just no time...

I don't know how all those other bloggers do it - post weekly, if not daily with something interesting. My life is just not that exciting, especially during the winter. I have to wait for something to happen before I go blogging about stuff. And I'd really like to feel creative when I am blogging, otherwise it just ends up sounding flat.

So, with that, I'm not really sure I'm feeling all that creative, but I think I'd like to finally post something about the 53rd Annual Corktown (Detroit) St. Patrick's Day Parade that our MINI club participated in this year.

We weren't a huge group, but we were still well received...for the most part. I mean, we did have some people yelling out that we shouldn't have a British car driving in an Irish parade. Someone should tell her we are no longer British; we're German...BMW. Yeah, that's right, I drive a Beemer :)

We also had the occasional "I only like American Cars" being yelled out - in which I gave my typical response "it's got a Chrysler engine!"...but at least no one threw eggs or anything and most people seemed to LOVE us, especially when we attempted the MINI Ballet. Well, it would have been more of a MINI Ballet if everyone had their walkie-talkies. Since not everyone had one in their car, they were relying on their vision to know when to start doing the cross-over and thus we ended up looking more like a MINI Weave. But it all turned out just fine.

Since we didn't have anyone that wanted to walk out in front of our group with our club banner, it was discussed on-line that someone should make a sign. Jerome jumped to the challenge and created two signs; one with an outline of Ireland in the back with a profile of a MINI in front. The other sign had our club logo in the middle of an Irish flag, just in case someone would be interested in looking us up.

The Friday before, Jerome sent me to some stores to find St. Patrick's day paraphernalia such as hats and maybe something like those round styrofoam balls (of course with something St. Patrick'sy on it) to put on our antennas. Since we thought about it so late, when I went to stores like Target and various Dollar stores, they really didn't have much to choose from. I found a couple of hats and some knee socks and some buttons. Couldn't find anything for the antenna and when I reported that to Jerome, he said we should just make something. He came up with making shamrocks for the antenna. I thought that was great and that we could use some stiff felt. And so we did. Went to JoAnn Fabrics, picked up some of their thickest, stiffest felt - which happened to have sparkles in the fabric too - bonus!  We used a template of a shamrock from the internet, I cut them all out, Jerome sewed them and stuffed them. But they were still a little floppy and wouldn't stand up on the antenna (most of us have "stubby" antennas). So, I thought we needed to have some kind of reinforcement such as a stick. We ended up using some wooden skewers from our kitchen drawer. It worked like a (lucky) charm :).

Sunday, the morning of the parade, we had a long wait from the time we all met at our "Division" until the parade began for us. We got to know the group that we were to follow. They were "The Wee Bit Tipsy Clan". Apparently they won last year. Their group has a float and then also some pom-pon girls whose pom-pons were made of empty Guinness cases. They danced to Pink's "Raise Your Glass". Fun. And from what they told us, someone in our group must have slept with someone in the Parade Committee because we were starting in the middle of the Parade when usually all newbies start at the end and work their way up. So, we're going to have to find out exactly what Chris did...or who he did (tee hee).

We really had a great time - the weather was Irish-like; cold, cloudy, some rain, some snow. But the inside of the car was warm...which was a good thing since Jerome decided that he wanted to show off his knee socks, so he wore shorts! Brrr.

He always goes all out!

We ended the day at Foran's Grand Trunk Irish Pub.  This was a place that I had just heard about as it was mentioned in this article (most underrated cities) and wanted to try.  I will have to give them another chance when it's not such a big day for them.  The service was friendly but extremely slow.  I think we were there for more than 2 hours.  Food was average.