There’s a can of Guinness in my corned beef today!
If I know my Irish history, we just assimilated your good genes. 
That red hair didn’t sprout from the “old sod” after all. And, FTR, I have a good bit of Viking blood meself.
taxi, good on you for the raise and bonus. It’s good news that somebody’s doing well.
muppet, sometimes there is family stuff that you just can’t fix. Sorry about your mom.
Well, I have another busy day in front of me.
Tupug
I got to sleep until 7 am!!! Yay for tahred pups.
Today will be gardening day. It has dawned cool and clear and will be warm later today. We’re gonna rip out one flower bed that is overgrown with weeds and plant pretty stuff. Clean out the wine barrel and put wheels on it. Plant some more pretty stuff in it. Weed the flower bed that has bushes in it. Plant pretty stuff around the baby oak tree. Repot my petunias that actually survived a winter’s worth of neglect. Cut back the hibiscus and the periwinkles that got a touch of freezer burn, but will come back just fine.
Whoo! That’s pretty ambitious! Someone is sleeping in late, it seems. To be fair, I think he was up sometime in the middle of the night.
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!!
I’m red-headed and I’m a huge fan of the Boston Celtics. Does that count for anything? 
<- Green guy
LiLi, I don’t think it’s the idea of my father paying for the dress that’s so bad, or the fact that my sister has been spending time with him. It’s the idea of That Woman swanning around playing at mother of the bride that has Mumsy in a tizzy… and even though I think she’s overreacting a little bit, I can understand where she’s coming from. That Woman, after all, was my father’s mistress long before she was his girlfriend or his wife.
Rebo, you wanna come and do some garden work at my house too? 
There’s more than enough for us to share, yaknow.
Aaargh.
At least it’s bright and sunny and beautiful today, even though I probably won’t get to see much sunshine because I’ve been dispatched to The Burbs again. It’s only AFTER I got here that I realised there was a conference bridge for this morning’s meeting… but whatever, it’s not like I had anything better to do downtown anyways (and no, I’m not going out for green beer because I really dislike ramming myself into a crowded bar, fighting my way through a throng of drunken eejits each time I want a fresh pint, and being forced to listen to pseudo-Irish music by whatever motley band of musicians the bar hired for the night)
Oh, and as of yesterday, the crocuses and the tulips are starting to peep their little heads out of the ground. Exciting stuff! It looks like we may get spring soon after all… which means I’d better get hustling on starting my seeds, huh? (LiLi, I’ll bring you a couple of kinds of 'maters on the weekend, along with your fabric)
My family went to Maine when I was in high school, and we stayed in a cabin on East Grand Lake in Aroostook County. The only thing to do was swim across East Grand Lake, get out and say “Hey! We’re in Canada!” (New Brunswick) and swim back. That got old pretty quick. And there were no radio stations.
My husband and I honeymooned in New Hampshire and a few years later we went back. We loved it so much we asked people, “Where do people in New Hampshire go on vacation?” and they all said “We go to Maine!” So we decided to go to Maine. I loved it; he hated it. We went to Portland and saw the Akron Aeros beat the Sea Dogs, we went to LL Bean, we went to Kennebunkport, we stayed at Old Orchard Beach. He wanted to go back to New Hampshire the whole time. Ah well.
Oh, I forgot to address the OP…
I’ve been to Maine I think twice in my life. Once as a really young kid, and I have no memories of it, and another time as a 17 YO – SouthWest Harbor (on Mount Desert Island, about halfway across it from Bar Harbor.)
I discovered that the sea water in Maine is cold!!! for this Mid Eastern kid – I’m used to the Mediterranean Sea in summer, or roughly 28C / 80F. Nice sunny August day, sun is out… hitting the 55-60F water was… surprising that first time :eek:
Thanks everyone! Drinks (or chocolate… whatever you prefer) on me!
I’m a mutt, too, with a little bit of Irish along with Scottish, English, French, German, Polish, and maybe some Native American (family rumor with no way to confirm either way). I’m unintentionally wearing green today. When I was deciding what to wear I thought, “Eh, I don’t want to wear blue jeans today; I’ll wear these green jeans” and only realized much later that it’s St. Patrick’s Day. No corned beef at our house - even though we like it a lot - because we’ve been planning since Sunday to have kabobs and haven’t gotten around to it yet. So grilled kabobs, pitas, and cucumber/yogurt stuff on the menu for tonight.
My family was a try-a-new-place-every-year type of vacation family so we didn’t have one place we went back to over and over. And we’re NOT campers so it was mostly trips to various cities to stay in hotels and go to museums. Let’s see if I can remember where we went… Chicago multiple times 'cause of friends of my parents there; California when I was ~5; Winnipeg & Churchill, Manitoba when I was 6 (Dad had a meeting in Winnipeg so we met him there afterward, and he’d been in the air force in Churchill so wanted to go back there.); Florida for Christmas of '87 to visit my godparents; Washington, DC, in April of '88 and '90 (not sure why we went twice… maybe just so much to see); Williamsburg, VA, in March of '89 (also related to a meeting Dad had) and Mystic, CT, in March of maybe '91 for the same type of meeting; England & Scotland in '92 and '95 (Mom and Dad had lived there for a few years before I was born so had friends there.); Calgary & the Canadian Rockies (LOVED that trip) in summer '93 also tied to a meeting Dad had out there but then Dad quit that job later that summer so no more meeting-based trips; Ottawa in '94; very long driving trip through NY, Ontario, Mich, to Chicago, back through Ohio and home in '96; and Toronto in '97. After that I was out of high school and started to refuse to travel with my parents because they’re horrible at traveling together and it had long since stopped being fun. But I got to see a lot and learn a lot about history and so on. So good experiences that would have been better if my parents could have made it without fighting all the time.
About 5 years ago I started traveling by myself (for a long-distance relationship at first) and discovered that I really like traveling. I’ve *totally *got the travel bug that my dad’s side of the family has. Now I just have to work on convincing KT that we’ve got the money in the budget for bigger trips - without using credit. His family was a “go up north and stay in Grandma’s cabin” kind of family so the idea of spending a few grand on a trip is foreign to him. We’re working on it though and I think some bigger trips will be in our not-to-distant future. The list of places I want to go is very long - Alaska, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Grand Canyon, the Canadian Rockies again, Vegas again (KT’s never been.), Seattle (We’re going to check this one off in May.), and a ton of other places that I’m not thinking of right now. Yay for travel!
We like to call “bracing”. Loves me some frosty Coast of New England water.
None of that sissified bath water down in the Carolinas/Gulf of Mexico or other hot locales.
:dubious:
At least we can go swimming into October without risking pneumonia. 
Yeah? Well let’s see how you deal with our jellyfish, missy! 
Fight went surprisingly well. I actually got to talk to a counselor (who I knew from Back in the Day, coincidentally) and it turns out my faxed appeal never made it to the director’s desk. Counselor made a copy to hand to the director personally and promised to email me once he heard something. Thumbs up!
To celebrate, the snark returns.
Tired. Bad night. Alive and awake.
Going to nap.
Hee hee
haha
Oh, dear…
If your water is bracing, the Pacific Ocean off the Northern California cost is structurally important. At no time of year is the water warm enough to just casually splash around in - even in summer months, surfers have to bundle themselves up in wetsuits if they want to survive. I think they’re nuts.
Structurally important??? That’s frakking hysterical.
Meh… sounds just like the North Atlantic to me.
I’ve walked along beaches in Nova Scotia where the water was icy cold even in the dead of summer (there was one day where I definitely recall the thermostat hovering around the 30C mark, which is hotter than average for that part of the world). According to Environment Canada, the average water temperature in summer is somewhere between 8-12C on the Atlantic coast.
It’s a cruel cruel trick of nature to taunt you with what looks like a cool refreshing body of water on a hot day, when in reality that body of water is so cool and refreshing that you’ll end up with hypothermia in a matter of minutes if you’re not properly prepared.
**Shadow **- Open from pit to waist? Oh yeah, that’s an attractive look for someone carrying some extra poundage. :rolleyes:
**Muppet **- sleeveless is almost worse than puffy sleeves on me. My upper arms are not one of my better features. In fact, I prefer 3/4 length sleeves most of the time. I’ll just wear the top under a cardigan and deal with it.
Because there’s nary a drop of Irish blood in me ( both sides of the family emigrated from Poland in the early 1900s) I decided to wear pink today - a pale pink top and a bright pink cardigan. I be stylin’!! My dad always used to wear red to work, a company owned and run by a trio of Irish brothers, and he added his “Thank God I’m Polish” button to further make his point. Guess that’s where I got it…
Tuna steaks for supper, with rice and some sort of vegetable matter. Since I don’t have school tonight, I can chill. Haven’t been able to chill on a Tuesday for quite some time. So yay!
Tomorrow, daughter’s class is walking to the Chinese restaurant adjacent to the school, since they studied China earlier in the year. I told her I’d come lunch with them, to help ride herd on the kids. That should be, um, fun?
tarra, you’re right - one day closer to Firday…
Éirinn go brách!!!
A little Gaelic for St. Patrick’s Day.
Howdy Y’all! Three down and two to go! WOOHOO!!!
Last night was our men’s night at church. Bein’ as we had left over corned beef, we made Reuben sammiches. YUM! Reuben’s and Polish sausage with sauerkraut are the only two ways I will eat sauerkraut.
Yay on the raise and all Taxi!
I have a confession. I shall spoiler it for the lobster sensitive amongst us. If you look and faint, it’ll be on your head not mine.
I don’t like lobster. It’s a texture thing. It just feels so weird in my mouth.
But y’all love me anyway, right?
I’m making my St. Patrick’s day chili.:dubious: Gordie and I had a nice walk. He’s a smart dog, he came running when I was making my martini. I’m gonna watch the Devils game, and see if Brodeur become the winninest goalie tonight.
FCM, I’m Polish on my mom’s side, but she never cooked Polish food for me growing up.
You’re just bitter because we can tailgate 9 months out of the year.
Congrats, Spaz!
Herbs, I have mixed feeling about Firday. There’s a tailgate on Saturday, but Firday is the third to the last day of vacation.
{{{LiLI}}}
I think I’ve dealt with a few people who decided to start drinking early today. sigh Too bad I can’t join them.
It’s spring. Actual honest-to-Og spring. It’s up into the low 40s and bright and sunny and winter will continue fighting back for awhile but today it feels like spring. Ahhhh. I still like winter, but I’m ready to see it go away for awhile.
swampy, that means more for me. No problem!