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.

I have been a fan of the band Matchbox Twenty since the first time I heard Push on the radio a decade ago but I somehow have never got around to seeing them in concert until last night. They were performing at the E center with Alanis Morissette. I had a great time!

The concert was one of the longest I’ve ever attended. It started at 7:00 and went until after 11:00. But I have no complaints about the length, except that my legs went to sleep from sitting in a hard chair for too long.

Jason and I are an interesting couple when it comes to concerts. Jason is one of the most unenthusiastic concert goers I have ever encountered. He is very sweet and will humor me by attending any concert I want to, but he will remain rather placid through the whole event. This does seems slightly out of sorts with his usually charismatic, energetic, and outgoing character.

I, on the other hand, according to Jason, am a little crazy at concerts. I really like music, and if a band I enjoy is performing I like to show my enthusiasm. Apparently I clap thunderously at concerts. Jason says it sounds like I’m slapping my hands together as hard as possible and it makes his hands hurt just listening to me. I did come out of last night’s event with red irritated hands and a strained voice. So maybe he is correct.

In that line of thought I just have to say it really annoys me when people go to concerts and never get out of their seats and demand that everyone else around them remain seated to prevent view obstruction. It always makes me think, “What, are you like 50?” I never encountered the “seated concert goer” phenomenon until a few years ago. So either, Salt Lake City concert attendees have become much more apathetic in general or the concerts I have attended lately have appealed to a slothly crowd. Whichever is the case, would it hurt you people to stand up and enjoy yourselves? Heaven forbid you should burn a few calories and get something almost resembling exercise.

Jason and I are going to the Police concert in July. We got great seats despite Jason’s complaints about the price. I certainly hope the people attending that concert have enough nostalgia wash over them to reminisce about what it felt like to attend a concert as an uninhibited teenager and they will get a little crazy with me. I am definitely not going to sit that one out!