Arone's grad and my tech failings

Well, my big little brother graduated to the fanfare that comes with university convocation. Or, in the words of Allan, Arone "convoked." (That sounds like an unfortunate way to die).

It was the end of a busy weekend and the beginning of a busy week. On Saturday, Natalie and I drove to Banff for a wedding at the Banff Springs Hotel (swank) and then came back to Calgary that night so I could sleep a bit before Sunday morning when I would drive (all by my lonesome) to Edmonton to hang with the sibling.

I went up on Sunday for two reasons:

1. I wanted to hang (as I've mentioned previously)
2. Convocation festivities began at 7am on Monday

7am!? It wasn't as bad as it sounds. Rather, the U of A treated Arone, Kristi and me to a complimentary breakfast filled with free food and awkward banter with other arts grads: "so... what are you doing now...?" The breakfast was the pre-covocation event. An opportunity for the Dean to send off his grads with a more personal (1000 people in the room) touch that couldn't be achieved at the more formal event at the Jubillee Auditorium later in the morning.

I was quite impressed by the breakfast function, actually. I remember when my Dean held a cocktail party to send off her faculty of grads. I think maybe 50 people attended and it was just an opportunity for James, Will and I to eat tiny vittles and talk about we'll miss the post-secondary shenanigans. While the U of A function was less personal, it sure had a good turnout and was punctuated by a great presentation from a U of A Arts alumnus and Edmonton Journal colunist Todd Babiuk. It was just a short presentation but at lot more fun/motivational than other speeches we'd here that day. He took a realistic approach and spoke about his "loser story" that had him sleeping on friends' couches and becoming aneimic following his graduation. But it ended with a positive twist that elaborated on the real opportunities that arts grads have in our world. I was pretty charged up after listening to him.

Which was unlike how I felt after listening to the the person who received the U of A's honourary degree later that day. Throughout that presentation, you couldn't help but feel that this was a degree that had been purchased, or, at the very least, had been given to encourage more philanthropic action to come the way of the U of A. After a speech about the challenges of following your dreams while being independantly wealthy followed up by a sickly sweet "did you know" story about JK Rowling, U of A officials tripped all over themselves to thank their recipient for being such a wonderful person.

Don't get me wrong, philanthropy to the arts and education is a wonderful thing. In fact, I hope to be able to do the same one day. But a convocation just didn't seem to be the right venue for a show of appreciation... or maybe I'm just reacting to a poor speech. Maybe I was spoiled by having convoked with Romeo Dallaire. I just think that this is a great opportunity to inspire new grads to do something brilliant with their education. And this time around, that didn't happen. I almost wish Todd Babiuk had got that honourary degree... it'll happen eventually, Todd, I'm sure.

I wore my new khaki suit jacket, jeans, shirt and a pink paisley tie. Apparently, it's quite a bright and, um, immasculated combination of clothing.
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OK, so Natalie and I have a blog and a new digital camera. When was the last time we took a photo? Three weeks ago... before we went camping, to the wedding in Banff or to Arone's grad. When was the last time we updated the blog? Three weeks ago when I talked about how I don't update the blog enough.

Something's gotta change here. We've got all this technology and don't use it for the reasons we have it. I should learn to update the blog in the evenings like the rest of the world, who are embarrassing me with the frequency of updates. Just check out some of the side blogs and you should see a few that are updated almost daily (except for James... who even has good news to share but must be too busy doing something else in the 'Fax). Yeesh!