driving

B. and I had received an invitation for Saturday. Our great-niece, T., has graduated from high school - and beyond that, owing to an arrangement between her high school and a local junior college, a lot of extra classes, and four years of summer school, she also completed an A.S. degree, normally two years full-time of junior college, at the same time. So she goes off to university this fall a couple of legs ahead.

So T.'s parents, A. and C., decided to host a big late-afternoon party to celebrate. We've been invited to some earlier birthday and other celebrations but were not able to attend. So since we did have this day free, we decided to go.

The thing is, T. and her family live three hours' drive and a mountain range away from here, in a large and comfortable home out in the boondocks far from anything, so it's a major investment in time to go there. I drove us, we spent an hour and a half there, and then B. wanted to get back, partly to perform evening ablutions before it was too late. It took even longer to get home, thanks to a brush fire in the freeway median, but we did that too. Amazingly I got us home without feeling too tired out on the way.

Not a trip we may ever take again, at least not together, but we did get a chance to congratulate (congraduate) the honoree, and chat with parents and grandparents. It was a good outing, despite the trouble it took to get there.