Past the Ides and straight on through to St. Pat's

Another birthday come and gone....this year's was pretty nice.

I decided to take a couple of days off and after the stress at work and not feeling well I am glad to have done so.

Erin wanted to do something for my birthday - I wanted to get away for a while so he surprised me by taking me down to Amish Country in Berlin, Ohio (and surrounding areas).



After having a pleasant dinner at the restaurant where we had our first 'dinner' together, we drove down to Berlin, OH. I had no idea where we were going. The drive down was nice - I read to him and we talked. It is amazing how beautiful the sky is at night with no light pollution. So even though it was Friday the 13th - a good time was had by all.

Erin took me to a little B&B run by a nice older couple. We had a comfortable bedroom although it was a little weird hearing the clip-clop of horse and buggy (at 11PM at night - is there some Amish bar I am unaware of???)....

Got up the next morning, had a nice breakfast and went on a tour of Amish country ,proper. I was, I guess, expecting a more rustic, simple life-style and when you looked out over the farms and the horse-drawn plows cutting through the big fields the sight was indeed pastoral - however, seeing the Amish using cell phones and running businesses and being rather shrewd about it was a bit off-putting (to me) - but then upon further reflection, the only people to blame are us tourists. We go down to places like this and turn them into a shopping meccas. Shame on us...in other words you can't blame the natives for exposing them to our disease process, thus in effect killing them....although some part of me wants the people to resist, resist, resist...perhaps on some level they do, perhaps they play the game better than we do ourselves, perhaps that is (as my old Yoga teacher used to say), the cosmic 'joke'.

We had a nice day and then met some friends of Erin's (his buddy from HS and his wife) for dinner at a great Amish restaurant. We then retired for the evening (after having switched to a larger room with a jacuzzi tub. Lovely night.

The next day being the 'Ides' we arose again to a home-cooked breakfast, nice conversation with our host and the added bonus of getting to pet the family Maine Coon/Tortie-mix cat.

We managed to get home without too much murder or mayhem...



(The Ides of March has always fascinated me as I have always felt it was only due to the retelling of the assassination of Julius Caesar via Shakespeare that we even pay attention to March 15th.)

Again, Erin and I are blessed with the 'gift of gab' and had interesting and philosophical discussions. We stopped to shop a bit, grabbed lunch at Menches' Brothers restaurant - which is supposedly the home of the invention of the hamburger.

We drove home and I read from David Sedaris' book of essays: 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' - absolutely hysterical just read the book dambit...perhaps then you too will want to donate your lung, your eyes and lop of your breasts and use them to feed abandoned puppies. (LOL).

My birthday was wonderful - not because I receive nice gifts (I did), or because I treated myself to some shopping and a massage (I did), but because people reached out to me to send me their love....THAT was the best part of the day for me. Thank you all very, very much.

Today being that day when that guy chased those reptiles from that really green Isle - I plan on meeting my sister-in-law for the parade in honour of him, having some lunch and then getting together with some friends tonight for boiled meat and potatoes (oh and some beer too).

I hope you all have a wonderful St. Patrick's Day - may your troubles be few and your joys be abundant. Remember kids, if you start seeing snakes, you've probably drunk too much....



Blessings upon you and yours.