Happy St. Patrick's Day and all that.

It's been a long time since we gave a crap about what really amounts to drunken, debaucherous, green beer day, but we thought we'd acknowledge it here anyway. No, we didn't get Zoey all decked out in green (for the record, Dad's least favorite color), and no, we won't be eating corned beef and cabbage for dinner tonight. The fact of the matter is we're just don't care all that much for all that luck 'o the irish junk. Sure, it can be fun (if you're drunk and debaucherous) and yes, we've indulged ourselves in some pseudo-Irish activities in the past, but there's no downtown pub to crawl home from now, and we've got Zo waiting to play with us when we get home, so breathing whiskey and corned beef all over her makes you feel like something less of the parent that you could be. We'll be more excited tomorrow when the first round of the NCAA tournament begins...at least then everyone isn't annoying the hell out of us with their horrible fake Irish brogue.

We don't mean this post to sound negative...we're in quite good spirits, it's just that we find St. Patrick's Day to be more than a little overrated. If anything, I should be the one who is the bummer here. June's family is half Japanese and those folks over there in Sendai and Aomori etc...couldn't give a @#$% about what's happening in Dublin, whether or not leprechauns exist, or how if it wasn't for whiskey or a potato famine the Irish might have taken over the world...not Japan they wouldn't. For someone like June's mom, Zoey's Baachan, St. Patrick's Day must be a cute little European immigrant enterprise that allows red heads to feel like they're the chosen ones. It's silly, really...unless, of course, you're actually Irish, then it's just pushy.

How come no one goes crazy on Bastille Day? I like wine...I eat cheese...I'm all for overthrowing constitutional monarchies.

I think we'll settle into a nice, normal evening of Zed, and let all the one-sixteenth Irish-Dutch-Iranian drunkards fill all the jail cells from here to Boston and back. I'm gonna go and pick me another holiday to act stupid on, you know, when all the bars aren't so crowded. Maybe we'll get all stupid on the vernal equinox?

Oh, BTW...Irish stew is just stew.