Trying it once doesn't make you an expert...

[Not naming any names, but some important members of the All Of This Is Wrong Fan Club have given me quite a bit of grief over my failure to write any blog posts for a couple of weeks.  Maybe I just needed to hear them beg.  Is that so wrong?]

This has been a good week to be unemployed.  Tuesday and Wednesday I got to attend almost all 24 Hours of PASS, a series of free webinars for database geeks, while my friends tweeted about how they wanted to attend but were busy at "work," whatever that is.  Suckers.

But more importantly, today I got to go downtown Cleveland and hang out with my drunken buddies to celebrate St Patrick's Day.  I don't quite have the fortitude to start drinking at 8:30am, but I rode my bike downtown just after noon and met the gang at one of Cleveland's 785 Irish bars.

Much fun was had by all, but it was a momentous day for yours truly, because today, I had my very first EVER, of ALL TIME....

Corned beef sandwich!!!

This joins the short list of things-I've-tried-for-the-first-time-while-on-sabbatical-that-you'd-think-a-grown-man-would-have-done-long-before, like getting a library card and allowing a goat to use its nose to--- well, that's another story.

Anyway, it was damn tasty and I'm sure finding yet another meaty, fatty, salty indulgence will take a few more years off my life, but I'll try to limit my consumption to once a year, and I'll only eat them in places like the Rathskeller, which is its own kind of health risk.

While I was congratulating myself for trying something new, a guy came and sat at our table and appeared to be trying to panhandle without actually, say, asking for money.  We asked him if he'd tried the corned beef sandwich here, and he said-- and this is a direct quote:

"Naw, I ain't, but I'm hoping to get me a little corned beef action later on tonight around 10 o'clock, if you know what I mean."

I didn't, and I still don't.  There's so much I have left to learn about corned beef...