after the more than 8,000 black-robed, mortar-boarded (as opposed to water-boarded) grads -- bachelors of arts and sciences, j.d.'s (lawyers), m.d.'s (the OTHER doctors) -- come the red-robed, wizard-hatted Ph.D.'s.

worth the wait.

yes, i DO have a pic of me with doc, but i LOVE these two!

seriously. we JUST walked in the door. i haven't even peed yet. look how i sacrifice to share with you.

tomorrow morning, we're heading down to columbus for one of the most notable occasions of our life -- tomorrow matty receives his PhD in computer science engineering at the ohio state university commencement ceremony. he will be starting his teaching career in the fall at moravian college in bethlehem, pennsylvania.

bill and i are crazy proud. we have been grinning like idiots and telling anyone who will listen all about it.  god, we're ridiculous.

matt is one of the coolest people you could ever meet. he has grown into an incredibly warm, funny, compassionate, and -- duh -- brilliant young man.  he chose very wisely his life partner.mel is lovely, funny, supportive, and -- duh -- brilliant. they are soooo good together.

matty's first-grade teacher complained in our first parent/teacher conference that matt "makes his g's backwards." i said, "did you know he has already read the entire 'little house on the prairie' series?" bill said, "we'll worry about that when and if he's still doing it at 15." again, we're ridiculous.

a friend of mine said to me when matt was 4, "i hope you're not raising him just as the smart kid!" i told her we were raising boys to be fine young men. i think we've done a pretty good job of that (not that i'm patting myself on the back, you know).

when he was just over a year old, bill and i were getting ready to go out. i remember the dress i was wearing -- it was a very light, colorful fabric with metallic threads throughout. matty (BABY matty) said, "mom, you look like a dancer!" honest to god, this is the way he talked. but it was also sooooooo sweet, bill and i just looked at each other with tears in our eyes.

i'm sure there will be a lot of those moments tomorrow. when i pregnant with the boys, i wanted to cherish every minute that i could. there are so few days like this in a whole lifetime. i have been so blessed -- i feel blessed every day. tomorrow will be a day that i'll want to experience and cherish every second.

Thank you, Cavs, for a freaking AWESOME season! looking forward to next year!

oh. and new york? sucks to be you.

by now, you know i'm a cavs' fanatic. and lebron. duh. so the past 10 days have me questioning the very meaning of life. why?

in spite of the fact that our loyal readers (all 2 of them) know for a certainty that that guy over there to your right thinks in a verrrry different way from most of us/you, you might -- or might not -- be surprised to learn that my thinking process can zoom wayyy out of control. i struggle (mightily) to be normal or some acceptable approximation thereof (one of us HAS TO) and to control the not-so-much demons as umm, well, i guess maybe thought monkeys?

so, i start thinking "cavs game tonight!"

then, "please, PLEEEEEEASE win!"

then "orlando doesn't need this! Cleveland does! they have freaking DISNEY WORLD!"*

then, "please, PLEEEEEASE, god!"

then, "wait. if there IS, indeed a god, then he surely is letting cleveland take care of itself."

then, "is there a god/gods? do i believe in god?"

arghhhhhhhh. i don't want to THINK about this right now. maybe never.

then, "what should we eat during the game? are we out of potato chips? should we even HAVE potato chips in the house?"

ARGHHHHHHHHHHH!

------------------

*sometimes THIS step spirals off into the "if-cleveland-loses-will-lebron-want-to-leave place. it's a dark. dark place where i don't want to go. ever.

"oh. my. god. we were there. i'm framing the tickets."

i wrote that last night and posted it to my facebook. if you don't know what i'm talking about, well, um... ok, i got nothin.

when i first started hearing all the media frenzy (all over the country!) about this high-school basketball player phenom from akron, lebron james, it was all i could do to not throw up in my mouth. wtf? he's in freaking HIGH SCHOOL! let the kid grow up and learn to be a freaking MAN before you start teaching him he's GOD! made me sick. and he signed with the cavs right out of high school -- ok yippee, big whoop, pffft. i couldn't sit through a cavs game to save my life. well, maybe that's a bit of hyperbole -- i never tried.

then we moved downtown. the building had this cool cable company that threw in almost every single cavs and indians game for free. and you just can feel the excitement in the air living down here on days of sporting events. the city comes alive. ALIVE, I TELL YA!

so i sit down to watch a cavs game with my throw-up bowl handy. bill's happy that we have a cavs game on in the living room. he says, "you'll love this kid." we'll see. 5 minutes later, i'm hooked. i cannot believe that this 20-year old has such poise, plays so generously, and is magic (real magic, not the orlando kind of magic) on the court.

i know you're thinking "did i go to the right blog? where's stacey?" sorry. it IS me. i have turned into a cavs/lebron james MANIAC. we bought 2 season tickets for next year (and then 2 more -- 2 + 2 = 4 seasons tickets. stay with me people) and purchased the package of 4 seats to guarantee seats to all playoff games. we picked our seats because we had sat in them on one of our regular season game days (before we ordered season tickets for next year). they are hard to get to (for me), but great seats (when you get there)! honest to god (would i lie to you?), they are the absolute last row of the Q, right at center court (bill sits on one side of the center-court line, i sit on the other side). dead center court on the players' bench side. but like a quarter mile high.

i'm a freaking screaming idiot at the games. bill looks at me at least once a game and says "who ARE you?" i don't honestly know -- i'm just having a ball.

last night i wasn't having such a good time when time out was called with one second (do you know how short a time ONE SECOND is???) left in the game. orlando 95, cleveland 93. bill's calm as can be. lebron's gonna hit a 3." well, duh, i knew he was gonna TRY. oh me of little faith. i had my head down, hands over my face. i first hear bill SCREAM "HE MADE IT!" and then the eruption hits. oh. my. god. i have NEVER heard such noise in my life. every single person in the Q is SCREAMING. CRYING. JUMPING. HUGGING. oh. my. god.

and the entire crowd stayed in their seats celebrating until lebron finished his on-the-court interview with espn or whoever it was (you tell ME who it was -- i was AT the game!) waved to the crowd and hugged his mom. ANOTHER LONG OVATION AND CELEBRATION.

sometimes, only "it was freaking awesome!" describes the moment.

oh -- and new york? sucks to be you.

The Cleveland Orchestra performs its annual concert on Public Square tonight. The sky is clearing, after rain and fog all day, which bodes well for the spectators, which might number 100,000. The streets around the square are closed to traffic; and at 6, while walking the dogs, I noticed people were already gathering on the square with their lawn chairs.

I also saw that the police have apparently determined that the alien ships on the Mall were sent in peace.

And after believing I was human all these years, I found this metallic tag that apparently worked its way to the surface of my bald head. You see, all the years of peeling scalp from summer suntans has revealed that I was made in China. I was taking a shower this morning, thought that I hit my head somewhere somehow (these things happen -- anywhere anyhow anytime -- and bald-headed people don't even know it) and that I had a scab on top of my head, said "Fuck, how the hell did that happen?" And this thing comes off my head:

I learn something new every day. I guess I don't need the jacket in wintertime.

I was walking one of the dogs this evening, passing the Renaissance Hotel; and a large amount of people were congregated alongside this bus.

I could not get a clear view of the driver of the bus; but he was somewhat older than when we last saw him, and he did have scars on his face.

I was in Target. Around the corner from the $1 aisles, that are just past the entrance doors, was a shelf with relatively healthful foods laid out down its length. Well, on second thought, maybe not totally healthful.

But I did notice something quite distressing. Well, on second thought, maybe distressing does not describe the reaction. Surprising is a better word.

I was distressed some time ago when Nabisco changed the packaging of Oreos, semi-hard, clear plastic container, reminiscent of blister packs that can't be opened by humans, holding the cookies encased in some kind of space age polymer, requiring stabbing weapons to open it, instead of the stiffened waxed paper-like dividers with the not-impossible-to-open, heavy cellophane, ends sealed by blue paper-like end panels that provided an easy way to carry the packages of Oreos.

These new packages of Oreos were quite different, not because there was any change in the nuclear-detonation-proof polymer package, but because there were four white circles on the blue-colored package around each of the blue letters, "O" "R" "E" "O," which is nothing like the usual OREO logo, "OREO" with a blue shadow around it, cookies somewhere behind it.

Next to this new-age Oreo logo packaging was a display of Ritz crackers, but these boxes of crackers had a different RITZ logo, not the blue circle with the yellow RITZ across it, but something quite different. Each yellow letter in RITZ was set inside a blue circle on the red box.

If Nabisco or Kraft or whoever owns OREOs wants to change the Oreo packaging, they should go back to the old, easy-to-open, destructible, non-resealable packages that required eating a lot of Oreos until the brown corrugated waxed thingy could be taken out of the package in order to be able to fold the end of the bag, which still didn't keep the Oreos fresh, but made everyone feel better about not having to eat them all in one sitting.

That, not making the package markings simplistic, would be old school.

And Ritz crackers? I don't care.

I won't disclose the location, but there are two huge, billion-gallon SULFURIC ACID tanks with only this low wall separating them from the roadway.

I'm still getting e-mails from ultra-right-wing Republicans about stuff. They still try to justify the war in Iraq and George W. Bush. Here are excerpts from one of them:

He was a nasty leader hell bent on annoying USA. Now he's gone.
- "no threat to anyone"? That's probably what you're thinking of Iran and North Korea right now...
-War in Iraq isn't anywhere near 1 trillion. Closer to half a trillion... and less than Obama's bailouts! Sure it was a proactive war. Not the first time that's ever been done.

I think if you had your way we'd never have fought Hitler either. Yippee

The dead in May, 2009, in the Iraq war:

Spc. Jeremiah P. McCleery, age 24,
Spc. Jake R. Velloza, 22
Spc. Shawn D. Sykes, 28
Pvt. Justin P. Hartford, 21
Staff Sgt. Randy S. Agno, 29
Spc. Omar M. Albrak, 21
Maj. Steven Hutchison, 60
Maj. Matthew P. Houseal, 54
Staff Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25
Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20
Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19
Commander Charles K. Springle, 52
Cpl. Ryan C. McGhee, 21
Spc. David A. Schaefer Jr., 27
Maj. Jason E. George, 38
1st Lt. Leevi K. Barnard, 28
Sgt. Paul F. Brooks, 34
Sgt. 1st Class Brian Naseman, 36
Navy Cmdr. Duane G. Wolfe, 54
Maged M. Hussein (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District), 43
Spc. Chad A. Edmundson, 20
Pvt. Thomas E. Lee, III, 20
Pvt. Bradley W. Iorio, 29
Spc. Marko M. Samsone, 30
Spc. Samuel D. Stone, 20

This is the ultimate price of an illegal war. And, of course, scores of thousands of Iraqis are dead.

At least, the nasty man is dead.