Jason attended Brainshare last week. For some of you, the word “Brainshare” may conjure up images of something resembling the Borg collective. But no, Brainshare is Novell’s geek-a-thon convention held every year at the Salt Palace. Although the arrival of Brainshare means Jason will have to work long hours and will be sharing very little of his brain with me, there is one good thing about it-the Brainshare concert.

As part of their geek celebration each year Novell has a concert at the Energy Solutions Arena just for Brainshare attendees and Novell employees. Jas and I quite enjoy these concerts; they actually bring in some quality talent for this event. The concerts typically consist of a comedian as an opening act and then some form of musical entertainment. Bands that have been part of the show in the past include Goo Goo Dolls, Counting Crows, and Train.

The comedian this year was Frank Caliendo. I had never heard of him before but he was hilarious. His impersonations were impressive and quite entertaining.

The band performing this year was Collective Soul. I am a fan of Collective Soul and have been to their show once before. They didn’t disappoint.

Based off the quantity of geeks at this event, and the anti-social nature of the typical geek, one would expect the audience to be rather blasé, but they were not. This may have been due to the amount of alcohol most of them had consumed rather than any inherent social skills. Either way, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one enjoying myself.

Jason was able to procure enough tickets to the concert for us to invite Jim and Cindy Brown, and Tom and Aimee Brown (yes, they are brothers) to join us. My sister Kristen and her boyfriend Johnny were also able to attend, so we had our own little concert posse to chill with. It rocked!

St Patrick’s Day: the day we celebrate gold-hoarding miniature men and mutant clover plants. St Patty’s day is celebrated here in American by those of Irish and not-so-Irish descent, a great tribute to the melting pot that is our culture. Why all the bother when we aren’t living in Ireland and most of us aren’t even Irish? Who knows? But hey, it’s an excuse to turn things unnaturally green and annoy everyone by pinching them incessantly, so why not?

Jason decided that although he isn’t a tad bit Irish, and I am most likely not either, that we needed to do a little St Patrick’s Day celebrating. So he bought me various food items that had absolutely nothing Irish about them, but were in green packaging, which, as far as he was concerned, counted. One of these items was a six-pack of non-alcoholic malted beverage, or O’Doul’s. Yummy! Not only were the bottles green, there’s that “O” in the name, so he considered them doubly Irish. He also bought me Irish Springs soap…maybe I stink. The crowning achievement of his St. Patty’s day cleverness was buying me a Green Day CD. He still laughs periodically and tells me, “Green Day…get it?” to remind me of just how enormously funny he is.

So there you have it, you don’t have to be Irish to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day, but apparently having a silly husband helps.

Most of you ladies are part of it, and most of you men wonder why- I am speaking of the bunko phenomenon. We women get together once a month to roll dice for a couple hours and you men just can’t fathom how this would be entertaining.

Well, since I too belong to a bunko group let me enlighten you and invite you into the secret world of women-and bunko.

First of all, we don’t talk about you much; you’re really not that interesting. Secondly, bunko doesn’t turn into an episode of Dr. Phill or a Girls Gone Wild video. Sorry boys, I know I just ruined most of your bunko fantasies.

So what DOES go on at bunko? Well, you already know that the game itself is simply rolling dice and trying to get certain numbers on certain rounds. This may seem uninteresting, but the truth is that the game is secondary to what else we are doing while we are playing it. And no, what else we are doing does not involve making a voodoo doll of your mom. What are we doing? We are trash talking each other and joking around about things that have nothing to do with anything important at all. You see boys, we use bunko as a way of letting the things that we worry about constantly (and as women I can assure you there are things we worry about constantly) out of our minds for a couple hours. We forget that we have a big deadline coming up at work or that we need to take our kids to ballet and soccer practice tomorrow. Whatever it is that overloads us is temporary forgotten and we are just a bunch of friends giving each other a hard time and laughing at the sometimes absurd things we do.

The great thing about bunko is that after every round you switch partners (I mean this in a strictly non Girls Gone Wild way). This gives you a chance to catch up with all your old friends and get to know soon-to-be friends as you are sitting across the table from each other.

So there you have it boys, the uninteresting truth. We girls get silly, bash each other, say things verging on ridiculous, catch up on each other’s lives, and laugh a lot at bunko. Now you know the secrets of bunko, of course the secrets of women are a whole other matter…and I guarantee you will never figure those out.