So my brother's high school graduation was help at SPAC last Thursday and the weather couldn't have been better. When I had mine there five years ago (!?!?) it was a sweltering 90 degrees, throw on the cap and the gown in a 3 hour ceremony on top of it and you have one sweaty Upstater. I found it a little ironic that just less than a week ago the same amphitheatre was flooded with a sold out crowd of stoners for the Phish show while now you have all these family members sitting in the same seats watching their kids graduate. We had a graduation party at our house Sunday, so of course as soon as I got home Thursday I had the pleasure of setting everything up since my brother was fortunate enough to have work that day, bastard. We rented a bunch of tables and umbrellas from this rental center to set up out on the lawn, but little did our trusting consumer souls know that two out of the eight actually functioned properly. Talk about ghetto furniture... one was missing a pin so we had to hold it up with a screw instead, another we had to tie the top of the base with a rope in order to keep it from collapsing, and then several others were warped so we couldn't even insert the craptacular umbrellas into the table without using a rock (we were simply too frustrated to get a hammer at the time). Let's just say the rental company got served after hearing it from my mom, so the bill eventually became half of what it originally was. As like any Jewish family, you can never have enough food at your party, so my mom packed me about five pounds of leftovers for the plane ride home that will definitely hold over my next Giant trip for at least another two weeks.