St. Patrick

Bench Buddy is listening to the steroid hearings right now.

He was like "Have you been following this at all?" and I had to explain how both of my parents are the most anti-sport people on the planet and how yes, I know there is a steroid issue in existence but no, I am not following it and have no idea what's going on.

It is imperative that I marry a jock so that my future offspring have a chance of not being completely isolated.

Bench Buddy said "This affects us all!"

Right.

So it's St. Patrick's Day. I've never really understood why Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, nor have I ever felt compelled to celebrate it. In fact, I think I honored it once and once only, and ended up at home after the fact with a Canadian in my bed.

At any rate, St. Patrick's Day is an American concoction. I learned all about it through a long conversation with Sinead, a former colleague of mine who hails from, you guessed it, Ireland. She explained to me that St. Patrick's Day isn't more than a religious holiday in Ireland. In fact, according to The History Channel, Irish law mandated that pubs be closed on March 17 up until the 1970's.

So people go out and get drunk in the honor of the Irish. Cool. That's fine. I guess what I don't understand is why there is peer pressure to do this. Seriously. People at work are all "You gotta come out! It's ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!! Come ON!" A bunch of people are going to some Irish-themed bar that is going to be playing music-from-Ireland all night.

It would be better if they just called it "National Drunken Act-Like-An-Idiot and Possibly See or Protest a Parade Day!"

Someone I work with, who is of Italian descent, has taken tomorrow as a personal day so as to enjoy St. Patrick's Day.

According to The History Channel (via the US Census): "There are 34 million U.S. residents who claim Irish ancestry. This number is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 million). Irish is the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only German. "

Who knew?

I can't decide if I am going to go out or not. I am definitely not going to the music-from-Ireland function. There's a counter-function NOT at an Irish bar that could be manageable, but I think D and I are going to go to the movies instead. Maybe have one non-St.-Patrick's-Day drink beforehand.

Hmmmm.

I'm bored and boring right now and on all sorts of drugs to counteract a headache I've had since yesterday, when I didn't have lunch or ingest caffeine until 4 pm because I was training people again and when I finally went out to lunch with them I ordered vegetarian burrito/enchilada that had chicken/beef in them. Awshummmmm.

OK. I am going to pretend to read a paper now.

Until tomorrow....