10.5 hours of fantasticness.

Tags

alanna, beer, burrito, dancers, drunk, green, guinness, irish, jo-ann, julia, momager, noon, o'byrnes, older lady, ryan, snug, st. patrick's day, trevor

so, st. patrick’s day. as i’ve previously mentioned, it was FANTASTIC! we had decided a while ago that arriving at 10am would be the best course of action in order to reserve a table and we rolled up to o’byrne’s at 10.30am ready to pounce on any available seating. we would have been there at 10, but someone – shocker, it was jo-ann – slept in a little. it’s actually a good thing that we got there when we did as all the seating was pretty much full up except for a few tables. we managed to get a good table located in the ‘snug’ right by the front door. we didn’t initiallly know it was called the ‘snug’ but we were later informed of this by an older couple who ended up being our snug-mates for a lot of the day.

we made a concerted effort be sure not to drink before noon as we rightly assumed that once started, the drinking would be hard to slow down. with this in mind we ate breakfast/lunch, and supped back some preparatory water up until noon and had the beer on the table at 11.55am, ready for the big moment, which was counted down along with the rest of the now increasingly jovial snug. i should point out here that our humours while sober were not that amenable. in fact, we were all fucking bitches before we got the first sip of ale in our bellies at which point the party well and truly started.

so now, we’re all greased up a bit and ready to take on the epic climb to the summit. ryan arrived in the afternoon NOT WEARING GREEN! as you can see from the picture above with alanna, he was far from festive, so we shoved a green hat on him and hoped people assumed he was colour-blind. or helen keller. ryan also brought in a burrito from somewhere and was initially caught by the waitress with ‘outside food.’ he quickly hid the burrito from said waitress – who was actually really nice – and then had to take short bites of the burrito for the next little while. this actually ended up being a good thing for 2 reasons:
1. as it turned out the burrito was hot beyond the point of all reason and ryan had to keep taking breaks to try and cool down his mouth (with beer obviously);
2. the above mentioned older lady with whom we shared the snug called him ‘julio’ each time he brought it out. quite funny.

the afternoon goes a bit hazy at this point as i reached my drunk pinnacle for the day in around the 2-5pm period having started so early. that being said i do remember the fantastic randomness of the snug suddenly becoming the dancers staging area after a dina lohan style momager bitchily noted to one of the servers that they supposedly reserved the area… bitch please!

so now there are children all over the show and ‘doting’ parents preparing them for their ‘moment.’ it was all a touch absurd and then in walked a little girl named julia who promptly noted in a bitchy tone that the snug was not a big enough area for all of them. she was fabulous, obviously. we also had a mini st. patrick at our table closely inspecting some scratch tickets they gave out. altogether a slightly unnerving experience when you’re three sheets to the wind.

as the afternoon wore on we were also joined by scott and kathy who informed us that the line outside was huge. they both obscenely flirted with me for a few hours and then headed out – to bp’s i think – with kathy’s friend fanny. ryan and alanna also departed in the early evening leaving jo-ann, trevor and i in the snug which had now been overrun by douchebags. at this point our evening started to wind down with trevor trying to finish 16 pints in a special sequence and jo-ann and i trying to convince him to abandon the plan. he did of course, but only after ordering pint 16 – a guinness – taking a sip, and promptly telling us it was time to leave.

we ended up departing at about 9pm and heading for my apartment to order pizza after a cab ride during which jo-ann argued with the cab driver about his stated policy not to drive to the north side. all in all, a pretty fantastic st. patrick’s day.