Friends in High Places

Retired General and former Secretary of State, Colin Powell once said, "Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard."

Sounds like a good plan to me, after all, as the old saying goes, "you are the comapny you keep."

So, I did just that, I spent my Monday with some pretty significant and successful people...the type "who take their work seriously, but not themselves."

Maybe you will recognize some of the people I spent my day with yesterday...

That's right, I got to spend the day with THE Colin Powell; Butler head men's basketball coach, Brad Stevens; 2003 Butler graduate and IndyCar Series driver for Vision Racing, Ed Carpenter; the entire Butler men's basketball team; and Indianapolis mayor, Greg Ballard. That's just how I roll!

It started out as a typical Monday...lots of sleeping in the cage that's in m dad's office, a lunch time appearance at the HRC, and more sleeping for the afternoon. Settling into the work week after a busy weekend has never been one of my strengths.

Then, come late afternoon things started to get interesting. My dad and I headed to the car and made our way to my favorite building, historic Hinkle Fieldhouse. Once there, we met up with Ed Carpenter and headed into the arena to watch the men's basketball practice.

You see, last May Ed gave A.J. Graves and the coaching staff a tour of the Vision Racing garages at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when A.J. waved the green flag to start practice for the Indianapolis 500 . This time the Bulldogs returned the favor by inviting Ed to come watch practice, tour the locker room and basketball offices, etc. I was fortunate to get to tag along.

Here's a picture of Ed and Coach Stevens discussing the intricacies of Butler's motion offense and which Horizon League member institution has the best cafeteria food. No, not really, but those would be things I would like to talk about with the coach.

After that it was over to Clowes Memorial Hall where General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.) was scheduled to enjoy dinner with some VIPs and speak to a capacity crowd as a part of the Diversity Lecture Series.

That's where I ran into General Powell and Mayor Ballard, as well as some other Butler and community big whigs like university president, Dr. Bobby Fong, and the Butler Board of Trustees.

I even got to take a picture with General Powell! Unfortunately, I do not have the picture to post right now, but I will do so in a future blog. It was sweet. All of these important folks got to meet General Powell and get a picture with him. I'm pretty important, so yes, I got a picture with him as well.

When I arrived, he smiled, kneeled down, clapped his hands once and said, "come here boy!" So I quickly ran over (when a General calls, you come) and he proceeded to pet me and love on me a little. He then stayed in a kneeled position and we took a picture together. It was cool.

Here I am, just an English Bulldog from Indiana who ended up mascot of Butler University posing for a picture with the one-time military leader of the free world. Eat your heart out "Spike," the Drake University bulldog!

Yeah, we've got a big game against No. 16 Drake on Saturday at Hinkle, so I am starting to prepared for that. It airs on ESPN2 at 5 p.m. (EST) and has been billed the best ESPN "Bracketbuster" matchup ever...of course it is, after all, both teams are represented by the English Bulldog! By the way, the Bulldogs of Butler are ranked a school-high No. 8 this week in both polls. That's pretty impressive! Go Dawgs!

Today, wasn't quite as exciting, but that's not to say I didn't get to have a little more fun. Each semester, my dad's favorite professor while in school, Dr. Steven Vibbert, invites me to come visit his public relations classes. He usually asks me to come mid to late semester when the students are starting to get restless. So today I stopped by class, did my tricks, and got a little love from the students. Below is a picture of that...

Note that class size. That's a student to teacher ratio of 16:1. Nice. Gotta love a Butler eduation! Although, it's not quite as good as my puppy class, but still, it's pretty good.

Okay, my bed time is quickly approaching so I've got to get going. Thanks for reading and before you leave, please vote for me again this week for the Bissell MVP contest! You can vote here: http://www.bissell.com/redirect.asp?page_id=47088&Pet=7217.jpg

Blue II