Catch Up

Ok, so I know I have not been keeping everyone up to date and I'm sorry for that. I think the best place to begin is with St. Patrick's Day...

While I may get shot for writing about this, here goes. This year for St. Patrick's Day I was invited by Charles, Rachel's dad, to the 207th Hibernian Society St. Patrick's Dinner. A little back ground on this Society is important. The Hibernian Society is an Patrilinial organization for me that has been in existance for quite some time now. Hibernian Hall is located on Meeting St. in Charleston near the court house. Last I heard, the waiting list for non-members was 20+ years. There are of course "honorary" members, ie: Political officials that are very often fast tracked and made members on the spot. Important to note however that most of our elected officials have been members since birth due to the fact that there families have been living in the Charleston area since the begining of time.
Each year before this even happens, letters go out to all of the members asking them to send in the fee for the dinner, I'm sure somewhere b/w $100 - $300, and then also at this time they can request additional tickets if they come available. When my ticket came in I was ticket number 625. I am assuming that there were close to 1000, all white, men that came in dressed up in tuxedo's and started drinking around 6:30. In order to get a good seat you had to stand next to it or it would be taken. For the lucky board members and honorary guest reserved seats were set up at the head of the room. Our friend David Norton, whose house was used for Buba's and Mario's wedding is an honorary member. Finally we all were instructed that all the fancy people were starting to come in so everyone faced the enterance and as the bag pipes started playing all these men started marching in. It really was something to be taken quite seriously and I of course enjoyed laughing my ass off, silently!
Before we could sit down there were a number of toast that had to be recited. Side note, there were so many people and so little room to move around that all the alcohol was placed on the table in advance and we had to serve ourselves. After about what seemed like 20 cheers, we finally were able to sit and start eating. The food was nothing of note but why should it be, everyone was hammered anyways. Then finally after about an hour of eating round two of speaches started and ended with Bob Sheafer? spelling i know not.... He was actually quite funny. Just so you know, the speaker last year was Dick Cheney. The night ended shortly after and all these men filed out onto the streets. Now i'm sure most of them went out to the local pub's, but I went home and passed out. It was quite something!

Delayed Events From Our Trip

OK, so I know I said I would fill everyone in on the details once I got back but I guess I got a little distracted this week. Miami was great, but to explain why it has taken a while to blog about it I must make a side note...

*** In an effort to get my house to the point where it could be sold for top dollar in today's only so so market, my parents and I have been slowly making some improvements over the years. Some have been structural and some cosmetic. Well the latest in ideas was to have all the windows replaced. Yeah! I thought what a wonderful idea. The bid came in and was reasonable. Just before this however we decided to have someone crawl under the house and check on the moisture issue's and see what it was like under there... Big Mistake! Turns out that some Rodents of Unusual Size have been going crazy under there and have ripped out all the insulation and duct work... Oh yea there is also a leaking sewage pipe that is creating a sink hole under my bathroom. Needless to say, I am not getting new windows. All of you apartment dwellers should be very happy right now and not jealous of people that live in houses.
So all of this we found out at the end of last week just before I left. Then on Tuesday morning the English version of Andy shows up at my house and starts ripping everything out from underneath my house and I have ended up moving into the room over the garage at my parents house. Until further notice I have NO AC/HEAT, yes it has been warm enough a couple of days already to turn on the AC if we wanted, and I have no bathroom usage.

Past all the above mentioned, Rachel and I had a lot of fun in Miami. We arrived Friday evening and went straight out to dinner with her sister Rebeca. A nice little Spanish place. Having been up early that morning we decided to head back to her dorm at UM and catch up on a nights sleep without the dogs around. For those of you with animals/children I think you understand how wonderful a thing sleeping without them is. Saturday morning we ate at a local hot spot in Coral Gables and then heading to South Beach. This trip was centered around eating just so you know. South Beach was quite something. I have always considered Charleston to be filled with very pretty people if you catch my drift. SB however had an unbelievable ratio of Hot to not Hot people. I have never seen more bare skin in my life. After walking around and stopping to enjoy a $30 pina colada I was ready for a nap. We headed back to the dorm to get a little rest in before heading out that evening to Joe's Stone Crab. This place was perhaps the best yet most overpriced seafood place I've ever been. I couldn't believe what they were charging. Oh well...
Moving on to Sunday, the only thing I really wanted to do while down there was eat Cuban food. We ended up at the Cuban equivalent of the S&S Cafeteria but it sure was good. There were other places we stopped in and things we did but the food we they main excitement for the weekend.

OK well now I'm tired and need to go back to work. Although mom and dad are in Tucson for some Law things so I will probably go back to ABC/NBC/CBS.com and catch up on some old episodes.
Bye for now!