{"id":6501,"date":"2025-05-20T00:17:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T00:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/?p=6501"},"modified":"2025-05-20T00:17:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T00:17:52","slug":"life-is-a-series-of-hellos-and-goodbyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/20\/life-is-a-series-of-hellos-and-goodbyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Life is a Series of Hellos and Goodbyes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Just got back from a road trip up to Buffalo, for Michelle&#8217;s graduation from college.\u00a0 She got a Bachelor of Civil Engineering, and has a job lined up starting in a couple weeks working on train bridges in the Bronx.\u00a0 We\u2019re all very proud and she is quite psyched.\u00a0 Now she&#8217;s moving back in with us for the summer and maybe beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We did a few things on the trip.&nbsp; Jeannie and I left New York on Wednesday night and drove up to Ithaca, so we we could do some hiking on Thursday.&nbsp; We picked a hike called Buttermilk Falls, which was quite scenic, and the weather was perfect, sunny and warm, after a long run of cold and rainy days.&nbsp; We arrived in Buffalo Thursday evening and went out dinner with Lizzy and Josh, and met Josh&#8217;s parents Rita and Ryan.&nbsp; They&#8217;re very nice people and we all got on well; it was alot of fun.&nbsp; It seems like this means Lizzy and Josh are getting pretty serious. He just graduated with a second degree, and tomorrow they&#8217;re going on vacation together.&nbsp; I wonder if he&#8217;s gonna propose to her soon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Friday we kinda had a day off.&nbsp; Jeannie and I went to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens, a place I&#8217;d heard of but never been before.&nbsp; It&#8217;s a 19th century greenhouse modeled after the famous Crystal Palace of Victorian London, all glass with great domes and galleries.&nbsp; Lots of tropical jungle and desert plants, palms and cacti, and an impressive array of carnivorous plants.&nbsp; Afterwards we went up the Michelle&#8217;s apartment to help her pack and bring some things back to Orchard Park.&nbsp; That evening we met up with Larry and Jackie for the Hamburg Music Festival. Larry is a band director at Hamburg High School and some of his students were playing in small woodwind ensembles in a park right downtown.&nbsp; Afterward we walked around the neighborhood, where various bands were playing in all the bars.&nbsp; We ended up in a park with a beer tent watching a The Tragically Hip tribute band.&nbsp; Fun night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saturday was the graduation.&nbsp; There was a bit of last minute drama that Michelle might not be able to walk with her class because of an AP class that she never got credit for.&nbsp; But it all got straightened out.&nbsp; Technically she&#8217;s not graduation until September because she switched majors and needs to complete the last of the electives this summer.&nbsp; But she did the ceremony, and it was great and the Engineering and Applied Sciences school is huge, over 800 students graduating.&nbsp; Beforehand we went out to Board Point and took a bunch of pictures.&nbsp; The weather was windy and threatening but it didn&#8217;t actually rain.&nbsp; Afterwards we took Michell, Lizzy and Josh to a nice restaurant downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sunday morning we spent some time talking with my Mum.&nbsp; She&#8217;s been feeling kinda down, knowing she and my Dad are getting older, and wondering how much longer they&#8217;re going to be able to keep driving and doing other things, and what that will mean for their ability to get around and all that.&nbsp; No easy answers, I guess.&nbsp; Then we went up to Michelle&#8217;s apartment and helped her pack and load up all her stuff into her car and my SUV.&nbsp; It was a long drive and by the time we got home and unloaded it all, it was late and we were all pretty tired.&nbsp; Luckily we all had today off to relax and unwind and get ready for the next adventure.&nbsp; Today Michelle is looking to buy furniture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just got back from a road trip up to Buffalo, for Michelle&#8217;s graduation from college.\u00a0 She got a Bachelor of Civil Engineering, and has a job lined up starting in a couple weeks working on train bridges in the Bronx.\u00a0 We\u2019re all very proud and she is quite psyched.\u00a0 Now she&#8217;s moving back in with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/20\/life-is-a-series-of-hellos-and-goodbyes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Life is a Series of Hellos and Goodbyes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6502,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6501\/revisions\/6502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}