Well, that was a busy weekend.

Mom showed up at my place on Friday around 9-ish, as usual. But she was amazingly well behaved- she didn't run around on an insane cleaning spree or ANYTHING. She quietly sat and ate food, watched a little TV and went to bed before midnight. When does that happen?

On Saturday, we did a little shopping at the outlets before we were due to go to my aunt's for party prep. As per usual, more stuff was bought for us than for other people.

At my aunt's house, I mostly sat around watching the end of "All I Wanna Do," one of the movies on my infinite Netflix queue. Now all I have to do is watch the beginning and middle of it someday.

My aunt had...more food than I have possibly seen in one place ever. Dishes and dishes full of mini-quiches, three dips, a lot of shrimp, two food trays (a third wasn't even opened), a freaking chocolate fondue fountain that broke after about seven minutes... so much freaking food. Nobody even touched the cookies. And my uncle had tons of wine flowing.

Why all that much food, I asked? Because she invited 60 FREAKING PEOPLE! Almost all of whom showed up at one point or another!

On the one hand, the food was great, and I managed to get myself a little drunk off all the wine, but not so I had to puke or anything in front of relatives (thank gawd). On the other hand, I was clearly the wrong age to be at that party, considering that the age groupings of the people there seemed to be either:

(a) 50+
(b) 1-12 (mostly the kids/grandkids of group a)
(c) 14-22 (also the kids/grandkids of group a, but my cousins's friends)

So, I wasn't exactly the most popular person around to chat with. I actually didn't haul my knitting down there to work on, but I was sorely tempted. At one point I finally got so bored that I went up to Kristen's room where my stuff was stashed, and found out that a good portion of the kids were up there watching "Dodgeball." I was all, "I'm bored, mind if I sit here with y'all?" and then I parked in the corner with my knitting. This probably creeped the kids out that someone OOOOOLD was around them, but screw it.

After people left, my aunt wanted us to watch the movie "Click." Comedy, my ass, it's depressing. But during the movie my aunt said she wanted us to spend the night instead of hauling ass back to my home at midnight, so we did. (And I was thinking, "Good thing I already posted for Saturday. And that I have an extra outfit.")

Sunday was Alicia's graduation day. Breakfast was- no surprise- lots of leftovers from yesterday's party. Happily, her ceremony turned out not to be until 2 p.m.

I have to say, as someone who went through two spring graduation ceremonies, the new fall graduation ceremony thing is so much nicer and less insane than the spring. For one thing, despite all of the drama about Alicia getting ahold of tickets (in the end, she got ahold of 12, so her boyfriend's parents at least got to go as well as the rest of the family), there were so many frigging empty spaces for seating in the hall, I don't know why they made such a stink about limiting it. For another thing, the ceremony? Lasted an hour and five minutes. I showed up with my holiday knitting/crocheting, all prepared for a three or four-hour Butt-Numb-A-Thon 2006, and we were out and eating dinner by 4 p.m. Go figure!

For one thing, it was much more sober than my ceremonies back in the day- no Silly String, no tortillas, no beach balls. What the heck? Alicia was quite disappointed by the lack of goofy objects.

For another thing, the chancellor actually gave a not-completely-eye-glazing speech. Mostly he talked about the movie "Cars." Yes, really. (Apparently the maker of that movie has uh, a lot in common with the themes of "Click.")

For a third thing, somebody at this school is named "Gargamel." For reals. I kept on giggling.

Names in general at this school are a hoot. I'm always amazed at the bad combinations or rhymes people come up with.

And speaking of names, #4: Alicia's name was left out of the program entirely...but her boyfriend, who had graduated last spring, had HIS name in the program. What the heck?

Anyway, those were the interesting moments, then we all went out for dinner. Which was definitely easier to do in town post-fall graduation than spring, that's for sure. And I do like hanging out with the nice relatives.

Anyhoo, all things considered, the weekend was pleasantly fun, and except for a really fun forty minutes where Mom had me cornered in the car and was going on about funeral arrangements and why can't I just act the way she does around Dad.... she was miraculously well behaved, even on a Sunday. Go figure!

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