Columbus--I should know better than to schedule late flights the day before an important event.
Tuesday for me, was D-day. At 11:00 a.m. I met in a small room with my four committee members, and they went around the circle asking me questions about the dissertation and making suggestions for improving it. Most of the suggestions were geared towards turning the dissertation document into a potential book, so the whole experience wound up being much less alarming and painful than expected--I escaped mostly unscathed. Oh, and I passed. Now, only some editing revisions stand between me and my own graduation.
I ran a couple of errands that afternoon and returned to the Christensens for a much needed nap (for some reason, I hadn't slept well the previous two nights! :)). That evening, I met my advisor, her husband (my former boss at the Graduate Writing Center), and a couple of friends from my dissertation writing group. We had dinner at a downtown restaurant, the Tavern. The food was quite good, and the deserts were even better. It was a nice closure to what could have been a rather long day.
On Wednesday, I had lunch twice. And no, I wasn't extraordinarily hungry, just a poor planner! I met up with a couple of women from my old ward at 11:30--and then met up with a few more friends from school at 1:00. (This was the only time that I could meet the latter group). Not surprisingly, I took most of the second meal home with me in a box. It was wonderful to have a chance to catch up with these people. I couldn't help but reflect, while I was in State College, how much I had liked living there, and how much I liked some of the people we got to know there. That afternoon, as a celebration of my successful defense, I went on a mini-shopping spree at the local mall (strangely luxurious to go shopping without a grasping toddler along--I actually had the leisure to try clothes on!), and then met my friend Wendy for dinner and our traditional Target run. (Despite carrying my camera with me faithfully for two days, I inevitably failed to take pictures at all of my outings, so you'll just have to use your imagination if you require visual illustrations).
Dan's parents and sister arrived in town late Wednesday night, and we made plans to meet up early Thursday morning. I also called home and got my daily report on how Dan and Andrew were doing--and found out that Andrew had been more of a handful than usual that day. My mom took him to campus with her during her office hours and, after emptying the diaper bag completely and ransacking assorted drawers, he started playing with the phone. Well, this proved to be a big mistake: on BYU campus, the number for the campus police is 2-2222. (You can probably see where this is going). Not surprisingly, the campus police showed up a short while later and took my mom's name, checked her ID, etc. (Apparently Andrew had made more than one call in the span of a few minutes). Andrew, unfortunately, seemed remarkably unrepentant about the incident. Reportedly, on the way home in the car, he sat in the backseat and said, "Andrew called the police!" and then giggled. Almost two and already a delinquent!
On Thursday, I was late arriving at my date with the Eves. This was okay, however, since the time difference had led them to sleep much later than planned, so I found them eating breakfast in the dining area of the hotel. Sarah and Trisha are big fans of Beverly Lewis's Amish romance novels, so the plan for the day was to head down to Lancaster, PA, and indulge ourselves with views of Amish country. Before we got there, however, we took a brief detour to Hershey and toured the chocolate factory there.
We went on a short ride that took us through the chocolate-making process (a ride replete with singing cows). In the past, on the same ride, I remember an almost overwhelming smell of chocolate. The smell wasn't as strong this time, but it was still an appealing aroma.
At the end of the ride, we saw actually chocolates being made. Here, you can see newly made Hershey's kisses being wrapped in foil.
After buying the requisite supply of Hershey chocolates, we proceeded on our way. Since we were a little unsure of the fastest route into Lancaster, we decided to stop at a gas station and ask. I asked an older gentleman who was buying a coffee in the store, and he explained what he thought the best route would be. Then, he offered to show us how to get there. Not only did he make good on his word, but he paid for the drinks that Robert was waiting to buy (water for Trisha and I, cokes for Robert and Sarah). It was nice to see this little glimmer of the Christmas spirit in a strange part of the country.
In due course, we reached our destination. Trisha and Sarah were "in alt" (to borrow a phrase from the 19th century)--in fact, Trisha at one point got so excited in pointing out an Amish buggy to Sarah, that she forgot to give Robert the directions he was asking for. Mostly, we drove around, stopped and investigated some local stores, and enjoyed the scenery. We enjoyed an enormous lunch at Miller's Smorgasbord and generally spent a pleasant day in Amish country. We even got back to State College early enough (well, around 8:30), that I actually got to see Dan for about fifteen minutes (he arrived late that afternoon and our friend, and new host, Steve Baylis picked him up). Dan crashed for the evening around 9:30 (you have to remember that this was 7:30 in Provo, so he was clearly exhausted, poor boy).
On Friday, not quite sated by their Amish experiences of the day before, we drove down to Belleville, a little community about 30 minutes away from State College, located in Big Valley (through which Dan and I drove almost every Sunday for six months, on our way home from Huntingdon). We went to a local country store (probably one of the last of its breed) run by Mennonites (and frequented by Amish folk), and then to a store that seemed run by the Amish themselves, if the lack of electricity in the store was any indication. Sarah was on a quest to find a cloth Amish doll--finally, after much searching, we succeeded in finding one (although it wasn't quite what she had had in mind). We rounded off our morning with a lunch at Peachey's--what passed for fine dining in the area. The food was decent--aside from the fried chicken, which was quite good (Dan and I were introduced to Peachey's by a friend of ours who claimed they had the best fried chicken in central PA). Of course, I don't have any pictures of this, either, but anyone who wants to see more pictures can check out Robert and Trisha's blog.
We decided to take things a little quieter that afternoon. So, while the seniors of the Eves clan rested back at the hotel, Dan and I ran some errands in State College (like closing out bank accounts), and then went to visit some good friends (and former neighbors) of ours, the Higleys, who had a little girl, Eleanor, the previous Friday. She was a sweet little girl--slept the whole time--and we enjoyed catching up a little bit with some old friends.
That night, we had dinner at Kelly's steakhouse (actually a steak and seafood joint), another local color spot (known particularly for the large bull on top of the building). The others opted for salad and sandwiches, but I had a wonderful macadamia nut encrusted chicken.
Saturday, of course, was Dan's big day. However, since graduation didn't start until 4 p.m., we whiled away the morning by driving out to the Woolrich store, headquarters of (of course) the Woolrich company. Although we didn't end up buying anything, Trisha, in particular, enjoyed the opportunity to wander among the wool and plaid products and finger everything. We came back to State College, had lunch at the Green Bowl (a local Mongolian barbeque type place), before retiring back to the hotel to array ourselves appropriately for the pomp and circumstance that is graduation.
And Penn State certainly did their best to indulge us in the full pomposity of the occasion. Faculty members filed in to fill the stage complete in their full academic regalia (which is pretty impressive--and sometimes quite colorful). Actually, the program was pretty decent--no one spoke outrageously long, and the speakers all did their best to stay focused on the graduates. The main speaker was a Penn State professor who was part of the committee (including Al Gore) that recently did the report on global warming, for which they won the Nobel prize. Not surprisingly, he spoke about global warming, but I was impressed by the fact that, although he could easily have turned the speech into a doom and gloom kind of occasion, he focused instead on the fact that change is a part of human existence and we need to be prepared for it. Maybe I just warmed to his talk (not necessarily the topic) because he concluded with Emerson's famous quote on success: "To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." (Although apparently the Emerson attribution is not entirely certain).
None of my pictures of graduation turned out very well--particularly since my flash seemed to illuminate the backs of the people in front of me rather than the speakers. As you can see, we were only a couple of rows behind the graduates, which was nice because we could actually see Dan--below, you can see Penn State president Graham Spanier addressing the PhD graduates (Dan is the one in the middle of the back, with a gold tassel over his ear and a white collar).
Here is Dan receiving his academic hood from Nicholas Winograd (better known to Dan and his fellow grad students as "Disco Nick" because of his propensity to wear heavy gold jewelry), a chemistry professor.
This picture, which you can hardly see, is of Dan as he first appeared on stage to receive his diploma. The next is of him walking across the stage.
This, I think, is my favorite picture of Dan at graduation because the expression is so classically Dan's--this was taken as he returned to his seat after receiving his diploma.
Saturday evening, we celebrated graduation at the Hanscom's house, with lots of food (yummy pizza) and several games of cards with some close friends from State College. Dan and I were able to see Bishop and Celie Hanscom again the next morning, because they kindly offered to let us hang out at their house for a couple hours between the time we had to turn in our rental car and the time for our flight. We've really enjoyed getting to know them over the last several years--Gerry Hanscom was the bishop of our local ward (then still a branch) when we first got out there--and they've both done their darnedest to serve as foster parents for us and a bunch of other lonely college students in State College.
There's not much else to say about Sunday--we flew back, it was pretty uneventful. I did, however, run into an old friend and roommate from BYU in the Cincinnati airport. I was thrilled to see her, because we'd emailed about getting together over the break while she's in Salt Lake, but then realized that our respective plans would probably preclude that. (It was, however, a little awkward at first because I haven't seen her in a couple of years and so naturally she looked a little different, and because the context was not a typical one I was rather embarassed that I might be approaching a stranger who only looked like Laura--of course, as soon as she saw me, that fear was put to rest, because she clearly recognized me too!).
Today, as Christmas Eve, was also pretty eventful. It was, of course, Andrew's second birthday as well, but his birthday only got celebrated incidentally (we're waiting to celebrate for real until after the Christmas excitement dies down). We did sing "Happy Birthday" to him, though, which he liked so much that he insisted I sing to him again when I put him down for his nap.
Jeni orchestrated a Bethlehem brunch for this morning, so all the siblings who were nearby (everyone but Justin, who's in St. George with Lia's family) and their respective families gathered for a lunch that was a rough (very rough) approximation of foods that might have been eaten during Christ's time. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that they're foods that are currently eaten in the Middle East/Mediterranean area--fish, saffron rice, pitas, cucumber yogurt dip, pomegranates, pomellos (sp? sort of like grapefruit), etc. The food wasn't a huge hit with the kids--Joshua insisted on having a hot dog instead--but the grownups seemed to like it pretty well (although we had enough food to feed three times that number of people). Following the meal, we acted out the nativity story. It was a little chaotic, since many of our lead characters were under the age of four, but it was pretty fun, too. Neither Mary nor the wisemen got any of their lines right (in fact, two of the three wisemen--Andrew and Joshua--refused to say anything at all), and the littlest wiseman (Andrew) absconded with Baby Jesus (who was one of "his" dolls) in the middle of the enactment, but at least the kids got the gist of the story. I think. (Andrew also tried to take back all of the "gifts" the wisemen had given Mary and Joseph, so maybe he didn't really get what was going on).
Below, Emi as Mary; her father was Joseph; and her mom, Jeni, was the donkey.
The narrator, Mary, and the wisemen.
Below, the abduction of Baby Jesus.
The wisemen leave Herod to present their gifts to the Christ child. (You can see the shepherd, Mitcee, in the background, with one of her sheep).
Below, the death of King Herod. (Who knew my dad had such dramatic capability?)
A sleeping sheep.
After the nativity enactment, we finished off our brunch with a cake and candles. The idea was that everyone would say one thing they knew about Jesus as they put their candle in the cake, and the light from the candles was to remind us that Christ was the light of the world. Again, this worked pretty well except for our small child, who was more interested in acquiring as many candles as possible than contributing to the proceedings. After the excitement of cake and icecream had worn off, we put our tired boy down for a nap.
Tonight, we finished off his birthday by letting him open two presents that I'd promised him he could have on his birthday--two sets of big boy underpants (Marvel comic heroes--"Spi-erman"--and Thomas the Train). You can tell how excited he was about this--he insisted on putting them on at once. At one point, I think he had four pairs of underwear somewhere over his nether regions; in most of the pictures he's wearing at least two pairs. Andrew cracks us up sometimes--we sure miss him when he's gone!
We hope those of you reading the blog in the near future have a happy Holiday season, though perhaps with a little less travelling involved than what we've described here!
1 comment:
Excellent posting. It's great to hear about and see all the excitement for your family. Again, sorry we couldn't take part, but are so happy for you and Dan, an of course Andrew.
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