Journal mcgrew's Journal: Happy Saint Patty Day! 3
Patty wasn't able to make it home for the parade last Saturday, which was a shame. The parade has been a family tradition for years. From the time she was in the eighth grade until she graduated high school, she was in the parade. Evil-X didn't bother going every year, but Leila and I never missed it, except one year when Leila was ill and I went by myself. This year, iinm, was the first year Patty didn't make it. She's had some financial problems since she moved out of her fiancee's parents house into her own apartment, and her car needs work. But Leila went with me. She almost didn't make it, either, thanks to her evil mother.
Unlike most parade days it wasn't cold. Most of the time those poor kids in the high school bands were playing their instruments wearing gloves. This year it would have been pleasant, had it not been for the wind. And there weren't many school bands this year, although the pipers and drummers were there.
I have to apologize, since the parade itself wasn't journal worthy. There were no trolls I saw, unlike previous years. And there weren't any bad girls with me, just me and my daughter. We had a good time, she drinking Diet Pepsi and me drinking draft Killian's out of a green plastic beer mug. "You've had enough beer, dad", she said after my second one.
"If I wanted to be nagged I'd have stayed married to your mom," I said. "I'll drink as much as I want." Again, we had a good time. I mentioned my new phone a few weeks ago, and it's a HELL of a lot better than the old phone. It has a megapixel camera, so it takes far better photos than the old one. It's browser hardly sucks much at all. I took about fifty pictures to text to Patty, and a few videos; the old phone wouldn't make videos. And this phone was just as cheap as the old one! This one even beats an iPhone in at least one respect -- it does Flash, so I can watch YouTube videos on it.
I took Leila home, went home myself and fiddled with the computer, then called Tammy. "Happy St. Patrick's day! They're having corned beef and cabbage at Felbers, why don't you come into town and have some with me?" Alas, her medical problems were getting her down. I sent the photos and videos to Patty, then was off to Felber's for some Irish food. Alas, all the beer there is American.
A few days earlier I'd complimented Gail on his jacket -- a NASA jacket. I saw him at Felbers and he handed it to me. "Here!"
"Wow, thanks!"
It's NASA blue, with gold stitching on the back that reads "The Nasa Mission -- to understand and protect our home planet, to explore the universe and search for life, to inspire the next generation of explorers... as only NASA can." The front left chest has the NASA logo stitched in, with "A.Stagg - CPS" underneath. So if you're A. Stagg, I have your jacket. Are you the guy who left coke at the shuttle hangar? Are there hookers there, too?
I bought Gail a beer. He handed me a lit joint (outside the bar, of course). I went inside and drank a beer, and got food (which, since they have no food license, is free). I walked back outside, and Patty called. "you blew up my phone!"
"Huh? How?" Her phone is one of the expensive ones that look like a computer. One of the ones too big to fit in a pocket. A so-called smartphone.
"All those pictures and videos wiped everything out! All my recieved calls, all my sent calls, all my missed calls, all my messages... and I only goy ONE PICTURE!" I'd slashdotted her phone, unknowingly DOSing a three hundred dollar phone with my hundred dollar Motorola. I've been a fan of Motorola hardware since the Air Force, when we had the two way radios the size of four bricks that weighed about as much as four bricks. Nearly indestructable and always worked. I'm not a fan of their software; whoever designs the user interface isn't very good at it, although the new one is far better than the old one. But nobody makes better radios.
This is my third Motorola phone, the first being a Razr five or more years ago. The Motorolas have better radios than anybody else's; I can get a signal when nobody else's phone can. There's another advantage over iPhones, which had problems with misdesigned antennas a few months ago. I know a few folks with iPhones, and IMO they're WAY overrated and overpriced.
"Wow, I'm sorry, hon," I said.
"Can you send them to my gmail address?"
"Sure." We have three Patty's days -- her birthday, then a few days later the parade day, then today, the seventeenth.
The AP says O'bama is part Irish. Must be the Black Irish? I'm sure the sociopathic, heartless Koch brothers don't have a drop of Irish blood in their veins, since you have to have a heart to pump blood. And the Irish have a history in American labor.
My own (and by extention, Patty's and Leila's) anscestry, from my paternal grandmother, is Irish. My uncle did extensive genealogical research, and it turns out that I'm decended from these folks, so St Patrick's day is a big deal for us, despite the fact that I've met few folks with Irish accents. Here's one I wrote about almost ten years ago.
The disk jockey on the radio this morning said Illinois has the fifth largest population of Irish-decended Americans in the US. There are certainly a lot of folks at work today wearing green shirts.
If you're in Ireland right now, please raise a Guiness for me, and say something in the comments section. A footnote to Americans: The snakes St Patrick ran out of Ireland were two legged snakes. St. Patrick was the man who brought Christianity to Ireland. Too bad we don't have his like today, or we could get rid of those Koch snakes.
Small point (Score:2)
iDevices can watch YouTube via the YouTube app.. and even on Android phones I prefer the YouTube app for watching vids.. for one thing it uses less CPU and therefore less power than Flash, and gets a nicer framerate.. at least with Android you can even watch sites that don't have iDevice compatibility though :)
You may be Irish, (Score:2)
But it isn't the wisest course to advertise yourself as Orange, outside Ulster. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's been a few hundred years since Cromwell exiled my anscestors. One day I'd love to visit Ireland, it sounds like a beautiful country (aside from the "troubles").