Good morning all:

Weekly St. Paddy’s Day quote:

“Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.” ~ Alex Levine

Therefore, the real question is, is it too early to pour myself some Irish Coffee? Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone

Actually, I am already nursing a full mug of White Castle’s finest.

Spring activities – Stuff is in full bloom and this means that my effort to finish taxes has slowed to a crawl.

With March Madness I am also finding myself in front of the TV a bit more. Usually I get a bit bored watching sports on TV, however, seeing Lehigh beat Duke was amazing; and that on the heels of Mizzou getting beat by a # 15 seed – wow.

All the local teams are still in the hunt. Locals UC and Xavier escaped, Little Ohio beat Michigan, and the regional big boys such as Ohio State, IU, and UK came through just fine.

Talk about watching more TV, one show I enjoyed, but couldn’t watch live due to a lack of cable and satellite, was Bear Grylls’ Man vs. Wild. I said ‘was’ since the show was cancelled last week. I did read where some wag offered up a resurrection (after all this is Lent) of the show, he proffered that it could be titled “Man vs. Wilde”. It would show Bear Grylls sitting under a blazing hot sun reading Oscar Wilde poems in a rotting seal skin, while sipping a tin-cup of his own urine.

Aside from watching a bit of college basketball I found myself ‘jonesing’ about, chomping to work on the Duck, our little 2CV, getting it ready to tootle around. The headlight switch was a problem and so I took it apart, cleaned, and made sure all the contacts were operational. If there is a ‘quirky’ was to build something the French will manage—it all works fine, and in a convoluted way, works exceedingly well—just quirkily.

Take for example the handbrake. The little car has a brake-disk rotor up high next to the engine to which the handbrake lever connects – and the pads had worn. Replacing the two ‘baby’ pads – each the size of a quarter – managed that problem.

My turn signals will require some more work. I found that while I surmised this to be the easiest portion of my ‘to-do’ list, it is the most troublesome. Before I get stacks of mail, I replaced the flasher unit, took apart each light and checked ground and bulb, the switch works fine, I get power to the flasher. I guess that now I best check continuity throughout.

The net result is that, with a sense of accomplishment, I am sitting here pecking away on my morning post, with grease laden fingernails.

Weekend –In a couple of hours we’ll all head into the city for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. I absolutely live for the pipers – the massive bag-pipe and drums band which usually struts by near the front of what will be about a two hour event.

All day there will be great stuff on our heart of the city, Fountain Square, with such notable groups as the Voodoo Loons. I mean, how is not obvious that winter is over!

Closing – Enjoy a glass of Guinness today. And for those who aren’t major beer fans consider making yourself a Black Velvet – as an old bartender, the Black Velvet is a great festive drink to enjoy. One that simply combines, in a flute, equal parts champagne and, what else, Guinness. – sláinte

Make it a great week everyone and be safe.
Cheers,
Dirk