A Girl With a Sword

The Rose and the Thorn

And since Natalie has already started it I feel I should share my side of the story. St. Patrick's Day is the biggest holiday in Boston, bigger than Christmas, bigger than anything. So while I was at work on the sixteenth I asked my boss what I should do to experience the really Boston St. Patrick's day. She proceeded to give me a run down of all the possible activities and ended up telling me that I needed to be outside The Black Rose at six in the morning so I could get in on the hot Dropkick Murphys/Guinness action there. "First Guinness served at eight." And I laughed heartily at the idea of getting out of bed that early.

That night when I got home Eb and Natalie were already thoroughly wrapped up in the madness that is Settlers of Catan, so of course we had to keep playing, we had to keep playing until I won, and I did win, even though we played to fifteen points instead of the usual ten (which is very difficult with no expansion sets). Ha! HA! (hm, I maybe getting this night mixed up with the next night, but either way I did win at some time and it should be noted). And then we had to go with the plan that was already scheduled earlier that day--to watch Y Tu Mama Tambien and Thirteen back to back. The movies ended around three or four and led into a long conversation that lasted until I noticed that the sky outside was starting to get light. Then the idea struck--the Guinness and The Black Rose. So we looked it up, saw the words "no cover charge" and even though none of us is a fan of The Dropkick Murphys, we all have people we love who are and that was enough to make us get up and put our coats (and lots and lots of green clothing) on.

We got to the place around six fifteen and found the line already about three blocks long. We joined in and were encouraged to stay (even though I couldn't imagine how all these people were fitting into that tiny pub up there) by the constant barragement of free stuff (hats, CD's, DVD's, beads). We waited there so long that we couldn't move anymore. My toes started to be in horrible horrible pain. I started to think about all the stories of frostbite I'd heard. At almost eight o'clock we heard something about not being able to get in to The Black Rose after all. A few people went to investigate and after Eb came back and told us they were only letting ten more people in (and there were still about forty people in front of us, not to mention people behind us threatening to kill people if they couldn't get in) we decided to cut our losses and go find someplace warm. We were almost frozen at this point and it's strange walking when you can't feel important parts of the process, like your legs. We recovered over bagels in Au Bon Pain and then went home to sleep.