Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Good morning crew,

Sunday, the day of the parade, ended up being a pretty mild day, but it started out cold and windy. Fortunately the wife and I were well dressed in sweaters and scarves and wind breakers. And we were glad of it too, because it was just about impossible to get inside the bars.

The parade route through our little town is lined with bars and restaurants and we planned to make good use of them before the parade kicked off at two in the afternoon.

At the first bar we visited I left the wife sitting in the beer garden while I elbowed my way through a just packed interior. I got lucky and squeezed into a free few inches at the bar right between two very 'happy' and maybe just a little bit boisterous young women who did not seem to mind me jostling my way between them. In fact, they had no reservations about jostling me back, in the most friendly way possible of course.

Unfortunately, by the time I got back to the wife with our drinks ten minutes later she was already starting to shiver from the wind cutting through the patio. And pouring ice cold beer into our stomachs wasn't helping.

So while I was more than willing to brave another expedition into the bar interior for more drinks, the wife decided she wanted to cross the street where another bar had a large beer tent set up in their parking lot.

By that time the parade was just about to start, so we were more or less stuck there, which was fine because there was plenty of entertainment. One such diversion came in the form of a friendly partier who called himself Irish Tommy.

We started talking to him because we just so happened to be standing next to him, but one of the funny things about Irish Tommy was his barely perceptible Irish accent which slowly got thicker as the beers appeared and disappeared. After about 90 minutes he was speaking in a rich brogue which he punctuated with the occasional 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph' and other colloquialisms I can't reprint here.

The other funny thing about him was his inexhaustible supply of dirty jokes. The beer tent and really the entire parking lot was a sort of milling melange of partiers, so we didn't stand next to Tommy the entire time, but every so often he would weave over to us and start out, "Did you hear the one about..." at which point he would launch into one story or another which I think was starting to make the wife a little uncomfortable, to tell you the truth.

But he was just one of many well-lubricated but mostly harmless parade goers we met that afternoon. And I use the term 'parade goer' loosely, because most of us there barely saw the parade as it rolled down the street a mere 30 or 40 feet from us. A couple fire trucks and some bag pipers were no competition for the cast of characters we met that afternoon.

At one point the wife did get distracted when she noticed one of her old taekwondo masters leading a contingent of young students from his school down the street. I lost her for a few minutes when she disappeared into the crowd lining the street, but she reappeared smiling and flush with success, displaying a piece of pine she got to break for the crowd with a punch.

But other than brief moment of participation we almost completely ignored the parade.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

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"The NYPD has announced they will no longer arrest people for petty crimes like littering, public drinking, and urination. Which means one thing -- Times Square is back, baby!" -Stephen Colbert

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"A recent study suggests that it is harder to concentrate in the winter. Said researchers, 'For example, this study was supposed to be about traffic accidents.'" -Seth Meyers

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"Colin Powell said recently that the Republican candidates are playing 'junior high school tricks on one another.' Powell then excused himself to take a call from someone looking for Dick Hertz." -Conan O'Brien

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Marriage Definitions

BACHELOR: A nice guy who has cheated some nice girl out of her alimony.

BRIDE: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

COMPROMISE: An amiable arrangement between husband and wife whereby they agree to let her have her own way.

DIPLOMAT: A man who can convince his wife she would look fat in a fur coat.

GENTLEMAN: A husband who steadies the stepladder so that his wife will not fall while she paints the ceiling.

HOUSEWORK: What the wife does that nobody notices until she doesn't do it.

HUSBAND: A man who gives up privileges he never realized he had.

JOINT CHECKING ACCOUNT: A handy little device which permits the wife to beat the husband to the draw.

LOVE: An obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.

MOTHER-IN-LAW: A woman who destroys her son-in-law's peace of mind by giving him a piece of hers.

MRS.: A job title involving heavy duties, light earnings, and no recognition.

SPOUSE: Someone who will stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single in the first place.

WIFE: A mate who is forever complaining about not having anything to wear at the very same time that she complains about not having enough room in the closet.


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