Saturday, August 13, 2011

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Jam's Perfect Day

The day started with a Department Chair Retreat. Hardly an auspicious beginning for a perfect day, but nonetheless Jam was clueless about the day's agenda as he always is. He walked onto campus with spring in his step.

And he walked upstairs to the meeting with that same spring. This meeting would be a great test of his abilities to calm down quickly and would let me know how he would be in the classroom. I walked in with my bag of toys, laptop computer, and notepad and pens all in my big Landsend carryall and took a seat by the door. I hooked Jam to the table leg and spread a couple of toys on the ground.

Aside from slipping by me one time and managing to put his head into Cindy's lap without my knowing he had woken up and moved, he was pretty good about staying under the table and taking a nap. He made occasional forays out to take a nip at Nikky's book bag, but she did say her cat made a pillow of it and moved it out of harm's way.


Here he is sleeping while the rest of us drone on and on.

Of course, they did give us breaks. It wasn't a torture session! And during the breaks, I would take the coat off and make Jam sit to be greeted.

After the meeting, we went to lunch and he slept through lunch. Fabulous!

When I got home at 5, Fred and I decided to go to Bonefish near IRB for dinner, so we got Jam suited up. We were given a pager and we turned around in the very full bar to see a small space against the wall where we could stand with Jam out of the way. As I was walking away I thought I heard the word Berkeley.

When we got the wall, this lady places her hand on my arm and says, "He is just adorable. What is he going to be?" She and her husband both had big smiles on their faces. So Fred and went into out SEGD spiel and talked about Jam and Southeastern. Jam by this time had already fallen asleep on the floor in his patented imitation of the Neverending Story dragon (as seen below and in the header of the blog).



Fred and I had finished chatting with the couple at the bar and began to talk to each other and then the lady on my right tapped my arm and said,

"We raised a guidedog puppy." Pause. "But in New Jersey. Ours failed though and he's our pet now."

Small world. We had a delightful conversation with them about puppy raising until our pager went off. Then, our hostess, who turned out to be a 2008 graduate of my school (which is why I heard the word Berkeley!), took us to our table.

Then, Jam decided that he would play peekaboo with the table opposite us because our table was a table for two on a very heavily traveled waiter path up against a wall. Jam was constantly peeking out through my chair and trying to lung into the aisle. There was about 10 minutes of me and Jam negotiating where, indeed, he WOULD sit for dinner and it WOULD be a down under, under my chair.

This so amused the people at the table across from us that the lady had to mime to me how adorable he was, complete with cute facial expressions. I smiled and waved back to indicate I understood.

He fell asleep.

New people arrived at the table across from us. We finished dinner. Fred got up and took Jam's leash to get us ready to leave. At about this time, Jam came out from under the table with a sort of sleepy Brad Pitt look to him and did a little stretch, which set many a heart a flutter. There may have been some sharp intakes of breath.

"OOOOOOOH!"

"Would you look at him!"

The new occupants at the table opposite of us proceeded to ask me all about Jam and what he was going to be doing and told me how cute he was; all this as Fred is becoming a distant speck on the horizon. I manage to impart info quickly, yet in a friendly manner and continue down the aisle, only to be stopped by two elderly ladies.

"Oh, dear! He is just adorable. You know that."

I smiled. "Yes, he's a very good boy. He did very well tonight." Her friend leaned over.

"Just precious. So precious."

"Thank you." I patted her shoulder and wandered on down the aisle. I kept my gaze focused on the door.

When did I become Jam's stage manager?

And when did he become a rock star with fans?

Sigh. I fear a long, long year is ahead of us.

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