"More Guiness, Please!" or "How does one say 'Killarney'?"

Last Saturday, we were all at a local Burbank fundraiser; one in the audience (that's me), 2 in the sound booth (my honey-man and the angel boy-O), plus 2 performing on stage (Wendy and her dear beau) to the benefit of all those in attendance that night... And it was a fully packed house!

APPLY IRISH ACCENT TO THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH: There was gut wrenchin' poetry to be heard n' felt, rousin' live music, absolutely gargeous voices; basically, a lot o' song n' dance, loads of emotion, and a lot o' clapping n' foot stomping. And of course, loads of beers and wine, soda breads, cheeses, fruit and oatmeal cookies galores, plus a lovely beer wench n' dirty limricks - oh my! - It was a wonderful, wonderful evening of splendid talents, heartfelt sharing and Irish honors. I loved it!

And beyond the admission price to garner additional funds for the fundraising effort, there was a raffle which offered a broad range of unique and novel prizes to be won. What? - "unique and novel" sounds kinda redundant to you? Well, how else does one describe such prizes as these, ranging from 4 1-hr workout training sessions with a personal trainer, to an hour of live harp at the event/location of one's choice? huh? Anyhow, lots of cool prizes were available for the winning and many raffle tickets were sold. I had planned to buy 2 raffle tickets - that'd be enough you'd think. Instead, I decided to buy five.

The grand prize was called as last of the raffle items - - the ticket number pulled just before the final call for the 2nd to last prize had accidentally been returned to the ticket 'pitcher', pulled for a 2nd time... WHOOPS! A bit anti-climatic, but so, a 2nd ticket had to be drawn for the final grand prize winner...

So yeah, I'd bought 5 tickets, right? Numbers 695049 thru 695053 - - (you should so know where this is going by now)...

"... number 52..."

And in my head, a split-second thought process: "Number 52? Wait, Number 52?!? NUMBER FIFTY-TWO!!!" - followed by very loud screaming... I'm tellin' ya, I screamed like an absolute ninny - and screamed some more.

After the performance portion of the event was over, the rest of the evening, people I didn't know would offer hearty words of congratulations, and to also often approach me saying something along the lines of "Oh, you're the one who won...you're the screamer." [SEMI-RELATED TANGENT: In my winning/screaming moment, I actually had someone turn around in their seat to tell me in this loud and annoying, most goofball condescending tone -to be sure I knew, which I already did- that my grand prize didn't include airfare - ?!? - So what the hell is your point, you rain-on-my-parade total goomba!?! It's still a prize worth $1,600 that I wouldn't have otherwise, and certainly, we can manage the airfare to get us there. END OF TANGENT]

So yeah, what did I win? Ohh, well, just two "Taste of Ireland" tour tickets for a 6-day paid trip in Ireland? Yeah, that's all... Can you yell, "Whoa Maggie Maloy"?

We didn't get home from the fundraiser until after midnight, but we still managed to investigate Dublin airfares online before hitting the sack - - hee hee. Since that winning moment, in the sound booth, in the car, in the kitchen, about to go to sleep, waking up, standing over the bathroom sink, sitting on the couch, unlocking the front door; at any moment, either my honey-man or I will turn to the other and say with a spur-of-the-moment questioning voice, "Hey, you want to go to Ireland?"