CAA! CAA!

This might not be the most creative endeavor considering that I took the idea straight from the syllabus, but today I spent my lunch break with people that I usually don’t.  I have already established my lunch break habits in my Monday entry, but today was different- today was the first day of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.  Although I am by no means a fan of college basketball (I’m an NBA guy- it’s an acquired taste), I am a pretty big fan of basketball in general, so I like to keep up with March Madness as much as I can. Since my department’s computer monitors have the resolution of a Nintendo Game Boy, the only viable option was to head over to one of Mill Avenue’s sports bars to catch the action.  When lunchtime came about I quickly ate my Saint Patrick’s Day leftovers and then headed over to The Tavern to watch a few minutes of the games on the bar’s large HD televisions.  After scanning the bar I quickly found the exact group of colleagues that I expected to be there watching the games, so I pulled up a chair and joined them for the remainder of lunch.

Like my other entries this is may seem like a fairly lackluster change in my normal life- and I can assure you, it was- but it’s what I learned from the experience that’s key.  Over the course of about forty minutes I learned that Jason’s mother is ill and that he visits her (in New Jersey) almost every weekend, and that he is an MBA candidate at U of A, that Jack is a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, that the lunchtime service at The Tavern is typically poor, and that none of us had any clue where Murray State University is located (Murray, Kentucky).  We all also discovered that Doug Parker- the CEO of US Airways Group- and his executive team are all either fans of basketball or the Tavern’s lunch special as we caught them leaving the Tavern.  Again, none of this is particularly noteworthy, but it’s vastly greater than what I would have learned had I followed my usual lunchtime routine- nothing.

Lastly, if Doug Parker doesn’t already have a nickname, Dougy P. is clearly the best choice.