lunch with Jimmy

Yesterday, in an e-mail to my protegée and co-author Sara describing my frantic efforts to complete our project, I told her of a lunch break I took with my wife after what seemed a very productive morning:

“Sensing victory, I took a break and went to Weber’s with Kathy to hear Coach Harbaugh at the U of M Club of Ann Arbor’s kickoff luncheon.  Kathy had to join to attend, bringing down the average age of the membership.  The place was packed and Coach was in fine form, slimmed down, enthusiastic, funny, and coherent.  If the team’s as good as he says it is, we’re in for a great season.  Odd what sports will do.  Kathy was all pissed off and sour at the U for how they’ve been treating her vis-á-vis retirement, teaching obligations, and vax mandate (but the U always treats you shitty at the end, maybe so you don’t feel too wistful about the job you had to leave behind).  But as we left Weber’s she was all rah, rah, go Blue, Hail to the Victors!  It helped that she bumped into JH as he was coming in, and asked after her former star student Andrew Vasartis, starting center and captain of last year’s team.  He just got into med school and as a 6th year senior will be playing football while attending his first year of med school.  As JH was discussing his players, he got to his glowing remarks on Andrew, beginning to say how very smart he was, then looked up and pointed to the back where Kathy was, saying “where’s that professor I was talking to, he’s the smart guy, isn’t he?”.  Good thing she was sitting down, or she’d a been walking on air.”

Now doesn’t that put you in the mood for a rousing chorus of The Victors?  Feel free to sing along https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJgDsYkGd4