So Much Sunshine

So the sunshine is back, well into the early evening.

Finally….

Time to once again resume our late afternoon walks, well into the early fall.

It’s as if an entire missing part of the day has awakened and been found.

By the time we get to the end of the month the skies will be light until nearly 8 PM.

Creeping steadily into the night, all the way until late-June where it will peak and begin to recede, again, unnoticed…until we do, sometime around mid-August.

But until then…..

Of course all the early risers have to once again deal with the miserable morning gloaming; at least for a few more weeks.

Yeah…we’d just gotten used to bright sunny mornings, again.

And today…it was tough finding our pants.

But we did get to see the sunrise…and that’s always heartening.

Of course there’s always gonna be somebody who can find a reason to complain.

Even in March.

Yeah…I know.

Sorry about that.

Speaking of March…or more specifically, marching….

We went to one of the local St. Patrick’s Day parades on Saturday.

Bagpipers up the gazoo.

Not sue what that means…other than there were a lot of Bagpipers.

Which means there were a lot of bagpiping tunes.

Not that there are a lot of bagpiping tunes.

There’s pretty much just the one, which varies depending on how much wind the piper has in him, which he blows into a bag, and then up through a set of pipes…I think.

I’m not really sure exactly how they make that thing “sing”. 

I’m usually too busy wondering how I’d look in one of those kilts to notice much else.

And don’t get me wrong…I’m not making light of Bagpipers.

I even have a few family members who play, and they take it very seriously…at least when they’re allowed out of the basement.

You have to admire a person dedicated to his craft, no matter what it is, especially if he or she has the ability to silence hundreds of people just by walking into a room, even if it’s only because there’s no way to talk over one bagpipe, let alone a dozen.

You have to respect them…but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to make them laugh…which would be the undoing of any piper. 

But it’s not easy to make a piper laugh.

I’ve tried.

Or the Irish Dancers.

No laughing there either.

Not much of anything there other than a lot of leg swinging and kicking…and curls…lots and lots of pretty curls on a bunch of cute little girls who've apparently been afflicted with some sort of arm paralysis.

So how can you not enjoy that?

Of course, like all heritage parades, it’s all culture specific, so you have to be attuned to the significance of all the goings on, most of which has to do with potatoes, persecution and, of course, the British.

The British seem to have been involved on the wrong side of a lot of these things through the years…at least until the Fab Four came over in the mid-60s.

Unfortunately though, for the most part, a lot of folks aren’t really all that clued in, other than they think it’s a chance to watch a parade, drink green beer and gobble down as many corn beef sandwiches as possible in an afternoon.

But it’s also a nice sunny afternoon… a prelude to all the long sunny days to come.

So, yes…it was a great day for the Irish…and everyone else.

Just a rehearsal, really.

Because we get to do it all over again, next Sunday, for real.

Pipers aplenty…dancers a kicking and green beer a flowing.

And the Shriners  scooting around in all those cool little cars…which I think were used to help chase the snakes out of town.

The Sunshine is back!

Bring on the parades!

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