St. Patrick's Day

What a day! I started off my Saturday with a brisky mornin' munchin' (yes, I just paraphrased Jar Jar Binks), then made my way to All Souls Unitarian Church for the peace rally. You know that I really care about a cause when it gets me to go to a church without a wedding or a funeral involved.

I took part in the march down Peoria, holding a sign that read "NO MORE WAR". It was kinda windy, so it was hard to keep the sign from blowing back and obscuring the word NO. The thing that I found funny was the fact that everyone who drove past us giving us the finger were all driving SUV's. I also enjoyed seeing people trying to counter-protest at thirty miles an hour. They all had about a second and a half to state their case. "YOU'REONLYHELPINGTHEENEMY!" "IDISAGREEWITHYOURPOSITION" "YOUSHOULDSUPPORTTHEPRESIDENT!" "GODDAMNEDHIPPIESBURNINHELL"

All in all, we had just as many people give us the thumbs up as people give us the middle finger.



Then, it was off to Kilkenny's to listen to the fiddlers and Hideaway Pizza for dinner. In retrospect, this was my time to hang out with my friends, and I'm glad I took advantage, because once I showed up at Arnie's to start my shift, that was the only appreciable time I would spend with them.

I showed up at Arnie's around 6:30 and had to go straight to work. My job was keeping the money straight in the office. I can't go into much detail about the job, but I can tell you these things:

1. Here are some of the unusual things people left in the tip jars: A car wash token, a twig, a chocolate coin, half of a dollar bill, numerous cigarette butts, and a button.
2. There was a group of guys sitting at a table just outside the office who, from what I could gather, were playing a drinking game called SCREAM. They all started screaming at the same time, and whoever stopped screaming first had to drink. I watched them on the security camera doing this, and it was just as irritating watching them as it was hearing them.
3. People were constantly banging on the men's room door telling people to hurry up in there, as if yelling ever made people pee faster.
4. We almost ran out of beer...twice. Aware of this problem, when I was told that I could grab anything I needed from the cooler, I only took what looked like it wasn't selling very fast. To that end, I had a Coke, a Smirnov Ice, another coke, a bottled water, and a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
5. To help me out, we had a money counting machine which was named Fred by the owners. I couldn't have done it all without Fred. He was a life-saver.

When I was relieved for the night, my hands were blackened with money ink and I was ten times more sober than my friends who were still hanging around. I went thome and fell fast asleep.