What did you do for St. Patty's Day?

We had fun. Drove across a good chunk of the Texas Panhandle, saw a St. Paddy's Day parade in Shamrock, TX, and I had a coupla brews. A pretty exciting day, really, will write more if the troll patrol ever catches the one that got away.

I hung out in a hotel room, did some prescription drugs, drank a few beers, and tinkered with some serious geek stuff. My life sucks.

Mine was pretty boring. We ate corned beef and cabbage, and then I read The Life of Christ by Catholic scholar Frederic Farrar, to give me some ideas for my Sunday School lesson. I think I win the boring-ness contest.

We're having a St. Patrick's Day lunch today at work. I made Barm Brack, which is a traditional Irish sweet bread. Some of the ladies here have decorated the lunch room with green streamers and bunting and there is some vile green concoction made from champagne, lime juice and soda water which I'll be avoiding. A few green beers would be nice, though.

I love Irish bread

I did get a car bomb under my belt... I love Guinness and Baileys! But I'm very sad that my pub crawl didn't happen.



I don't know... I watched my friend make six book covers, and then watched strangers sand down a staircase. This is over 12 hours of watching people do boring stuff. Only the kittens were cute, which may put me over on the "boring meter", but in defense of my bad day, we only played with them for 15 minutes and then the kitten owner's boyfriend kicked her door in, and we left as quickly as possible. Not boring, but not fun either.

I played with my kids, dealt with a crazy cranky baby, made green sugar cookies with my middle child and watched a 2 hour History channel special about Irish immigration.

Ask me something about Irish immigration. I now know tons!

Let's see...

I made pork chops for lunch, took a nap, planted some honny suckles vines by a trellis I built, trimmed some shrubs, drank several bottles of Coors Light, grilled a steak and that's about it.

Exciting, huh?

Green sugar cookies? YUM!

Was the potato famine really the cause of Irish immigration?

Turns out I'm glad we were out of town because one of the guys didn't show at work and my boss asked if I'd come in. If I wasn't an hour away, I probably would have, like the dope I am.

As it was, though, my alibi was down pat, since my boss was ALSO in Shamrock and saw me there. Kinda helps to have your boss verify that you're out of town, don't it?

There is disagreement about that.

Some scholars feel it was the greatest cause, but others suggest it was the crushing rule/persecution by England that caused them to immigrate in such large numbers.

One letter they read on the program said that they could have fed themselves four times over even with the famine if it hadn't been for England's interference.

Immigration probably CAUSED the potato famine since the fungus that started it came from America.

Wow! You really do know tons! That is so cool. I wish I could have seen that special.



Depends on your definition of exciting...



Always nice when that happens. There have been times that I wish someone would have been able to prove to my boss that I was out of town.

Then you'd LOVE the book I'm reading. It suggests, among other things, that the gunpowder plot (Guy Fawkes; key to the plot of "V for Vendetta") was a frameup to help certain people in Britain stay in power.

Awhile back, I suggested the idea of having a JU "book trading post". It never really got off the ground, but I think the yahoo! group is still active. If you guys would be interested in joining, we could start it up again and I'd be happy to put this book up when I'm through with it.

No.
WWW Link

Mason: Take it up with the History channel.

Book trading? How does that work?

I think the idea is we share books, shipping them to each other and then sending them back when we're done.

I'd be horrible at it, because if the book was good, I'd just want to keep it.

Sorry, but whatever ratings motivated television show tried to propogate such a silly idea is just dumb. The real causes of the Irish potato famine are well documented.

No, here's my idea...

To start with, everyone posts five books they have that they're willing to share. Someone sees a book they like, makes arrangements with the original poster to share the book or to swap. These should be paperbacks with low retail value unless it's something you just *have* to share. But because we're all bibliophiles, we would need to understand the odds of getting it back are low.

Ideally, when the person who got the book finished, they'd post it back to the group. That's the intention. And every month or so, we'd encourage members to add another book or two to the list. If we got 100 users, we could have a pretty cool selection. Sure it would cost us a small amount for shipping, but every one of the books would qualify for media mail rates so it wouldn't be too much of a cost. And if they wanted to ask to be reimbursed via paypal for shipping expenses, I don't think that'd be an unreasonable request.

It might take a bit to get the "rules" down, but I think if we worked at it we could set up something pretty cool.

Mason:

The program is The Irish in America. Blurb: "Aidan Quinn narrates this special 2-hour look at the epic 350-year struggle of Irish immigrants. Includes Irish involvement in the American Revolution, the Age of Jackson, the Mexican and Civil Wars, the California Gold Rush, and the building of the great American cities."

Perhaps you should let them know that they are mistaken? They probably have some sort of forum or email address for disgruntled history buffs. LOL.

I have no dispute at all with those aspects at all. Being of Irish descent tracing back from before the American revolution and far back in Irish history, but the cause of the Irish potato famine had little to nothing to do with the North American immigration. Like many things, people attribute causality where they will.

But then again, perhaps all of the things that I have read over the years regarding this issue were wrong.

That would be my guess.

I spent six hours in a call center negotiating hotel rooms for people who couldn't get flights out of whatever airport you can name due to the weather on the east coast! My mind numbed to such an extent that I completely forgot it was St. Patrick's Day until I got home at 1am and read a Yahoo! thing about how St. Patrick's Day is inexplicably popular in Japan.

My question is this: Do I win the boring game since, technically, I drifted (mentally) to a place where the holiday didn't even exist?

I did my taxes - now do I win for the most boring?

10 of us got a limo up to the casino (Mohegan Sun)

When we got there, we had a VIP table at the club for free, normally 500 bones just to get the table. Bottle service, gambling, the whole nine yards.

Was lots of fun but I paid for it yesterday. I did win a few hundred at craps though