St Paddy's Day: The Hooligans Are Loose In Dallas

My favorite Drinking Holiday has come and gone but it was one hell of a time.

I celebrate St Paddy's Day twice a year in order to completely respect my heritage and ancestors. Actually, the real reason is because there are two big parties the Saturday before St Paddy's Day in Dallas every year and also another party of the actual St Paddy's Day.

For the past couple of years, a group of friends and I have been going to the St. Paddy's Day Parade in Dallas the Saturday before the actual St. Paddy's Day on March 17th. This is always a big event in Dallas. Thousands of people go to the parade everywhere to watch the parade and the 5K marathon that happens right before it.

The parade started around 11, but we went there early so we could get a good spot and set up camp for a couple of hours. We got a great spot right off of Lovers Lane and Greenville Avenue. The spot was ridiculously awesome for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that we were on an elevated position and we could clearly see the whole parade without any obstructions from the crowd at all. The second and the best reason was that we were right across from tons of food kiosks (such as Hooters and a couple of hamburger places) and a Central Market.

One thing I love about Central Market is that they allow you to drink in the store. A couple of us just went right up to the beer aisle and cracked one open. Some of the employees were even passing out bottle openers for the customers who were buying bottled beer. After a quick purchase of random beers and a horrible sandwich, it was go time

The parade was in full force and everyone was enjoying themselves. We were meeting people and having a huge party. Jello shots were being shared, beer was being poured like water, and somehow an enormous amount of girl scout cookies appeared out of nowhere and they were delicious.

When the parade finally ended, which was around 12:30 or so, we decided to hit Lower Greenville and party out there for a while. Due to the fires that took out a block of bars that were famous in Dallas, there was an $8 cover charge this year. It wasn't that big of a deal and everyone seemed cool to pay it since the money was going toward the costs of rebuilding the entire block of bars. It was also cool just to hang out and drink in that neighborhood again.

The Lower Greenville Block Party closed at 6 p.m for only an hour so the cops and the Dallas City Workers could clean up the streets up a little bit before all hell breaks loose again. I thought that was stupid because for that one hour, no one could sell, buy, or consume beer at all. If the cops saw you with a beer within the hour window of prohibition, you either had to pour the booze out or go to jail. I was actually very surprised to see how many people chose to go through the retard route and pass go without collecting $200 and go directly to jail.

The group decided that this would be the perfect time to go and get some food outside of the block party so we could drink as well. The only choice was obviously Mexican food. There is no better way to celebrate St. Paddy's Day than to drink heavily for an extended amount of time and in the sun and then get some greasy Mexican food followed with margaritas.

2 hours later and about a half a dozen margaritas, we decided to go to one of our friend's apartment in order to finish the night properly. And by "finish the night properly", I mean get to a place where we can safely pass out and just enjoy the rest of the night without any fear of repercussions for activities from earlier in the day.

The next morning I felt great with the exception of a slight sunburn and a bit mark that came from a girl that night, but that story is for a later time. All I had to do is to get pumped for the actual St. Paddy's Day Party.

Buddy: The Best Dog Of All Time

Usually this posts are nothing more than somewhat interesting stories that have occurred that I want to write down so I wont forget all of the things that I have done in different stages of my life. Nothing too serious and the writing is never going to be very professional or extremely thought provoking. But this post may be the closest that I have get to that type of writing.

On Thursday March 11, 2010, my beloved dog passed away. Buddy was a great dog and a part of the family.

We got Buddy as a puppy in the fall of 2001.Instead of studying for exams, I would play with him and watch him try to climb out stairs without any success at all.

At first, he was a handful. He would mark his territory all over the place (which also included peeing on friends when they came over to visit), chew up some of my DVDs, and he was notorious for digging through any trash can that he could.

I do believe that Buddy had a great life with us. He would play all of the time, get Christmas gifts, and howl at the top of his lungs when Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" started to play. He would also bark if growl if he saw another dog on TV, for some reason he hated to see dogs on TV.

At the end of his life, Buddy developed several tumors on his hind legs and was not able to walk as well as he could. He lost a lot of weight very quickly and had to have assistance eating and going to the bathroom.

I am very sad that he is no longer with us, but I know that he is not living in so much pain that I knew he was in. All I really know is that he truly was the greatest dog that anyone could ever have.

27 Years of Craziness

I recently hit the 27 year milestone of my life and thought that the proper way to celebrate this occasion was to have a numerous amount of drinks with some friends.

I decided to have a group of friends go to a place called Chimy's in Downtown Fort Worth. Obviously by the name, it is a 5 star Greek restaurant. Not really, but if you believed that then you should be punched square in the jaw. It is actually a nice Mexican restaurant/bar. One reason that I like it is because you have to drive down a creepy alley to get there but it is well worth it.

The group was originally going to meet at Chimy's at 8, but Boj, Katie, and Paul called and wanted to know if I wanted to pre-game it a bit at Ye Olde Bull and Bush Pub, which was not too far away from the party at all.

Bull and Bush is a nice small bar that cant fit more than 30 people at a time if that at all. After a couple of drinks there, it was time for the main attraction, which I was late for.

After being only 10 minutes late to my own party, we quickly grabbed some tables and started to drink and have a good time. I knew people would be coming at all sorts of times but I did have a good turnout for the event. At the end of the night, 25 of my friends came and hung out and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Since Chimy's closes at midnight, half of the group decided to check out The Ginger Man Beer Bar and spend the rest of our time there. The other half went home or went and got some much needed food to soak up the alcohol from their system.

Overall it was a great time and nobody got sloppy drunk which is always a good thing since the majority of us had at least a 20 minute drive to get back home. Check out the pics from this once in a lifetime event here.

Pumping Iron: The Kevin Way

I guess hell froze over today because I joined a gym about a month ago and I have actually been going on a regular basis.

I joined the gym, the place I joined rhymes with LA Mitness, with a couple of friends and even developed a 5-day a week workout plan. Four days a week, I workout a specific area of my body and on the 5th day, it is a full body workout baby.

After every workout session, the group of us will play a couple of games of racquetball. I have becoming pretty decent at the game in two ways. I am learning how to play the game by the proper rules and how to think quickly about where the ball may go next.

The other way I am becoming ok at the game is constantly getting hit by the damn ball. So far I have been hit in the head, back, face, Achilles tendon, and stomach. If I received bonus points for the official blue racquetball hitting me, I am more than confident that I would be the World Champion of getting hit by that damn devil ball.

Since I joined the gym, one benefit I was entitled to was have 1 free sessions with a personal trainer. Big f'ing mistake.

I went to high school with the personal trainer named Jimmy and he seemed liked a douchbag. And guess what, I was right. Total douchbag. He told me that he played professional football for the Seattle Seahawkes and I found all of his stats here. Hope you didn't check out that link because there is nothing on it. Nothing at all.

Anyway, I ended up working out like crazy under his "supervision". I was completely drained the 3/4ths of the way through and barely finished

. At the end of the workout, he tried to sell my some more personal trainer sessions at an outrageous price. Once I said no, he did something that cracked me up. He started to talk to me like the two of us were on an undercover Mission in Guam and the only way to get out alive is the purchase of more sessions at an extremely low price. So low even that he would have to play dumb to his boss about how low the price was.

I ultimately said no but thanked him for his time. About a week later, a friend of mine had a sessions with him and pulled the exact same "Mission in Guam" speech to her as Jimmy did with me. This made me laugh a little more.

Anyway, I have been doing pretty good at this "working out" stuff and have even lost some weight and gained some muscles. For some reason, my friends think I have "retard strength" since I have been impressing everyone with my ability to lift a bar of weights over my and repeat that motion 10 times in a row.

I will give an update of my progress in a couple of weeks to let everyone know how awesome I am doing.