School's out for summer!

It's over. We graduated a whopping 48 students today. For a senior class of only 50-something, that's not bad. Especially when you consider our demographics. (Inner city by Utah standards). We had it outside on the football field, and you'd think that since we live in the desert that the last cause of stress would be the weather. At least that's what you might think if you weren't in Salt Lake this week. We've been watching the weather for a while now, and they were predicting rain for yesterday and today for the last week or so. For a while it was going to rain all through Thursday, then it was going to start Wed morning and end 9ish on Thu. Then they had no clue. Well, we were hoping the rain would start on Tue, which would most likely mean that the storm hit early, and would clear out early. When it didn't start raining until late Wed, we got worried. This is typical winter and spring weather for Utah; storms can suddenly stall, speed up or even hit a high pressure and go above/below us. So we knew the thing to do was to put off the decision as long as possible. The crux of the dilemma was the rental of the stage for on the lawn, how long could we put it off before we had to pay for it anyways, and at what point would we not have the time to set it up. We had the stage in the auditorium set up by mid Wed, so the change to inside would be easy, but when do we decide to go for the outdoor stage and risk eating the cost of the rental. That point was at 9:30 this morning when the rain stopped, it looked like it was going to clear up and the chairs we sat on to check the grass didn't sink into the ground. But then again, we've seen storms circle around and hit us again, which this one did as I was driving back to school with the stage in the back of the truck. Nothing terrible, since another Utah trait is that with some storms most of the rain evaporates before hitting the ground (something that facinates me having been raised in Massachusetts). Anyway, the upshot is that despite rain hitting the ground at 11:30, by graduation at 6:00 the grass was dry, the bleachers were dry, the sun was out and blinding the speakers on stage and we were all sweating in our graduation robes. But not as bas as last year when it was sunny all day, not even the slightest threat of wet and 20 degrees warmer. Everything went perfect. It was amazing. And despite having nothing more than a 10 minute run through, my sister-in-law Rae, who ran the sound for the event, was invited back to do it again next year.

Well, I rewarded myself for making it through this week with the 3rd season of Voyager. I think I'll go have a beer and watch it. G'nite.