In a few short hours, my brother and I depart for Ireland to spend St. Patty's Day among the true Irish and also plan to watch my best friend get married at an ancient structure near Cork.
It should be a good trip with free-flowing Guinness and old friends and green fields and rain and pub crawls and train rides through the country and a wedding to serve as the catalyst for the whole experience.
We also plan to get some work done on our two comedy scripts because the deadline for the International Screenwriting Awards is fast approaching and we narrowly missed the semi-finals last year.
Two lousy points cost "Last Train to Amsterdam" a place among the internationally elite.
This year, however, we've revised the train and also have "Monkey Business" to enter in hopes of advancing far enough in the contest season to lure an agent to our work.
That's the plan for now, but we'll see how much work we can acomplish on our vacation.
To prepare for Ireland, we spent this past weekend stuffing ourselves full of Tex-Mex and barbecue at various joints around Austin, which as Dan Jenkins once noted could rival Geneva, Buenos Aires, and Paris as the best eating city in the world.
This was necessary because the Emerald Isle has a lot going for it, but food is not at the top of the list. 
On the other hand, the Irish regard Guinness as a food group unto itself and they make and pour it better than anyone. Doctors still prescribe it to cure certain ailments and with any luck at all it will help with writer's block and laziness.
Happy St. Patty's Day,
-BDS
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