"If you're not going to kill me, I have things to do"

I come bearing photos from my siblings graduation, and they are a harbinger of impending doom and destruction.


Here we see Clif as he walks up the center aisle to take his seat at the beginning of the ceremony. Note the cheese-eating grin. He wears that grin constantly.


The esteemable Dr. Stewart Dippel, my undergraduate advisor, addressing the graduates. He said warm and worthwhile stuff that most of them probably promptly forgot (he was a much better speaker than the Commencent Speaker guy was).


The Noise Monkey's father receiving his diploma cover. What, I didn't say all the captions would be witty and humorous.


My friend John Cooper getting his diploma cover. This picture would have been better had the girl in the cap and gown in the foreground not walked in front of me right as I was snapping the picture. No sense of timing, I swear.


Clyde gets his diploma cover. Both he and Dr. Niece, the President of the University of the Ozarks, seem very excited to finally my brother's scrawny butt out of U of O.


The Cottrell siblings--me, Clyde, and Scott. There were about five cameras going at the same time, and none of us knew which one to face, so we all faced a different one.


Clif with the paternal grandparents.


Parents, Scott, and I join Clif for a photo. Scott's fat head somehow managed to obscure Clif's face, even though Clyde's a good head taller. Strange.


I know all the people in this picture, I just can't remember the name of the girls on either end. I know the one in the striped top is Audrey, an Ozarks alum who currently attends OU (and yet I managed to see her more at Ozarks than I do here at OU. Weird).


Clif with the girl whom, it turns out, is his girlfriend. Yeah, my brother got a girlfriend three weeks before he graduated. Cottrells have the absolute worst timing known to man.


Clif with his lady friend once more. Note the look of smug satisfaction on his face.


Me and Amanda E., whom I hadn't expected to see at graduation but was nonetheless very pleased to see. This is the only picture I have of the two of us together, because she is of the impression that she is not attractive (which I think is a load of horse pucky myself). My theory is that she's just too embarrassed to be seen in public with me.

So yeah, it was a bit of a bittersweet weekend, really. Hard to believe that most of my close ties to Ozarks are gone now. Adam still lives in the area, of course, and so do my old professors, but the great majority of my friends are long gone now. I was commenting to Amanda that this was the last class at Ozarks where I knew anyone. Strange, really.

I also managed to grab a video of Clif playing his tuba at baccalaureate, but I don't know of any way to upload that so that you could get access to it (even assuming you wanted it). It was pretty neat, actually, but I know that tuba music isn't everyone's forte.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Tom Petty, "Crawling Back to You"