@maddy23 Thanks for the tip. We are in NYC and American has 2 direct flights a day between Laguardia and Roanoke. Yes, they are expensive, but if only makes 1 round trip (2 at most) a semester, it’s worth it for us.
The trick is getting to and from campus and Roanoke. There’s a great bus service, but it doesn’t operate on Sundays (???) which is a day he will like be traveling. He just needs to hook up with friends to get the 30 mile ride from Roanoke to campus.
Holy cow, I just looked at my last post, and it was May 10th. I just skimmed most of the last 30 or so pages. Life got busy with some work travel and end of school year stuff.
Speaking of travel, here’s a PSA for those traveling this summer (really applies anywhere, but my mishap was in Spain): Keep your phone in your pocket or otherwise packed away when not in use. Don’t leave it out on the table in a outdoor cafe or busy restaurant while you’re eating. Thieves have multiple ways of distracting you while they or an accomplice grabs your phone. I learned this the hard way, and now have a new phone.
The scam that got me: a person posing as a peddler put a piece of paper down on the table over my phone and pointed to the paper as if they were trying to sell us something. I didn’t realize my phone was under the paper and they grabbed it along with the paper when they walked away. I didn’t notice my phone was missing until 5 minutes later as we were getting up to leave. It was a careless mistake – I looked at a text then didn’t put my phone away.
Congrats to all of the new graduates! Graduation here is still more than a week away.
Hi there.
Couldn’t let us go 24 hours without a post.
Carry on.
Let’s try a QOTD to get some discussion going. This is stolen from a parallel facebook discussion (sorry if this has already been discussed here).
QOTD: Decorating grad caps at your graduations: Yes, it’s a big thing? Not allowed? If allowed, what did your grad do?
Here, it’s definitely a thing. Our neighbor, also a graduating senior, stopped by yesterday asking if she could have the fake fern plant in our garage to use in making her cap decoration. Don’t ask why we had a fake fern in our garage and how she knew about it – long story… I have no idea how she’s going to incorporate giant fake fern leaves into her cap, but I’ll find out next Thursday.
Decorating caps: Allowed (with prior permission for the design) at D17/19’s high school; there’s always a couple students who do it, but it’s not really a big thing. It’s a huge thing at the college I work at, though, and judging from the pictures recently posted of their May commencement, it’s an even bigger thing at D17’s college.
Decorating caps is allowed. S plans to but has yet to decide what he wants to do. We shall see, the kid does NOT have a lot of free time between now and then!
Huge here. I wish we could post pics. Hers is the Scottish flag with Alba gu bráth in foam black letters.
Some decorate their caps with the logo of the college they’re going to. I guess we’ll find out how many are doing it when he eventually graduates this month, maybe Friday. Apparently we are the last in the country to graduate it seems. I think they were waiting until there is a heat wave.
ours is tomorrow. it’s going to be way too hot.
Allowed here. I didn’t see anything that wasn’t a flat design, so there may have been a rule. DS didn’t decorate his. He was more interested in being able to toss it really high.
QOTD: DD was not allowed to decorate her cap. It was one of the rules in the permission slip I had to sign for graduation. Another rule: no dancing or gyrating on stage (which a few students broke lol).
QOTD: No cap and gown here. All boys wearing tuxedos. It’s tradition.
Sadly not allowed here. D would have covered hers with dragons.
I am daily resisting the urge to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I never shop there.
They must be sending subliminal advertising that says “your kid can’t possibly go to college until you come here and buy an entire cart full of ridiculous tchotchkes.”
Not allowed.
No cap and gown here. 
Dd is at orientation. She was feeling really sick before l dropped her off (bad parent here. I am enjoying relaxing time at a hotel and skipping parent orientation. Btdt.). I am hoping she isn’t too miserable.
Our life is crazy. We are in transit in a cross country move. When we left for orientation that was our last time there. Cant wait to be settled in in a couple of weeks.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek - clearly you don’t have enough to do so happy to hear that you have a cross country move added to your agenda ^:)^ lol!!
No cap decorations. School really tries for parity in terms of graduation. Very little distinguishes any of the kids. On graduation day, each of the kids is pretty much the same.
Neither of my kids decorated their caps. The last weeks of school were so hectic they didn’t get around to it.
They graduated last Saturday morning. Surprisingly I didn’t cry at all, I thought I would. Of course I didn’t get the all of pictures I had hoped for. None of them with their dad.
On the college front we have turned in medical forms and signed up for dining plans. Just waiting of insurance waivers and orientations.
We are headed off to Disney World with a group of family and friends to celebrate. Hope the remaining graduations are great.
@twoforone99 Congrats on graduation. Have fun at Disney. Avatar Flight is definitely worth it. Best flight simulator. ride I have seen. We took my daughter to DW right after her graduation a couple weeks ago.
** QOTD part deux:** If I were to graduate today alongside these amazing kids, my cap would probably be decorated as a pizza box, signifying the next chapter of my life.