And She’s Done! Mom Retires!

So there we were driving to Kingston for mom’s retirement. You heard about mom’s retirement, right? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at least 3 or 4 times, or more. We arrived late Thursday night, went to school with mom Friday and spent most of the day prepping for the party Friday night including doctoring up her corsage with a used paint brush for authenticity.

It went beautifully!  Or at least I thought it did… it was the first retirement party I’ve ever been to.

There were over 50 people crowding into the University Club to celebrate mom and her colleague Alan’s retirement.

Gerry grabbed the camera and started snapping shots of everyone and everything (these are all his as are the hundred or so more I didn’t upload).

There were choral arrangements written to roast mom & Alan, performance reviews, a slide show of photos from through out the years, and speeches highlighting the influence and impact they have both had on their students over the years. I was invited to give a speech about mom’s career.

I was lucky enough to be able to read a letter from one of mom’s students which was the perfect tribute to her. (Thanks Ben if you are reading this!)  I also threw in a story about Glenn’s cherished memento from her class in the 70s,  and a couple of amusing quotes from RateMyTeacher.com just to keep things interesting.

This is what it looked like when mom realized she actually was getting a Mac as her retirement gift, not just the bag of apples I presented her with.

(BTW, Alan is the other person in the photo with mom… Mom has the bear, Alan has the beard in case you are confused ;->)

Afterwards we headed over to the Kingston Brew Pub for dinner, which incidentally is owned and operated by yet another of her past students.

The next day we went comparison shopping for the perfect Mac. And to top it all off, we just won her a free Gelaskin for it too!! (Would you believe one of the founders is a KC grad too?)

At this point I’m wondering what I have to do to “retire”, because this whole retirement party thing seems like a gas!

But then we hit the road again, back to Toronto for… Toronto Taste!

Rather than give you a full round up on that, I’ll just point you to some of the pictures I took of the food, chefs and … well… food.