st. patty's day. by 2 pm, drunk, green-shirted people ("RUB FOR GOOD LUCK") were already staggering around UC, and lines were forming outside the blarney stone and smokey joe's. i got into a rather brief and pointless discussion with a colleague about what st. patrick actually did to be canonized, pointless because neither of us knew anything beyond the fact that he's either the patron saint of ireland, or beer, or both (wiki tells me that he may have driven the snakes out of ireland and resurrected some dead people).

we declined the mid-afternoon drinking and went to eat at the newly-reopened samosa on 13th and walnut. the service was terrible -- one gay waiter who wrote our orders down, repeated them (2 mistakes), disappeared into the kitchen, reappeared 5 minutes later to repeat the order again (2 more mistakes), and then proceeded to bring out the wrong appetizers. fortunately, this meant they were free, and also very good. the vadai was unusually crunchy, although i will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the novelty was intentional. the pakoras won points for not tasting like they had been fried in three-day old oil. coconut chutney and thin but flavorful vegetable curry came on the side. the indian/sri lankan people, ewa and stephen had dosa with various permutations of fillings, i got the bangan bhurta with naan, and alyson to my disappointment ordered a lasagna (but i am good at swallowing my tongue nowadays, and proceeded to do so with great enthusiasm). i snitched bits of dosa while waiting for my food to appear (it took ages), and regretted not ordering it -- i think it's their specialty, and only $4.95. my naan turned out to be hot and fresh and light, but the curry was very non-descript and completely uniform in texture. oh well. i do want to go back to try the prata at some point.

it was still early, and people had not decided if they wanted to brave the pubs, so we adjourned to naked chocolate for sweets and making stephen suffer because he had given them up for lent. they had new cupcakes, and a four-foot chocolate bunny. now that i've been there a bunch of times, i think i'm ready to say that i don't like naked as much as bakerzin (sic) or even (glug) TCC, notwithstanding the 1.5 million schoolkids who seem to pack the latter places 24/7. and, since it's going to be spring (4 inches of snow on thursday!), i'm officially ready to move on to capogiro as being my dessert place of choice.

we eventually decided that we should just go back to the hangout house and play poker, so that we did. as it usually happens, the one person who had never touched a deck of cards in her life (who will remain unnamed) cleaned almost everyone else out, leaving stephen and myself to slug it out for second (drowned by the river twice, don't ask. does anyone know where the terms flop, turn and river came from? i'm sure von knows the answer.) a lot of white russians floated in from the kitchen, which led to a few eastern european jokes and someone confessing that they were almost named "nadine". i'm glad that the mother and the father decided on good, sensible names for all of us; i don't think i would ever have recovered from romulus, or henry.