St. Patrick's week adventures, part 2

Today was overall slightly less adventurous, which probably stemmed from the lack of freely flowing alcohol. However, this did not dampen my excitement and general good spirits once I woke up and started moving. But before I get into my day, who's brilliant plan was it to have Shamrockfest the night before we lose an hour due to daylight savings? I needed more sleep last night than what I got...

After a hectic morning of waking up late (ahem)... I did end up making to the Metro at exactly the time I had planned, fully wigged and dance dress and other attire in tow. This is not the first time I have Metroed into DC looking like this. I'm not going to go so far to say it's a regular occurrence, but it certainly seems to be an annual one. One of the more exciting parts of my day happened to be the Metro ride this morning. Aside from the general odd looks, I had one group of guys "slyly" take a picture of me. I say slyly because I was on to their shenanigans, andcheesed it up. I also had a family of 16 from Hawaii end up talking to me and taking a group photo with me after we got off the Metro. I have apparently reached minor celebrity status.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent between decorating the car for the parade, freezing my butt off, and generally getting ready to be in the parade. Despite the cold and breezy morning, the weather warmed up nicely during our time in the parade. We got to see a great deal of it as they passed by our float on the way to the main parade route, which was nice. As for our time in the parade, it was essentially a free for all for us dancers on the float, just calling who was going to next and with whom. By far the most interesting part was performing for the grandstand on the float, which was bouncing up and down and generally unstable feeling.

We concluded the day with a little performance at Fados. Little here is not metaphorical. The pub was literally packed from a mixture of Caps fans who came after the game, and parade watchers who walked down afterwards. Needless to say, us 11 dancers didn't have much space, so I guess it's good to say we're Irish dancers and not doing crazy things with our arms.

One of the more brilliant things I did today was to bring my new jig shoes and wear them all day long, which means now they are almost broken in! The completely not brilliant part of today was my lack of sunscreen, and while my dress and tights covered most of my body, my face was exposed to the sun all morning and afternoon, which has left me with a sunburn of epic proportions. My face is still getting redder and redder as it all settles in...

And I'm going to conclude by including a nice little shout out here to the GMU basketball team, who will be playing the second round of the NCAA tournament on Friday against Villanova. Go Mason!

Goals: turnout, finish breaking in shoes

Days till worlds: 39