Milestones for Max and Millie

Max and I spent Friday morning at the Bonnabel High School cafeteria. It was the Jefferson Parish Public School System's "Celebration of Champions," honoring all the students, middle school and high school, who have finished the year with a 4.0 GPA.

And Max is one of them! Congratulations Max, great job. We're very proud of you. Hence this blog post.

They hold the event at Bonnabel, I suspect, because it has the largest cafeteria and even more important, the largest parking lot. What it didn't have, oddly, was any 4.0 students this year. Max's school, East Jefferson, had a handful – eight or nine, I think – and the two Riverdales, high and middle, both had contingents. But the Haynes Academy had by far the biggest group – around 80, I'd guess. That's the "magnet" science academy. We talked a year ago about letting Max go there, but he opted for EJ, and it's a good fit. Not as overwhelmingly academic, but a good school with a lot of options.

He's in the honors program, which provides a really strong incentive for college. Earn a 2.5 GPA and the state pays a big chunk of college tuition. Earn a 3.5 or higher and they pay almost everything. I was talking to his counselor who said there is some talk that the standard will be raised in the next year or two, "but he's not even close to the cutoff line, so don't worry."

He's got his work cut out for him. Next year's schedule is mostly honors classes – Spanish II, Geometry, English II, Civics, World History. Thank goodness for band, he's good at it, enjoys it, and practice isn't the same as homework.

Anyway, just wanted to take a moment to brag a little, Max is doing great in high school and we couldn't be prouder.

ALSO – Millie called Saturday. She had three and a half days to throw together a wedding for friends. I didn't get the details, something about the friends moving to and planning to get married in England, only to discover it would be much easier to get married in the states first. So the courthouse ceremony will be Wednesday. Millie's the maid of honor. It doesn't seem all that long ago that we were attending the weddings of various friends. Now it's Millie's turn.

We were able to help a little, found her a bit of poetry to read at the reception. Every year on our anniversary Tori and I go to the park and I read her poetry, so it wasn't like we weren't prepared. Most "romance" poetry seems to be based on the guy trying to talk the woman into having sex with him. Seems kind of inappropriate for a wedding. I mean, by the time you're standing at the altar (or in front of the judge) it's just a matter of sealing the deal. But there's one that over the years has become  both Tori and my favorite. Now it might be the favorite of Millie's friends for decades to come as well. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.

SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
  Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
  Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
  That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
  Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
  Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.