Yesterday was the senior awards ceremony at Ani’s High School.

And the principal I find very annoying because he doesn’t prepare his speeches and he comes up and hems and haws for a very long time and says a lot of words without saying anything.

And he said, you know, this is often an emotional thing.

And I was like, why would this be emotional?

Like I get my kids are graduating but this isn’t graduation yet.

So like, what’s the deal?

And then I realized that the vast majority of the awards are memorial awards.

And so it was definitely emotional because the presenters would come up and be like, this is the so-and-so award named for my dead kid.

And it was really sad in some of these cases.

You know, I have a sickness and I want to know more.

And so I was Googling some of the people involved in these awards.

And sometimes they were kids who had died very young, dealt with cancer at like age 14 or whatever.

Sometimes it was like a kid who went to college and then had a health incident.

Terrible.

But the ceremony was sweet.

You saw some kids get awarded again and again.

The trick to getting at this high school anyway, the most awards, which include small scholarships, is to be a smart athlete or to have a major that indicates you intend to be an educator of some sort, because those are the ones that have the most scholarships available.

The award that Ani got amused all of us and surprised all of us.

Ani, who is an amazing writer and who’s majoring at Emerson in like writing literature and publishing or something like that, got the social studies award.

When the language arts award came and went and did not go to Ani, we were surprised.

And Ani got the social studies award.

And when the description of the winner was being read and talking about how, you know, this student always speaks their mind and is happy to share opinions on these core topics and believe strongly in freedom and justice and whatever, like, oh, this is going to be Ani.

And indeed it was, but it was kind of funny.

But boy, Lauren and I were saying we could really streamline that ceremony if they would put us in charge.

They had student MCs who actually did a fine job, but somebody had given all the seniors getting awards directions ahead of time.

Like, you’re all going to sit here in the middle and then go up the left side of the stage, collect your award and go down the right side of the stage.

But they put all the students in the audience on the right part.

So they had to take the longest walk possible to go up the left side of the stage.

Crazy.

The presenters weren’t queued up in any way.

So like they would wait until their names were called to go up, but they were going in order.

You could always know that you were the on-deck presenter and they could have done things to speed stuff up.

Instead they didn’t, which was sad.

So two and a half hours later we were finished.

Great.

In grumpy news, I, my arm is really bothering me.

That’s the short version of my grumpy news.

It’s enough that two days in a row I actually stopped working earlier than intended because my left arm was bothering me too much.

And that’s really problematic.

I wrote to my physical therapist, whose name is Lex, and was like, can I see you this week since my MRI isn’t for another week?

I actually have two separate MRIs scheduled.

And she’s like, no, we’re slammed.

But did the doctor prescribe any pain medication?

No.

No.

So yeah, that’s been sucky.

But I have one MRI next week and another the following week and we’ll see what they show.

I’m hoping that I can maybe convince them to do both MRIs at once, but it’ll depend on how much time they have available.

My lovely wife, Lauren, has a colonoscopy tomorrow morning.

And they told us that today would be the day we would find out what time they want her there.

And the answer is 6.45 in the morning.

So we’re fired up for that.

And I’m very pleased with the Ora Ring company.

I know I told some of this story on different podcasts, but I don’t think I told the story on this podcast.

So here it is.

I have an Ora Ring.

It’s a smart ring.

I especially like it for sleep tracking.

When I ordered the ring, I weighed 50 more pounds than I am today.

And the ring is now too loose.

So I wrote to their support email.

And I was like, hey, I lost 50 pounds.

Now my ring’s too loose.

I know your exchange program exists, but you have to exchange within 30 days for a new size.

I just know if, you know, I can get a discount or something.

And their AI bot wrote back to me almost instantly.

Congrats on the weight loss.

That’s really impressive.

And we’re glad that Ora could be a part of it.

You’re outside of the exchange window, so buy a new ring if you want a different size.

And I wrote back to me like, I’d like a human to look at this.

And it writes back saying, no problem.

We’re going to get this in front of a human.

And then the next day, it’s like, you haven’t responded to your ticket in 24 hours, so we’re going to close it.

And I write back like, no, don’t close it.

I’d like a human.

And it’s like, well, I’m the bot, and that’s outside of our exchange policy.

I’m like, right, can I talk to you?

And I got stuck in a loop.

So I went on LinkedIn, and I found the CEO of Ora, and I wrote to him and explained exactly the situation.

I said, the main bummer to me isn’t, you know, that maybe your policy doesn’t account for the fact that people lose weight.

But the bummer is that I have no way to reach a human there.

That’s crazy.

Within an hour or two, a human had reached out to me from their VIP support, and Ora is exchanging my ring for free.

So pretty cool.

I’m not mad at it.

Thanks, Ora.

And I figure if they’re going to be kind, I’ll be kind to talk about them on this very podcast, which I have now done.

I hope you’re having a wonderful June 11th and that your arm doesn’t hurt.

Lex.