When you get your doctorate, your college has specially designed robes that only its degree-holders receive. They have colors in bands of varying widths to tell the casual onlooker who you are and what you do. Mark's say that he's a doctor of engineering (or will be with a tiny bit more hoop-jumping).

Mark and me. I guess this will make me Mrs. Dr., like in the later Anne of Green Gables books? That's kind of neat. Now I want to go reread Emily of New Moon -- I always liked Emily better than Anne. Maybe when I'm home at the folks' in a few weeks.

This is with Mark's folks and his sister. You can pick them, my folks, and my grands out in the rest of these, right?

Every once in awhile, it strikes me how little Sarah and I look alike for how much we look alike. We both have long brownish hair and are on the pale side, and while she's taller than me, it's not by that much. I think a lot of the superficial descriptions would be the same, and yet we could never be mistaken for each other.

The hood that PhDs get is actually a hood and could be pulled up over the hat if they so chose. It might also be a decent place to store books, snacks, etc. For when he's wearing the robe around casually, of course.

Dave had gotten a new camera about a month ago (I think), and was really enjoying playing with it all weekend.

Mark took his folks and Sarah down to San Gregorio -- the pictures are here, but I wasn't, so I'm mostly just putting them up, without commentary, for those of you who want to see pretty Half Moon Bay stuff, or are fond of Gritters. My folks and grands finished watching the baseball game, and then we wandered around Palo Alto and the campus until it was time to meet for supper at Jing Jing.

Splendid time had by all, with potstickers, soup, and many happy Jing Jing spices. If you don't want to look at the Gritters' beach adventure, you can go home now.