krakblog

St. Patty's F-U-N

Hope everyone had a lucky and festive St. Patty's weekend. And speaking of luck, how awesome was it to have the 17th fall on a Saturday night!! Nick and I don't usually partake in the San Diego festivities, mostly because we usually have to work the next day, but this year, we went ALL OUT.

So San Diego's answer to dyeing the river green is to carpet the streets with green astroturf. Yes, yes, verrrrry gimmicky. Two blocks of the Gaslamp (for those who haven't been out here, the Gaslamp is the "nightlife center" of downtown SD) were fenced off, and there were cocktail tents, food tents, beer tents, and a stage at one end for the string of bands that played from 2pm til midnight.

A group of us gathered at my friend Daryn's house for a bit of pre-partying (otherwise known as "cheap drinking before paying exorbitant prices for booze at the party"). Daryn and I both made Jell-O shots ... hers (smartly) in dixie cups ... mine (not so smartly) in festive pipe, bowler hat, and shamrock candy molds. Yup, the molds would have worked perfectly for chocolate. Not so good for Jell-O. Nick and Daryn explored the art of unmolding Jell-O using warm water, which yielded semi-unmolded, almost-melted, watery, alcoholic orange globs. But damn they were good! Peach Jell-O plus mango-flavored Malibu Rum ... mmmmm ... tastes like college.

(see all of our pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/64932172@N00/)

This is Courtney, Daryn's roommate, slurping up the yummy orange gooeyness.

In preparation for the big event, Daryn had found some lime green T-shirts at Target that stated in equally fluorescent colors that "I {shamrock} Ireland." Get it? Like "I {heart} Ireland"? But with a festive shamrock?! And the shirt was even GREEN! How could anyone DOUBT that we were all Irish? Even though we aren't. But nevermind. What I didn't realize ahead of time was that five of the six ladies in our group have long blonde hair. AND - the brunette didn't meet us until much later. So ... we basically made a quintet of blondes in matching shirts. Yes, Nick's a lucky man.

From left to right: Me (looking refreshingly short in my squat position), Dana #1, Courtney, Daryn (who is also quite tall and who sometimes I try to pass off as my sister), and Dana #2.

The green bowler hats were my find, also at Target: 99 cent happiness. In fact, while Nick and I managed to pawn ours off on others much later in the evening, Courtney was able to SELL hers for $16. Yes, sixteen dollars. 99 cent hat = cab fare. Go figure. We also cleared out Party City's clearance St. Patty's Day merchandise (all four pieces of it) first thing Saturday morning ... Nick was lucky enough to get these glasses ... true "luck of the (half) Irish" if you ask me. But maybe that luck went to his head:

Not too long after this picture was taken, however, a girl approached us wearing the same wire-framed glasses complete with shamrock shaped lenses that Nick was hoping to find all along. The best part is that she was IN LOVE with Nick's cheap velour ones, and we engaged in the age-old art of bartering. It was very complicated, but to make the long story (not really) short, we traded glasses. Awesome upgrade.

We ended up at the final concert of the evening, the Young Dubliners. They're an Irish rock band, which sounds odd until you hear them (and then it makes sense). If you want to hear a sample, go to http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/youngdubliners They were great, and if you get a chance to see them out by you, I highly recommend it. It's a shame that they're confined to the "state fair" circuit.

Anyway, it was great to actually celebrate St. Patty's Day ... in the most American way possible. And then we turned around the next night and made a corned beef, cabbage, and potato dinner for friends. We even had Guinness ice cream. I know, it sounds weird, but it's REALLY good. It was the first thing I made for Nick when I bought him his ice cream maker two birthdays ago.

Happy St. Pat's!!