The Irish Rover

It's St. Patrick's Day today, one of my favorite holidays, if not one that I've had much success celebrating in recent years. For the second year in a row I've missed my college friends' reunion over pints of Guinness and probably just a little bit of mayhem - as alumni of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, it's a holiday we take seriously.

Last year was a wee bit harder than this one, of course. I was in India and besides the obvious technical difficulties and the paucity of corned beef and cabbage, there was one more problem with my attempts to share the holiday with my friends.

I walked into the office with a bright green shirt on and a big smile on my face, only to run smack into one of my coworkers. He looked tired, drawn, and he had a streak of white on his forehead. He explained, he was celebrating a holiday too - the days of Vasant Navratri leading up to Ram Navami - and he was fasting.

So, no green beer, in other words.

That was probably the quietest St. Patrick's Day I'd ever had. No matter where I'd spent it, though, it would probably be hard to top the time I actually lived in Ireland, the holiday's spiritual home. My sister was in town, and besides the usual tomfoolery we stumbled across a céilidh and danced like idiots with half of Dublin. The rest of the night, we [scene missing].

More than anything, today's celebration of its patron saint makes me reminisce about the good times I had there both as a student and more recently for a rather long run. Maybe it's time for an impulse trip back to the Emerald Isle . . . You never know . . .

Trinity College and Dawson St

O'Connell St looking towards the Dublin Spire