No Tales of Happy Hour Glory :(

Due to the occurrence of the Dallas St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday, the weekly happy hour was cancelled.  Shocking?  Not if you live in Dallas.  Bars all over town tend to be deserted the eve of the parade, because veterans and those with an ounce of common sense know that they should rest up the night before for the all-day beer-fest that is the Greenville St. Patrick's Day Parade.

I did not attend the parade, however.  The Happy Hour crew went, for the most part, but I was under the mistaken impression that I would be out of town this past weekend.  I got my weekends confused.  As things stand, it's probably for the best that I didn't attend.  It would have violated my (somewhat) strictly observed One Night Per Week drinking allowance, spent the evening before at a Housewarming Par-tay.

I attended the St. Patty's Parade for the first time last year .  When in college, I generally had some sadistic professor issue tons of homework or a massive deadline that interfered with my ability to attend the parade and to have the requisite day of R&R afterwards.  After I graduated, I went, because weekends were no longer occupied by professors.  Do you know what I discovered at the parade?

1. YOU CAN'T GET A DECENT PINT OF BEER.  If you want a drink, you may have a Budweiser, or a Miller Lite, but God help you if you want a pint o'Guinness.  Nothing doing.  At least not where I was at the block party.  If you want to try to cram yourself into the mass of humanity that the Tipperary becomes, you might be able to get a good beer, but probably not.

2. CELL PHONES DO NOT WORK because there are so many people trying to use them that the cell towers in the vicinity get overloaded.  Dropped/failed calls galore.

3. BRING EARPLUGS because you will be surrounded by SMU sorority girls whose first reaction to seeing an acquaintance will be to shriek at the top of their lungs, as if it's the biggest coincidence in the world that they're all at the same place.

4. TAKE A GUY IN A RED SHIRT.  A BIG GUY.  At first, we all teased the fella in our group who made the (seemingly) unlucky gaffe of wearing a red shirt.  After all, he stuck out like a sore thumb.  Which turned out to be awesome when we wanted to leave and kept getting separated in the mass of identically clad party-goers.  So it's helpful to have a 6'4  bright red beacon to follow.