March 17th - St. Patrick's Day

This year I decided to celebrate St. Patrick's Day the way I want to and not rely on someone or something to be put in place for me to enjoy my day.

Last year, a friend of mine decided to set me up on St. Patrick's Day which I thought would be a good idea...I mean St. Paddy's would never do me wrong, not on his day. I thought we'd all go out, drink some green beer and just have a heck of a good time. Not so fast. The date was a disaster. We ddn't go anywhere that had anything remotely resembling green beer and we didn't dance with any leprechauns, wear green outfits or just generally let our St. Paddy's hair down. We sat in a normal restaurant, that was dead empty, if I remember correctly, I think we were the only diners, and we had flatbread pizza. We also ended up, in some way, talking about religion. You know that never goes well especially with someone you hardly know.

So this year, with no dates lined up, blind or otherwise, I just did my own thing. Unfortunately for me, the bars, mainly the Irish pubs had chosen this year, out of all the years to scale back on their St. Patrick's Day fun. There was no Irish band playing folk music, no green beer, no sponsorship by the reputable beer companies or radio stations, and worse, no special Irish menu. It was a recession clad St. Patrick's Day. You would think the mix of green would encourage it to be recession proof. Not so much.

In that space, I just decided to make the best of it. I sat down with some eager drinkers, and chatted about life, love and parties, and all the things we wish we could be doing with our lives but cannot because of this damn economy. The beer helped us ease into the intensity of the conversation. We carefully avoided the topic of religion! In the end it was not earth shattering fun. It's not the best St. Patrick's Day I've had. The best was seeing Nickelback in concert followed by seeing Adele in concert. I haven't been able to top those 2 in terms of fun level again. It's just been ho-hum celebrations. I'd say the worst was last years, which I will generally not like to repeat.

I suppose the moral of this story is to do what you love and not get suckered into making plans with strangers (or in my case a blind date) on a day that you should and are required to have fun.