St. Patrick's Day Part 1

I'm not Irish. I don't think it's anywhere in my heritage. I love Irish beer, though. That means I love Ireland, their people and traditions like St. Patrick's Day. I was able to leave work around 7:30 and headed straight to Connolly's for pints a plenty. Travers, Campbell, Tim Baier and others were already there and had been for quite some time which made me feel I was way behind and needed to drink quickly. More on that later. Connolly's was pretty crowded, but not as crowded as I thought it would be St. Patrick's Day. Tim Baier was whipping the dance floor's ass. This attractive young lady was digging his moves so much she was embarrassed and didn't want her face shown on the interweb. Either that or she had a boyfriend in another town and was out pickup up dudes in this town. Either way, Baier owned the dance floor.
Clint Bowyer was walking around Connolly's for several hours waiting for someone to recognize him. I felt bad for him. Your average NASCAR fan wouldn't recognize Bowyer without a Jack Daniel's hat on. Despite Charlotte being the home of 75 percent of NASCAR, uptown isn't exactly a place where being a race fan is cool. Thus it would take someone like Weaver or several television news professionals like us to realize, "Hey, it's the #07!" He took time out from chatting up a young lady for Tim Baier to snap this picture. I tried to act like I couldn't believe it was really him. I figured it'd help him with the young lady. I'll assume it didn't. Bowyer was cool, but he's no Mr. Excitement. Your Friendly neighborhood police officer Tim took a few minutes off from text messaging to make an appearance. Tim recently led the CMPD hockey team to a 4-3 victory over the CFD squad a couple of weeks ago in front of several thousand fans at the Bobcat's arena. Tim scored a goal and fought the fire department's best player in the third period. It was a good, old fashioned hockey brawl that lasted almost a minute. It was an even fight that Tim actually won since he was on top when it was finally over. It didn't suck.
At one point in the evening, I went inside to get a pint and ran into Caputo as he was coming out. As we met, we both noticed this guy in a Portland TrailBlazer's jersey. Caputo was hoping for a Drexler, I was hoping for a Duckworth. When we asked the guy who Matt Hill was he informed us it was a good friend of his who died. A good ten to fifteen seconds of awkwardness ensued.