Before the Satruday account, here's a shot of the awesome foursome at the Dean's Award dinner on Friday night, taken with some strange manual setting on my camera and accordingly grainy:
So, we last left the story headed down to the Sprechers in Newton on the Saturday evening before the party. And a smash up event it WAS! I arrived just as Goldie, Ali's 93 (?) year old grandma was being helped up the steps. Ben was in host / managerial mode, and inside there was a whole shebang of Wolfs and Sprechers and people and friends and well we might as well get it out of the way... BONES! Ali's childhood best friend Emily Deschanel, star of Fox's TV show Bones (and costar of David Boreanaz, former Star of Angel and supercrush of the Beck) was in full effect and wearing heels that made her ridiculously tall. As I search through my camera here, though, I realize I got NO pictures of her! I'm the worst blogarazzi-er ever! I stink. Here's a stock headshot type thing...
So Emily turned out to be very sweet and down to earth / low key; she just hung out with the poeple and still managed to crack jokes about her celebrity status. Very pretty, obviously, but I must say that I think celebrities in the flesh always seem like their hues have been dampened, and it was definitely true with her. She just looked less vibrant than her TV self, and it is quite a strange experience hanging out with a stranger but constantly feeling like you know her very well because of the facial familiarity factor. And all told, I probably said three words to her all night. All of this is leading me to believe that perhaps Alyssa / Winona and I were never meant to be; I would have been too weirded out all the time. But Emily was very cool, and I even got a tres chic goodbye hug. I may never wash the spot that she patted on my back again.
So the non-celebrity portion of the party was fun; lots of wandering and talking to people who looked remarkably like Ben. I also re-met Ben's lifelong friend and business partner whose name I am comletely blanking on at the moment, but he and his wife are very comfortable and pleasant peeps. At one point Ali's mom gave me a hug hello and knocked my diet coke out of my hand; it was the first time in a while that I dropped a drink and it wasn't completely my fault. Self-five! Fun times meandering about the family clans and then hanging out with the iPFam for dinner. Before the cake and such there was a grand series of very touching toasts for Ali - they were all very heartfelt and it served as a nice, tight encapsulated reminder of how much ALi and the Beck have accomplished in getting all of this way - Ali had the additonal tear-jerking factor of both her grandmas being present, and one of them Goldie had some health problems recently but had stayed very motivated to see Ali graduate. They both gave very nice speeches, and Ali's dad regaled us with a story of a time when Ali's pet fish died, he had to break the news to her and she replied "For me?"
So the dinner party was fun, and Saturday we headed out for a brunch (and what turned out to be our last brunch) at the South Street Diner in Westboro with BenAliMaPaSearlMeghan and Ali's brother Jon who was a relly great guy who reminded me of a hyperkinetic version of WIlliam H Macy, though un-ugly. Quite dapper actually. A verital PBoat. Which does not mean "Patrol Boat," you crazy Battleship players. ANyways, fun French Toasty brunch full of talk about medical technology and data collection and the trap of human narrative as a construct for understanding. Hi YA! We ended up and headed back to get dressed for the graduation festivities.
Graduation itself was... well, a graduation. Ali's 24 definitely won the loudest / borderline immature explosive applause for a grad school event. Rainy day interrupted by an hour of sunshine which directly coincided with the grad event itself. Really nice, beaming people, all proud of their relatives. The dean, a Rice grad, did a great job running the show. Sarah's speech (featured in a separate post on this very blog) was fantastic. ALl in all, a nice event. ANd now, pictures:
The only pic I got of Emily, and entirely accidentally when i was trying to catch Sarah walking down the grad aisle.
Beck the happy grad and Nyet and iPFam. We noted last night that the excuse "you'll have to call a real doctor" is no longer valid.
YAY VETS!
Followed by a nice reception complete with whispers of "Is that Bones?" and a thunderstorm. We headed over to Scoops & Swirls for our record 27th cotton candy ice cream in the past two weeks. And then on to the Sole Propeitor for a NICE dinner.
Fun weekend all told. I'm losing energy on the recall and the next week was not all that exciting anyways, so I will leave that in outline form in the previous post.
ALright then. Wedding updates to come. Hella exciting. yeah.
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