Thursday night was the senior class award ceremony. Now, the underclassman awards are great, but the senior awards are considered more important. For one thing, they take place in the evening, while the underclassman awards are during school. That means they're definitely more important. They're also, it turns out, fiendishly long for reasons I'll get into in a moment.

Most of the seniors were there. If you were going to get an award, then you were there. Unless, of course, you were at the football game that was going on at the same time. Apparently there are football games in the spring? The marching band was all there, as were some other people who were apparently more interested in watching the game than picking up an award.

I got into the auditorium, and it seemed like a lot of people were there. Maybe a lot of people weren't there; I didn't really notice. After not long, the show started, and I had a look at the program. The bulk of the award ceremony would be the awarding of scholarships that students had applied for. As I went down the list (and it was a long list), I couldn't help but notice that I hadn't applied for any of these scholarships except one, and I knew that I didn't get the one I applied for. So it seemed that, during most of the ceremony, I would be sitting in my seat and applauding other people for winning scholarships I hadn't heard of or wasn't eligible for in the first place.

(During the ceremony, I found out [thanks to word of mouth and the miracle of text messaging] that there were streakers at the football game. I later found out who they were... or did I? I won't incriminate them here, but once I found out who they were, it was very, very funny.)

The school itself was also going to award several scholarships, all of which were new for this year. They were named after Mr. Laguerre, Mr. Allstaedt, Jonathan Krix, and Chalon Keen, all of whom were students or teachers who had died within the past two years. I didn't hear much about the ones named after the teachers, and for the Krix & Keen scholarship you had to write an essay about you had overcome some terrible hardship. I couldn't think of anything that would gain anyone's sympathy, so I left that on alone.

It came time for this guy from Office Depot to announce the winners of the Allstaedt and Laguerre scholarships, which his company had sponsored. The winners were David Paul and Jordan Ksomethingsomething. In slow motion, my mind was rationalizing. Who, me? How many other Jordons/Jordans were there? I could think of several. Jordan Peters? Jordon Feldman? Jordan King? None of them fit. Jordan Peters isn't even a senior anyway. It had to be me. I stood up, completely surprised. I went up to the stage incredulously. I got the Jeff Laguerre Social Studies Scholarship. It was a check for $800, plus a gift card for Office Depot.

I won a scholarship that I didn't even apply for... and in social studies, no less. I would have expected to get the Allstaedt scholarship, which was for math. Supposedly they had asked the social studies teachers to decide which senior was most worthy of getting the scholarship -- that's what I think I heard, at least. Three of them have taught me, and I didn't seem to stand out particularly in two of their classes, although I did get good grades. Oh well. I'm just glad I got a scholarship, for whatever amount it may be.

The second part of the award ceremony was related to classes rather than scholarships, so this was the time for the best students in each class to be awarded. I got awards for English IV Honors, Physics Honors, Programming (presumably Programming III), Top 10%, Perfect Attendance, and National Merit Semifinalist or whatever that thing was that I heard about a year ago and never heard anything else about again. Luke and I were the only ones to get perfect attendance, which isn't as surprising as it should have been. Most people have been afflicted with "senioritis" at one time or another, after all. When presenting the perfect attendance award, the prinicpal quipped that he'd take Luke and me out to breakfast on Monday. At least, I think he was quipping. It wasn't a very funny joke?

Oh yeah, the whole thing was about two and a half hours long, maybe even longer. I told you it was long. It was because of all of the scholarships.

On Friday night, my friend Andrew had another one of his birthday parties at the local drive-in, like last year and the year before. We met at Panera Bread, and Tyler drove Andrew, Alberto, Justin, and I to the drive-in. I had never ridden with Tyler before, and I'm kind of glad that I probably never will again. We saw Spider-Man 3, which I liked. Not that many people showed up this year, but there was a high fun-to-people ratio. After the movie, Tyler dropped off Alberto and perilously drove us to Denny's, peeling out into the parking lot. He left us after that because he was banned from entering the restaurant. There, Ed (yes, that Ed) joined us, and we calmed our nerves with a little food. Then we counted down the seconds till midnight, which legally marked Andrew's 18th birthday. It was a blast. I'll really miss those guys.

These photos are probably really embarrassing... if you're George W. Bush. They're 15 embarrassing photos of George W. Bush.

From History Magazine, which I've never heard of, here's an article about the evolution of mealtimes.