So, first this happened:

…and then this happened:

…and just like that, high school is over. Thank heaven, because I was ready for it. Toward the end there, her high school got several bomb threats, nothing Columbine-like, just the usual freakout over some bathroom graffiti. I hasten to add I understand the freakout — you can’t ignore that stuff — but the day I received an email from the district with this Scooby Doo subject line — North solves mystery and keeps focus on teaching and learning — I just kind of mentally threw in the towel. Bring on a new set of irritations. Microaggressions, climbing tuition bills, all of it. P.S. The mystery wasn’t solved. The day after they nabbed the kid they thought was making the threats, a new one appeared. Oh, well. School’s out.

I still can’t believe the Vipers booked a show the night of graduation. I had paid $70 for a ticket to the all-night party, and she was going to go, dammit. I made arrangements for her to be let in after the admission window had closed (you can understand why they have to do these things; someone might bring in a bomb) and she came home at sunrise with the usual party favors, including a pair of green boxer shorts with “Kiss me I’m Irish” all over them. Boxer Short Bingo, I gathered.

Now I will take a one-year break from caring who the superintendent is, the status of the teacher contract, and of course whether the district’s wifi will ever be brought up to snuff. I will commence caring again in June 2016. For now, I have no more fucks to give, as the kids say.

So, a little bit o’ bloggage as we start the week:

I found this story fascinating. A softball player at MSU is claiming an assistant coach threw two pitches at her head after she was overheard saying unflattering things about the program to a reporter, off the record. The coaches could be looking at assault charges, I expect. Laura Lippman has written several books with the theme that women’s worst enemies are often other women. I’ll say.

How Michigan is going to overturn its prevailing-wage law. Worth reading.

Honestly, I never expected a Bush — especially the smart one — to be this incompetent, but it’s just one thing after another with this guy. Or should I say, this guy!

The Rachel Dolezal case is simply a wonder to me. Someone on my Facebook feed wondered if this isn’t some sort of Munchausen’s syndrome. I wonder.

So let’s get the week underway, shall we?

Well, I think orientation’s done. For us, anyway. Kate’s program goes into day three, but I’ll be picking her up this morning. Upside: She’ll be registered, propagandized and basically ready to begin school in September. And I’ll know what laptop I need to buy for her.

I came away from the experience believing that college sure is different these days. Of course, when you’re standing on the brink of spending a fortune, would you want to go into it half-prepared? The program was excellent overall, answering every question either parents or incoming students could possibly have. There was a session about how to succeed academically, talking about study habits and the zillion resources students have at their fingertips. There were talks about stress, counseling services, academic advising, safety, housing, health care and more I’m probably forgetting. We talked about their feelings. We talked about our feelings.

And we learned the fight song. The best line of the session came from the housing guy, who was very funny, and pointed out that Michigan’s fight song is the only one that doesn’t exhort the team to fight and win, but just assumes they’ve already done so.

“You’ve gotten your kids into this school! You’ve won! You’re the leaders and best!” We heard that a lot. I’m sure the new freshmen did, too. And so you see why people who attend Michigan State say that AA stands not for Ann Arbor, but arrogant assholes.

And yes, to all who asked — laundry machines now operate with a card swipe. You load them up with Blue Bucks, and it goes down the drain as suds.

So now the summer unfolds before us. Graduation is later today. I plan to have a cocktail after.

Not much bloggage because I wasn’t online, but here’s this: The First Lady’s increasing outspokenness on race and FLOTUS-hood.

Mrs. Obama has often been open about personal experiences and race in speeches that went unnoticed by the news media, but rarely more so than in the speech at Tuskegee, where she recalled the New Yorker cover depicting her with a large Afro and an assault rifle. “Now, yeah, it was satire, but if I’m being really honest, it knocked me back a bit,” she said. “It made me wonder, just how are people seeing me.”

She noted that a fist bump with her husband was referred to as a terrorist fist jab. “And over the years,” she said, “folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited ‘a little bit of uppity-ism.’ Another noted that I was one of my husband’s ‘cronies of color.’ Cable news once charmingly referred to me as ‘Obama’s Baby Mama.’ ”

…But outside that room, it stirred debate. To some critics, it sounded as if Mrs. Obama was complaining about a privileged life, and as if she were bitter and resentful. Ron Christie, who served as an aide to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, said that as an African-American he was proud that the Obamas live in the White House.

“I just wish the Obamas would recognize the historical significance of that rather than say racism is driving everything down or that America is inherently racist,” he said. “America is not this mean, angry, racist place that sometimes I think the first family in the form of Michelle Obama would like you to believe.”

It wasn’t that long ago that someone first brought my attention to a conservative blogger named Matt Walsh, and ever since, it appears he’s everywhere. One of my Facebook friends is always posting his long, long, lightly edited screeds about this and that, and he’s gotten quite the readership, I gather. If you’ve never heard of him, I think this Gawker explication is about right:

Walsh, a 28-year-old married father of two from the Baltimore area, writes with a level of arrogance that makes Bill O’Reilly look like a monk. As the mighty defender of the majority, he offers a much-needed perspective for heterosexual, white, American men. Walsh is the cool Christian millennial for oppressed conservatives everywhere. He drinks! He smokes! He has tattoos! He’s not like those other stuffy right-wingers. If you feel like today’s conservative Christian pundits are just too kind and tolerant, don’t worry: Walsh thinks Christians should be more judgmental.

Pandering to the masses of right-wing fundamentalists, Walsh responds to current issues with a degree of moral outrage that asserts the stupidity and wrongness of anyone who disagrees with him, regularly touting that “liberals” and “progressives” are the ultimate enemy against God and country. Wait, what if you’re a Christian and a progressive? Don’t raise your hand, because Matt Walsh doesn’t think you really exist: he’s fully prepared to determine whether you’re a Christian or not. But his perspectives aren’t actually based in theological truth, much less Christian love.

Finally, now that’s what I call…disgusting.

Cap! Gown! Let’s do this!

After a full day at the University of Michigan, with another half-day ahead tomorrow, I am exhausted and have much to report, but at the moment can only summon this one example of wonder, which I offer you now:

The dorm laundry facilities can be monitored online, and will indicate how many machines are free, as well as how much time remains on those that are in use.

Signs and wonders.

Carry on.

If you have to have a four-hour meeting, you should have it in our Ann Arbor office, where three windows look out onto green loveliness and you can gather strength from the verdant fields stretching away into more greenness, and…excuse me, did you say something? My back hurts during a meeting that long. But there was a lunch afterward, and more meetings, and now we’re all done for another quarter.

That was Monday. Plus the drive there in the rain, and the drive back in the mugginess, and then some spaghetti carbonara, because I can’t always get it together to marinate something and otherwise plan a decent dinner. Sometimes bacon and eggs and spaghetti is the best you can do. Fortunately, it’s delicious.

Tomorrow is orientation in Ann Arbor. I still have cleaning to do before graduation. And yet here I sit. Sue me.

It’s an all-pop culture bloggage menu today, because I’m out of gas to think very deeply:

What will be the song of the summer? A few contenders.

How horrible can people be? In a Walmart shampoo aisle, pretty horrible.

“Caps lock is the Palin family’s rhetorical open-carry.”

Off to bed.

It appears flower season is over at Eastern Market, and thank Gaia for that. Besides produce, the market is full of bedding plants and perennials and hanging baskets and potted trees and all the rest of your landscaping needs, at bargain prices. Of course this attracts people from all over the metro area, intent on getting all their annuals in one go while of course stopping for lunch at some restaurant they visit twice a year and getting lots of snaps for their Pinterest page. All of these people drag enormous wagons and clog up everything.

It’s impossible, i’ve found, to get up early enough to beat this crowd. Last week I was ready to do some murderdeathkill, but this week the crowds were considerably less, and so I was able to get my arugula and eggs and meat. Eggs are $4 a dozen. Avian flu, the sellers all said. “I heard a guy in Iowa lost eight million,” one said.

“Maybe that’s why he had avian flu in the first place,” I said. What do I know? I’m no poultry producer. Just more b.s. that woman had to listen to last Saturday.

It was a lovely day, so we hit the water.

A little bumpiness in the panorama, sorry — it’s hard enough to keep the arrow on the line when exposing a panorama on solid ground, much less while out on the bounding main.

Sunday, I cleaned. And sweated. It went from clear and chilly to overcast and muggy in a trice. In other words, typical Michigan weather.

Expect spotty posting this week. Kate graduates Thursday, attends orientation in Ann Arbor Tuesday and Wednesday. Sunrise, sunset. Etcetera.

So let’s get to it, then:

Jeff posted this story last week in comments, but I just got a chance to read it, the story of the crafting of the president’s Selma speech. My favorite passage:

“Those who only understand exceptionalism as preserving the past; who deny our faults or inequality; who say love it or leave it; those are the people who are afraid,” Obama said, according to Keenan’s notes. “Those are the people who think America is some fragile thing.”

Worth a read.

And at the end of Saturday came the Belmont, which I simply couldn’t watch. I was so sure this would be like every other Derby-Preakness winner, but at the last minute I turned it on, and got to see the race from the backstretch on. Wow.

Here’s a nice deadline piece from Sports Illustrated, and here’s a blast from the past from the great Bill Nack. An awful lot of racing writing can easily tip into the overblown, but both of these pieces strike the right note of drama without getting that extra nudge.

Warning, folks: This won’t be long tonight. I woke up at 3:30 a.m. and never really got back to sleep. A 4 a.m. rousing is sort of my baseline for basic functionality the following day. I spent the day staring blankly at my laptop, sending wan emails and otherwise wishing I were dead. But I did my bike ride, because summer is short and wheezing is character-building. I can’t waste this season. Winter was so long.

So a short link salad today before I hit the keys face-first, OK?

I’m the world’s biggest fan of “The Wire” — how has this tautology supercut been out for more than two weeks and I’m just now hearing about it? I demand to know.

Men are an on/off switch, women are a rheostat. Nowhere is this more evident than the description of “female Viagra,” just approved by an FDA panel:

Viagra treats sexual dysfunction in men by increasing blood flow to the genitals. Flibanserin, on the other hand, targets the frontal cortex, in particular some key neurotransmitters involved in sexual desire: By increasing the flow of dopamine and norepinephrine, flibanserin helps women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder feel turned on; at the same time, the drug decreases levels of serotonin, which is associated with sexual inhibition.

I will not be taking this in my dotage, preferring the more traditional bourbon goggles.

Ted Cruz came to town for a fundraiser night before last. And made a Joe Biden joke. Funny! The day before Biden buried his son. Who ARE these people? It’s not like this is a secret.

Fading so, so fast. Have a good weekend, all.

So this was shaping up to be a chilly but lovely June 1 morning. New calendar! New leaf! New resolve!

I decided to bike to work. Not to the bus stop, all the way in. It’s only 12 miles, I’ve been planning it forever, and got rained out on Bike to Work Day last month, so I figured there was no time like the present. And until about the halfway point, it went great. Until I hit one pothole WHAM and then another WHAM, followed by the grinding of an insta-flat tire.

Now. I carry flat-fixing tools and a spare tube and pump. But I was dressed for work, this was the back tire (meaning I’d be touching the chain) and it was in one of those freakishly abandoned parts of the east side:

Note looted, empty school at right. That empty gas station/repair shop, freshly painted when the Google Maps car rolled through two years ago, has tipped all the way into seedy. The thought of standing exposed on this weird stretch, getting my hands greasy with no hope of degreasing them with the soaps found in office bathrooms, all with the very real chance the rim might be bent and it could all be for naught, potentially attracting unwelcome “help,” and I did what any sensible person would do: Called Uber.

A very nice man picked me up. Cornelius, a jazz drummer who Ubers for a cash flow between gigs. He helped wrestle the bike into the trunk, drove me to my office, wrestled it out of the trunk and told me I should check him out at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, any Sunday night.

I love this town. Potholes and all.

I guess the news of the day, in the non-foreign policy, non-national policy, non-consequential division, would be the birth of Caitlyn Jenner. Bruce is dead, long live Caitlyn. I know we have many gay, lesbian and perhaps transgender readers here, so a reality check, please: Is this list of rules offered by GLAAD just a tetch obnoxious? I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: People have to be guided gently on this issue, and there’s a certain STFU in my head when I read stuff like this:

AVOID the phrase “born a man” when referring to Jenner. If it is necessary to describe for your audience what it means to be transgender, consider: “While Caitlyn Jenner was designated male on her birth certificate, as a young child she knew that she was a girl.”

Don’t tell me how to write, don’t tell me what words are OK to use, don’t make me Caitlyn Jenner’s publicity agent. OK? OK. This is uncharted territory for most people, and we’re figuring things out as we go. Let’s be kind to one another, not assholes. And now “misgender” is a verb, apparently:

Fox News Repeatedly Mocks And Misgenders Caitlyn Jenner

Meanwhile, Jenner’s non-Kardashian children seem to have their heads screwed on right, refusing to appear on his latest reality show:

… [D]espite numerous entreaties from their father as well as the head of E! programming, the Jenner children refuse to participate, forgoing financial gain and exposure in the process. At first their decision did not seem to register with Caitlyn. She kept hoping they could be persuaded because she knows from eight years on Keeping Up with the Kardashians the necessity of a family dynamic for ratings success. When she realized the decision was final, she became increasingly frustrated and on one occasion hurled profanities. She told me she felt “terribly disappointed and terribly hurt.”

So there’s that.

Any “Game of Thrones” fans in the house? You should be reading Grantland’s recaps and precaps for lines like this:

…last night’s episode of Thrones taught us that only three things can stop a rampaging army of pickax-wielding, undead popsicles: obsidian, Valyrian steel, and 6 to 10 inches of shallow water.

It’s chilly enough that I expect a White Walker or two to emerge from the gloaming, frankly. I give up. It’s June. The week ahead must be better. Hope yours is, too.

Shit-tastic weekend weather, alas. Heat and occasional showers on Saturday gave way to cold and slashing rain on Sunday. Nothing to do but clean a closet. Found these:

I bought these a few years back, thinking I’d indulge in a fun fad of my long-lost youth. The soles would indicate they’ve been only lightly worn, maybe because I realized that when you take a wrong step in these, your heel comes down OUCH GODDAMNIT on the edge of those wooden soles. I recall a miracle in those soles, shaped to support the arch and encourage your toes to grab the little ridge with every step — remember, these were Dr. Scholl’s exercise sandals, the idea being those little toe clenches were exercise for your summer legs. You bought them in a drugstore, in one of three colors: Red, blue and bone. I was always a bone girl, so that’s when I picked this time.

Why do we remember how comfortable the wooden sole was, and forget how much more comfortable was everything that came after, with gel soles and miracle foams and all the rest of it.

I might wear these to my high-school reunion this summer. We’ll see.

It felt good to purge the closet. Threw away a few things, put a lot in the donate pile. There’s a little air in there now.

Even with cold and wind, we had a better weekend than some. And some others. And certainly Denny Hastert. If you missed Sherri’s comment on the last thread, I think it’s a win:

The more I think about the Hastert situation, the more incredulous I grow. This is a man who was third in line in the succession, yet he seems to be dumber than a box of rocks. He doesn’t seem to be aware that banks have to report cash transactions more than $10K, so when his former victim makes himself known and they negotiate a payment, he starts withdrawing $50K chunks of cash, instead of, oh, wiring funds, or hiring the guy to do some “job” for him. The bank calls him in and tells him, look, we have to tell the IRS about this, where’s the money going, and he says, oh, I just don’t trust banks, I’m stuffing it in my mattress, and he promptly starts withdrawing chunks just under $10K. The FBI, unsurprisingly, becomes concerned that something is going on, and contacts him, and Hastert talks to them without a lawyer (who talks to the FBI without a lawyer?), and then lies to the FBI (who doesn’t know that lying to the FBI is a crime?)

If Gingrich is the stupid person’s idea of a smart person, then I guess Hastert is just the stupid person.

Yes, amen.

Meanwhile, there were some moments of zen to be had. Read this WashPost story on the anti-Muslim demonstration in Arizona all the way to the end, because it’s worth it. The friend who pointed it out referred to the idiot at the center of this as a “halfwit hick” and that certainly describes comments like this:

“I can’t let my kids grow up in a society where tyranny is reigning over. I’ve got ISIS posting my address. This is terrorism at its finest, right here in America,” he said. “My family has to go into hiding.”

But? It gets better. Read to the end, I promise it’s worth it.

Time for “Game of Thrones.” And the week ahead. I hope it’s better than the last.

So here I am on Memorial Day, staring at a Facebook post that wishes all a “happy” one. Sigh. Every generation that goes by in which it is no longer common to have service members at all levels of society, in most families, and these things are going to keep happening.

For the record: Veterans Day is when we honor all veterans. Memorial Day is when we honor dead ones. It used to be those killed in action, but has expanded to mean those who served and died later — fine with me, as the more we learn about PTSD, the more it seems that even those who came home more or less in one piece may later be considered a casualty of the wars they fought in.

Neither occasion, Veterans or Memorial, strikes me as a happy one. War is hell. You may have read that somewhere.

But as the years pile up between us and our closest serving family member, the more the day just means another long weekend, the official start of summer, a day for barbecues and backyard sprawling, and I suppose that’s fine, too. Free country and all.

My sole connection with the martial was taking Kate to see “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Holy shit, but I could feel my hair being blown back by that one. Of all the genres available at the local cineplex, sci-fi and action are the ones most likely to leave me cold. CGI has taken much of the fun out of watching stunts, and the scripts for dreck like the “Taken” franchise leave me cold. I like my action stories to have at least one foot in reality if they’re set in our world, but Mad Max takes place in an apocalyptic future that makes its own kind of sense. Quite a bit of sense, actually; the imagery was so firehose-like I found myself groping for a remote to stop the action and just examine some of the frames, but no deal — that thing started at a gallop and never really let up. There were nods to the original, sly observations about the present, and on a dark future to come.

Did I mention we saw it in 3-D? Mind-blowing. And then there was this guy. Oh, and these guys. And about a million other guys. Fun fact: The five young women who represent the booty (sorry) at the center of the story include Elvis’ granddaughter and Lenny Kravitz’ daughter.

Other than that, it was a typical weekend with a little extra added on. Cookin’, shoppin’, eatin’, drinkin’. Droppin’ Gs everywhere. You?

I did do something new on Friday, to kick off the weekend — tried a boxing workout at a new place nearby. LOVED IT. But my bad knee HATED IT, which means I now have to figure out a way to float like a butterfly while not actually doing so. The stinging like a bee was easier, and the next day I felt it in my arms in places I didn’t know existed, always the sign of a good workout. It’s a little scary, how good punching feels. I shuffled a mental slideshow of my enemies list on the heavy bag, and did some serious virtual nose-bloodying. Another fun fact: Nearly everyone who works out at this place is female. True, it’s a boxing fitness space and not actual, hit-someone boxing training, but still — you’d think it’d be one place you’d see more men than at a yoga class. Maybe Mad Max is on to something: You want a fierce warrior, pick someone with XX chromosomes.

This weekend also passed without any of us stopping at the Movement electronic music festival at Hart Plaza. Ticket prices this year? $75 for one day, $150 for all three. To watch some guy or guys stand on a stage in front of an Apple laptop? I wish I were kidding.

I don’t think for a minute Jeb Bush is faltering as badly as Charles Pierce thinks he is, but he makes some good points here: He’s whiffing on some very slow pitches.

And as it was a holiday weekend and I mostly stayed away from the internet, that’s what I have today. Short week ahead! Let’s enjoy it.

Yeesh, another late one. Senior Honors Night down to the high school. We heard some names over and over, our child’s name once, but hey — she got a cord to wear around her shoulders at commencement, a medal around her neck, and she was made late to the Tame Impala show I’d given her permission to attend. The students sat on stage, and as the names piled up and the five-second claps stretched to two hours, I could see her dying up there. Oh, well. Tame Impala is lame, anyway.

Anyway, highlights: Most of these kids I hadn’t given a second thought to since grade school, when the Girl Scout troops were still intact, and Kate would occasionally tell a story from the classroom over dinner. And so I watched one girl walk and thought of the time I was driving a field trip, and heard her small voice in the back seat, saying, “My mom goes to a doctor who gives her shots in her face so she’ll be pretty.”

I thought, in 15 years, someone from this class who isn’t on the stage will be richer than all of you. Someone who is on the stage will be taking heavy meds for serious mental illness. Someone sitting here is going away and won’t go to a single reunion. Someone hates everybody else. Someone secretly loves somebody else.

What can I say? It was an astonishingly boring evening.

Tomorrow I have to get up early and head to Dearborn. I was there today, in fact. I saw no sign of sharia law. In fact, it was delightful, as it almost always is. Every time I go there, I’m plied with the most delicious hummus in the land, and fresh — really fresh — pita bread. You can win me over with a lot less.

As I was out of pocket all day, I didn’t get much bloggage material. I continue to be fascinated/astounded by the biker-shootout story:

On Sunday, witnesses described seeing a mass shootout that involved dozens of of guns being fired inside the restaurant and in the parking lot along Interstate 35, according to CBS affiliate KWTX. The station reported that panicked patrons and employees sought refuge from the mayhem in the restaurant freezer.

Hours later, authorities from multiple law enforcement agencies — including local and state police, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — were still trying to secure the area and survey the large crime scene, which was littered with more than 100 weapons.

“In 34 years of law enforcement, this is the most violent crime scene I have ever been involved in,” Swanton said, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald. “There is blood everywhere. We will probably approach the number of 100 weapons.”

Unbelievable, except all too believable.

Still sifting through “Mad Men” mop-ups, but right now — off to bed.