Dating the Hard Way

At one time, the Romans used a lunar calendar. The beginning of the month would be determined by the sighting of the faint crescent of the new moon, upon which a pontifex would call out that the sighting had been made, establishing the beginning of the month, the Calends, named for the act of calling out and from which we get our word 'calendar'.

The Calends was also the half-month period following the full moon until the new moon, numbered backwards from the first day of the month. For Calends of January, Calends 1 is January 1, Calends 2 is December 31, Calends 3 is December 30, and so on.

The next lunar event was the quarter moon, which would follow about a week later. It was called Nones, and the period of Nones was numbered backwards too, so, using our previous example, January 2 was Nones 4, January 3 was Nones 3, and so on.

The big event of the month, as you might guess, was the full moon or Ides, The period of Ides, which ended on the full moon, was also numbered backwards. The Ides was the last numbered day of any month. The day following the Ides was the first day of the Calends period of the following month.

The Julian calendar was adopted by order of supreme Priest Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. and the beginning of the year 45 B.C. was set for January 1, two months earlier than the previous new year's date of March 1, which is why our ninth month, September, bears the name of the number seven. In 5 B.C., the lunar calendar was abandoned and the Calends, Nones and Ides were given fixed dates in each of the months, counting, as before, from the ends of the previous months. This causes the Ides to fall on the fifteenth (and the Nones on the seventh) in March, May, July and October but on the thirteenth (the fifth for the Nones) every other month.

March 15 is the Ides of March, even when it isn't the full moon. The Ides of April is April 13. That dreaded day of taxation, April 15, is Calends 17 May.

The ancient Romans were constantly counting down to the next lunar event. A count of six or seven from Calends to Nones was reasonable, as was a count of seven or eight from Nones to Ides, but the new calendar allowed a countdown of up to nineteen days from Ides to Calends, impossible with a lunar month of 29 days. Eventually the system fell into disuse and a new system was started where the days were marked cyclically with the letters A through H to mark off marketing weeks.

If Julius Caesar hadn't been assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 B.C., we probably would have completely forgotten about the system.

The Roman day, from sunrise to sunset, was exactly twelve hours long. Likewise, the night, from sunset to sunrise, was divided into four equal watches of three hours each. The length of the hour was changed to make this happen.

We have the technology now to make Roman clocks and calendars and to do calculations using them, but it isn't a simple process. It is much simpler with our modern system of fixed second, minute, hour, etc. and our modern calendars which, awkward as they may seem at times, are simplicity itself compared with what our ancestors used.

Holiday Gift Giving Tradition

The ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia was celebrated on December 17. During the sometimes wild festivities, master and slave would, for a time, change places. To make sure they wouldn't be mistreated by their slaves, masters would often give gifts in the days preceding the celebration. But this isn't the only, nor the strongest, reason for giving gifts at this time.

The Roman army had discovered Mithras and most of the enlisted men were worshipers. Following their religion, officers would give gifts to the enlisted men on December 25. When the new Christian religion was being established as the state religion of the Roman Empire, the army threatened to revolt if they couldn't continue their worship ... and their gift day.

That is why the date of Christmas was set as December 25, to keep the gift day of the Roman army according to their beliefs in Mithras, and why gift giving is associated with Christmas.

Garlic Salad and Garlic Soup

I decided to make myself a garlic salad a couple of days ago.

I peeled two heads of garlic. Cathy saw me working and told me she had discovered a neat recipe for garlic soup that she would brew up if I would peel enough garlic for it. That was another two heads of garlic. Since I was already peeling garlic, doubling the amount wasn't a great problem.

I slowly fried my share of the whole garlic cloves in olive oil until they were golden brown and just barely soft, stirring constantly, carefully hoarding the oil after. When the garlic cloves cooled, I used them as an additional ingredient in a chef's salad based on spring mix, which I can usually tolerate. It shared the salad with chunks of leftover turkey, mozzarella cheese, quartered small tomatoes and chunks of an avocado. I topped it with a sweet onion vinaigrette.

I ate both heads of garlic all by myself.

I later used the oil to fry a bun for a hamburger and a bagel for my breakfast the following morning. It imparted the garlic flavor to both forms of bread.

Yesterday, Cathy made the promised soup. I'm not sure of all of the details, not having present during its making, but the garlic was fried in olive oil, then processed in the blender, with garlic, oil and some bread crumbs winding up in the soup. Two heads of garlic made four servings, of which I got one (Cathy got two, Delia one). The soup was excellent. I will gladly prepare the garlic any time Cathy decides she wants to make the soup, which she said was easy.

That was another half head of garlic the day following eating two heads of garlic.

I told several people about it. They had difficulty believing me. There was no trace of garlic fragrance coming from my body.

Eaten raw, garlic is hot and peppery. Cooking gives garlic a totally different taste, one that seems to fill the mouth and, perhaps, the soul. It is a flavor difficult to describe apart from its ability to expand upon the flavors of other foods it accompanies.

Garlic is not to be feared unless overcooked or cooked in the presence of rancid fat, especially rancid animal fat, when it can create a smell that will drive skunks away.

Even if you manage to overcook garlic slightly, you will feel it inside you, particularly in your skin, long before those around you notice anything.

Garlic is good stuff.

Senior Moments

More and more often lately, when changing from my street clothes to the clothes I wear around the house I have been forgetting to put my house keys in my pockets. I don't think I've forgotten the keys when dressing to go out, only when I'm getting ready to stay around the house. Then I'd walk outside and be unable to get back in.

So far, I've only done this when somebody else has been at home to open doors for me or lend me their keys. I could easily enough do it when alone and get stuck outside for hours instead of just for a few minutes.

Knowing I had this problem, a couple of months ago I got a key retractor to place on my at-home pants. Yesterday I finally had duplicate keys made. They have keys now with plastic coats in a variety of designs, so I was able to get two of the keys in blue with the Chargers bolt emblem on them. The third key is less common and I just got a plain metal copy.

Now the keys reside with the appropriate set of pants. The old keys reside on two key holders with several other keys, a flashlight, a bottle opener and a plastic piece that reminds me of the facts behind my birthday, shared with such notables as Beethoven and Arthur C. Clarke as well as being the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of the Bulge. They are all in the pocket of the pants I wear to go places. The new copies hang on the pants I wear at home.

I shouldn't get locked out again.

Unless I forget to wear my pants.

Turkey, My Way

Derek asked me to send him a message detailing how I prepare a turkey the easy way. Rather than go to all of that effort for one person one time, I decided to make it a Weblog entry.

I have enjoyed slow cooking for many years. The secret is that meats and most other foods will cook at any temperature over 140 degrees. This is also the temperature that kills most bacteria. The lowest temperature slow cooker I used had three settings, the lowest being 145 degrees, and it would do the job even at that low a temperature provided the temperature was never allowed to drop. That meant the lid had to be kept in place.

Most authorities say turkeys should be cooked until they reach 185 degrees. Ovens turn on and off, their temperatures fluctuating wildly in the process, so I've found that setting the oven somewhere in the range of 200 to 225 degrees will keep the contents at 185 degrees or more. It will depend on the particular oven you are using. Some ovens do the job better at the lower temperature, some work better at the higher temperature.

You will be cooking for much longer than you would by conventional methods. I usually try to get my bird in the oven the night before I intend to serve it, set the cooking timer for nine hours and let the oven keep the bird warm with residual heat until I need to cook something else in it. It doesn't have to cook that long but it can cook longer with no harm.

The result will not be a showpiece you can place on the table for carving. It will be an overcooked bird that is falling apart, too well cooked for carving. The meat will be juicy, though, rather than dry, particularly if you inject the breast with an appropriate mixture.

The following steps should be followed:

1. Rinse your bird inside and out. Remove any remaining feathers or pinfeathers. Toss a shot of scotch, brandy or aromatic gin into the cavity, rotate the bird to distribute the liquid throughout the cavity, then toss in another shot. Cover the bird with a clean cloth and pour a shot or two over the cloth. Set aside in a cool place.
2. Put the neck and giblets in a pot with enough water to cover, add sage, pepper and other spices, a quartered onion, some garlic and celery, and cook at a low setting, to be used later in your stuffing or gravy.
3. Prepare a mixture of two parts brandy to one part butter, warming it enough to keep the butter liquid. Warning: do not add salt to the injected mixture or the meat will become dry when cooked. Get the largest hypodermic needles you can find and inject the warm mix generously into the breast and thighs. This used to be what they did with the Butterball turkeys before they switched to a cheap substitute that doesn't work as well. You will find that the liquid cools quickly and the syringes become slippery, so it is better to have two people working together, one filling syringes while the other injects. Inject only the turkey, not each other or yourself.
4. I always make at least twice as much stuffing as will fit into the bird. It doesn't matter what kind of stuffing you use. I've used bread stuffings, cornbread stuffings and rice stuffing. Just make sure the stuffing has lots of flavorful goodies in it. Sausage, prunes and nuts go well in the stuffings I make. Stuff the body and neck cavities loosely, then place the remaining stuffing in a Corningware or other container and cook it in the microwave. The neck cavity usually has a generous flap of skin you can sew up to hold the stuffing in (don't use dental floss; get a lacing kit with a length of linen cord). The body cavity can sometimes be sealed with a simple buttered slice of bread, particularly the heel, or you can use the skewers and lace from your lacing kit.
5. Turkey skin is a delicacy which should be enjoyed by the cook. Mix together some flour with pepper, sage, garlic powder and your favorite spices, oil the top surface of the bird generously (I use olive oil) and cover it with the flavored flour mixture. The bottom of your cooking bag or roasting pan should be lined with chunks of onion and celery. Place the turkey in the bag, seal it and punch a few steam vents. Place the cooking bag in a large, high-walled pan or place the lid on the roasting pan.
6. Place the turkey on the lowest rack of the cool oven, set the temperature and timer and do something else for a while. This is when I usually go to bed. This is also a good time to consume a preview sample of the dressing you cooked in the microwave.
7. When the turkey finishes cooking, remove it from the oven and set it aside to cool. Trying to carve or divide a hot turkey is a frustrating task, so give it plenty of time, better than an hour. When you can safely handle the bird, remove it from the bag or pan, gobbling the skin when nobody is looking. Throw out the used bag, onion chunks and celery chunks, but save the liquid to combine with the giblet liquid for making the gravy.
8. When everything else is ready, you remove the dressing from the turkey, mixing it with the microwaved dressing, then cut the turkey up into serving-sized chunks you can arrange on a platter. Turkey and dressing should still be warm at this point.
9. The very last thing you do before serving the meal is to make the gravy.

Doing a turkey this way avoids the problem of critical timing. Your meat is guaranteed to be well-done but juicy and flavorful. Preparation is broken up by a period of sleep or other activity, reducing the stress levels. By starting earlier, the process is made less frantic.

It works for me.

Unanticipated Thunderstorm

This morning we were treated to strong wind, heavy rain, nearby lightning and thunder that rolled on and on. It didn't last long and didn't upset anybody enough to get them out of bed.

When I finally got up to investigate, I found that the green garden trash container in front of the house had been turned around, moved about a yard and knocked over by the wind. I went beside the house to find that the trash and recycling containers had both been moved about ten feet and knocked over, with trash, cans and bottles scattered in the iceplant next to the driveway and into the yards of two of our neighbors, the Websters next door and the Johnsons across the street.

It took me about half an hour to get everything picked up. In the process, I slipped on the wet iceplant and twisted my left knee, which hurt for a couple of hours afterwards. My back hurt for a while, too, and my feet felt frozen from being soaked by the wet plants, even after replacing my sandals with slippers.

There seems to have been no other damage. The sun came out shortly after the storm passed. Despite the violent start, it has been a pleasant day.

Blogging Survey

This was taken from Library Princess' Weblog, presumably with her blessing.

BLOGGING SURVEY

1. What is your full name?

2. Where is your current location?

3. How old are you?

4. What is your profession?

5. How long have you been maintaining a weblog?

6. What is your username and where did it come from?

7. How many subscribers do you have/how many people do you subscribe to? Out of this number, how many people do you estimate read and/or visit your weblog regularly?

8. Do you have a sitemeter or some other method of counting visits to your page?

9. Do you have any other weblogs besides one at Xanga? If so, please give a brief summary of each weblog and explain why (or if) Xanga is the location of your primary weblog.

10. Do you have more than one weblog at Xanga? What is its function? (no need to disclose the location of it if you keep it a secret, just answer about its existence)

11. How did you first hear about weblogging? Did you try or investigate other services besides Xanga for this purpose? If so, what made you decide on Xanga?

12. How did you first hear about Xanga?

13. Do you know any of your readers/subscribers personally? What proportion of your readers/subscribers are people you know personally?

14. Have you ever met someone through Xanga in person? If so, could you detail that experience, including how the person’s "in person” persona matched up with their “xanga” persona?

15. Are you interested in meeting, in person, someone whose weblog you’ve read? Why or why not? If so, is there someone in particular you’d like to meet? Why?

16. Besides physical meetings have you had contact outside of Xanga with someone whose weblog you’ve read? If so, please detail the experience(s).

17. Describe something unpleasant/scary/dangerous that has happened to you as a result of keeping a weblog.

18. Describe something fun/positive/happy that has happened to you as a result of keeping a weblog.

19. What is the most rewarding part about keeping a weblog?

20. What is the most frustrating part about keeping a weblog?

21. Is there a person (or people) that you would not feel comfortable reading your weblog? What steps would you take to keep them from reading your weblog?

22. Have you ever had to use Xanga’s “Block User” feature to keep someone from commenting on your site? Has someone ever harassed you over/through Xanga? If so, please describe this situation and the effect it had on your weblog/life.

23. Do you use Xanga’s “Protected Posting” feature? If so, what qualifies someone to be included on that list and what do kind of content do you post there?

24. How often do you update your weblog?

25. Have you ever taken a hiatus from maintaining your weblog? If so, what caused it and what made you return?

26. How much of your time online is spent with matters concerning your weblog? How much of your personal time at all is spent with matters concerning your weblog?

27. What is the most personal thing you have ever written about on your weblog? What kind of reaction did this post receive from the people that read it? What motivated you to write about it and share it with an audience?

28. Do you have Premium at your weblog? Why or why not? If you had to pay to continue using Xanga, would you? Why or why not?

29. What do you consider the primary function of your weblog? For example, do you view it as a diary, a place to polish your creative/non-fiction writing skills, a forum for meeting people and sharing interests, something else all together or a little bit of everything?

30. How important is feedback at your weblog? Do you consider people's responses a crucial part of your blogging experience? Discuss your feelings about reader response and public interaction and how it affects your writing and/or blogging.

31. Did you have any expectations about what your weblog/blogging would be like? If so, what were they and how did they relate to the actual experience of keeping a weblog?

32. How do you think other people (both in your life and in the general public) percieve the act of blogging? Does this affect you in any way?

33. Do you have a personal website outside of Xanga that contains more than just a weblog? If so, what content is on it? Did Xanga replace a personal website for you? If so, why and how?

34. Do you consider yourself a writer? Has maintaining your weblog changed your answer to this question?

35. Why do you blog?

+++36. Don't you totally want one of those bumper stickers/t-shirts that says, "I'm SO Blogging This!"+++

Annoyances

Weather Bug Chirping

Weather Bug is a useful service ... and it is free. They have thousands of live weather stations scattered all over the country. The nearest to me is just two miles to the east of our house. The temperature and wind readings they get are very similar to what I observe here.

But recently we had flood warnings. Anyone familiar with our area knows that we don't get rain from the beginning of June through the end of September. Yet for three consecutive days, Weather Bug sounded its cricket chirp about every half hour to tell us of updates to the warnings of possible flash floods due to thunderstorms in the mountains to the north and east of San Diego. Once would have been enough. The same goes for the high wind warnings for winds gusting up to 45 mph in those same mountains: one warning would have done it instead of bombarding us with insane chirping all afternoon and morning long.

Unwelcome Inhabitant

Monday morning, when I took some letters out to the mail box, I found a black widow had taken up residence. She was a large sized speciman and had filled the box with a pattern of webs. I got a can of pyrethrin spray and let her have a good dose, then went away and waited over half an hour before returning with a stick to remove the body and clean out the network of web.

As I placed the letters in the box I thought it was good we had outgoing mail this time. Otherwise, the mailman would have been the one to encounter the spider. It is a common enough problem, particularly at this hot, dry time of the year. I just hate to see it.

Back Pain

My back started hurting in a new place Tuesday after my mall walk, just below my right shoulder. It wasn't bad enough when I retired to bed for me to take a pain pill, but it woke me prematurely this morning. I had wakened prematurely Tuesday morning, thanks to a cramp in my right leg, so I have been a bit short of sleep. I tried taking a nap late in the morning but the pain wouldn't let me sleep.

Delia has to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning so she can get to a meeting she has to attend in Costa Mesa. That means I'll be up early, too. I've still got the pain. I hope I can get some sleep.

Pedometer

The first week of walking I was taking 4,500 steps to walk two miles. Tuesday, walking the same path for the same distance, my step count was down to just over 4,000 steps. It seems I've stretched my stride.

Either that or the machine isn't working. If I walk around without shoes, the machine doesn't count my steps at all. If I mount the pedometer on my hip, it can't detect movement and stays at zero. Just walking around the house, it misses about 75% of my steps. The slower I walk, the fewer of my steps get counted.

This is apparently a design feature. The machine is designed to count regular steps. If you don't have rythm, it throws them out. It says so in the instructions. It takes at least five regular steps, in rythm, before the machine will register anything. If I become irregular for two seconds, it shuts down. I walk about like a drunk staggers, irregularly. This is especially true in the uneven terrain within our house, but I don't walk too much differently when shopping, with all of the stopping and starting.

Apparently the only steps that count are the ones I take on my measured miles, which makes the machine useless. I already know about the miles I'm walking. I wanted to know how far I was walking the rest of the time.

My Schedule

I had decided I was going to wash my clothes today. Cathy discovered she had a flat tire last night. She asked me to take her car in and have the tire fixed while she was at work. My clothes never got washed. They might not get washed tomorrow after my mall walk, either, if I'm too tired or hurt too much.

Cathy's flat tire wasn't the only reason I didn't wash my clothes. When I was starting to get cleaned up to take the car to the dealer, Delia asked me to come upstairs and give my opinion on several outfits she was considering wearing to her meeting tomorrow. While she went through the several required changes of clothing, I decided to watch television. They were showing the World Championship Poker Tournament of Champions.

My friend Richard Lederer has two kids who play poker professionally, both of whom were in the tournament, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke. I enjoy watching them play and both were among the last three players in the game.

Howard and Annie went face to face with similar hands, Howard holding two sevens and Annie holding two sixes. The River turned up two queens and a six, knocking Howard out of the game. Several hands later, Annie beat the remaining player to claim the two million dollar prize for herself. The losers got nothing.

By the time the game finished, Delia and Cathy had left the house and the mail had arrived. After quickly checking the mail, I finally got ready and set out to have the tire fixed.

Various Topics

Fiftieth Birthday Party

Early this last week we received a strange telephone call from an old friend, Jimmy. Part of what made it strange was that Jimmy, rather than his wife, Gloria, left the message, as Gloria is the one who usually talks with Delia. The message indicated that it was a matter of some urgency and mentioned two telephone numbers at which we could reach Jimmy, one being his cell phone number, but no clue was given as to the nature of the emergency. We've been out of touch with Jimmy and Gloria for about three years, ever since her parents moved down into Mexico to set up a restaurant associated with a family cattle ranch.

Delia tried to call back, but she couldn't reach anybody at either of the numbers. Fearing there had been a death in the family, Delia started calling all of the relatives she knew of who lived nearby. She finally contacted an aunt, who told us that the emergency was Jimmy's 50th birthday party, which was to be on saturday. Minutes later, Jimmy called and Delia, without consulting me, confirmed that we would be there.

The last time we were there, Jimmy, recently out of the Navy, had joined the San Diego Sheriffs Office, working on Otay Mesa. He gave that up some time ago and has a new job, about which I know nothing, but there were a lot of new faces at the party as a result. I had good conversations with a few of them before the live music started, a dj with a multiple keyboard setup who produced a mix of live and recorded stuff at ever-increasing volume settings.

We were sitting on folding chairs -- none too kind to my poor, damaged back to begin with -- and mine kept sinking into the lawn. I had to keep standing up, pulling the chair up out of its grassy sinkholes, move it a few inches and sit again. Then a woman spilled her margarita on my left arm and leg ... and the mosquitoes descended on me. Between the musical torture, the sinking folding chair and the unintentional blood donation, I was distinctly uncomfortable. I decided to move to a nice wooden chair in the kitchen.

There I observed a couple mixing drinks ... and wished I hadn't. They filled their large plastic cups with ice, enough so the ice would be about a third of the resulting drink, and they added about an equal amount of inexpensive, but decent, Cabernet Sauvignon. The remaining third of each drink they prepared was Coca-Cola ... and the guy lamented not having the diet variety.

That's disgusting.

Favorite Comics

There are a number of comics I follow on the Internet in addition to the selection available in the newspaper I subscribe to.

One of my favorites is Frazz, the tale of an elementary school janitor and the students he comes in contact with. One of those students, Caulfield, is somewhat of a philosopher and, in the sunday episode, he discovers that the concept of summer ending is all in his mind.

Another favorite, 9 Chickweed Lane, is somewhat more mature and more intellectual, but no less funny. It treats of three generations of women in one family and their relationship problems. The youngest is a student in a Catholic school, which allows affectionate jabs at the entire Catholic way of life, and whose boyfriend is an ubergeek. The next generation is a university professor, the central character, who delights in driving men mad. Then there is sour granny, critic of everything and everybody, whose boyfriend is a large person with godlike powers of possible extraterrestrial origin who may be thousands or millions of years old. This old alien has been the subject of analysis by Men In Black for the past week, ending the week with his confusion on the topic of botox, and it may continue next week.

Heat

The WeatherBug temperature for our area was 104. The newspaper had predicted just 98. At 9:00 this morning we experienced blast furnace winds from the south and south-east as well as what Panamanians call el sol que pica (the sun that bites).

Until today, it has been relatively cool. Today made up for it. Cathy's dog, Rocky, could only stand it outside for about two minutes. After going out briefly in the morning, he refused to go out again until the sun set.

All three of us had headaches all day long.

Mosquitoes

When I was being eaten alive at the party, the subject of mosquito avoidance came up. I knew, from experience in Panama, that eating garlic helped keep the critters off. But I learned something new from the rarest of sources, my wife.

According to Delia, if you want to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes you have to stop eating bananas. Mosquitoes and chiggers both love the flavor you get after consuming bananas. She said they will attack if you've consumed the fruit as long as ten or eleven days previously.

I can believe it. The mosquitoes had ignored me until I had the margarita spilled on me, which worked as a blood-sucker magnet. Even washing the stuff off of my arm didn't discourage the critters once I became live bait.

Cathy's Birthday Jinx

Every young lady deserves a pleasant birthday celebration. Cathy wanted two, one with her buddies and a second for a larger group, which included her parents and some older friends, Don and Anita Bohensky. Both should have been enjoyable and problem free.

They weren't.

As Cathy was preparing to go bar crawling with her buddies, her hair brush got stuck in her hair. She had been attempting to curl some of her very long hair, a bit at the front, into a tight curl that would function as bangs. She got her long hair tightly wrapped onto the brush and it wouldn't unwrap.

Cathy worked at it for a while alone. Then, with no results, she asked me to help. I tried prying the hair out one strand at a time. This worked for about an inch at one end of the brush. That left a major problem, the brush bobbing right at her forehead.

She didn't want to cut the hair. That would have solved the problem but would have left its mark.

She decided to see if wetting the hair with conditioner would lubricate it enough to begin freeing it up. But hair swells when moist, so the problem became worse.

Delia arrived home and took over. Within a minute she was laughing uncontrollably, which didn't help the problem and got Cathy close to tears. Then Delia started snipping the bristles off of the brush with a pair of scissors. Removing the bristles seemed to help but Delia's method left too much bristle behind. I got a pair of pliers and started pulling the bristles out.

I had gotten about 75% of the bristles out when Cathy's friend Tiffany arrived. Tiffany took over because my arms were tired. She managed to pull a few more bristles before deciding it was too awkward and too tiring of the arms. Instead, she concentrated on freeing the hair, now that we had an advantage. Eventually she got the brush untangled completely, after a bit over two hours of being bound to Cathy.

Cathy quickly restyled her hair to minimize the damage, then went out. That was the night before Cathy's birthday.

On the evening of Cathy's birthday, we went to an Irish pub called Hooley's, as far as possible from the stadium (Chargers game) and the Gaslight District (some kind of Street Scene celebration). Cathy had a table for fifteen reserved. Twenty people showed up. We fixed it by adding a table and a few chairs, something the people at the bar could have done for us but didn't.

Live music was provided by a quartet (guitar, bass, drums and violin) who called themselves The Ballad Mongers. They played a mix of '60s, '70s, Irish drinking songs and their own compositions. They were amplified but not to the point of pain, or even unpleasantness, and the patio being covered with a cloth cover for a ceiling helped keep the sound enjoyable. They played with a lot of enthusiasm and a good deal of skill. When I informed them that it was Cathy's birthday, they played several songs for her besides the traditional "Happy Birthday to You".

Hooley's serves what is supposed to be Irish food (calimari? shrimp quesodillas? Irish?). I had a Hooley's Egg (hard boiled egg coated in sausage meat and then deep fried) and Bangers and Mash (sausages). Delia had their fish and chips, with three pieces of fish so large it was difficult to finish them. Cathy treated herself to a sixteen ounce piece of New York cut steak from an animal supposed to be just two years old.

As midnight came and went, some of Cathy's friends had to bail. They wanted to know what their share of the tab was, and Hooley's doesn't issue individual checks. The whole table was on one bill, so Delia and Anita got a preliminary copy of it and started working with the early departees to get them taken care of. Cathy's friend Wendy took care of the real bill.

Then the jinx hit. Everybody had settled up, and Wendy was holding about $100 less than the amount shown on the bill. After several conferences with Jason, the waiter, Cathy and Wendy moved to the office to try to figure out what was wrong, Cathy taking my PDA with her for its calculator capabilities. Delia and Anita eventually joined them, as did several of Cathy's other friends. Anita returned to explain the problem to me.

Each bill had been brought in a plastic folder, the type all restaurants use. One of the black plastic folders was still sitting on the table. I picked it up. It was full of money. I brought it in to Cathy in the office area and presented it to her without a word. She almost cried with relief when she saw what was inside. The amount exactly matched what they were missing -- I don't know how much that was.

Cathy had come with us but wanted to hang out with her buddies for a while, so us old folks (Delia, Anita, Don and I) headed home by ourselves. We drove right into a traffic stop run, strangely, by the Sheriff's Office; they don't normally do traffic. I had to produce my driver's license and answer concerning the drinking I had been doing, which had amounted to two beers, the last one about three hours before we were stopped. When we got home, I called Cathy to warn her.

Her response was, "Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. I heard about it earlier."

Everybody did arrive home safely -- eventually.