A night of great craic

Craic [kræk] noun:

• enjoyable time spent with other people, especially when the conversation is entertaining and funny
• Irish word for fun/enjoyment, usually when mixed with alcohol and/or music
• fun, especially through enjoyable company, a pleasant conversation

Last Thursday evening was a night of good craic. Adi and I started out the evening with softball club practice. I managed to have some decent hits while at bat and even scored a run. This of course was balanced out by my sincerely horrible fielding as third base, with almost every one of my throws to first base being completely off-target.

For dinner, we hung out in the dorm dinning room with Colleen and a bunch of other students. Colleen, Adi and I had originally planned on just going to the local pub Conway's for a couple drinks. However, we soon changed our minds when we learned what the rest of the students were doing for the night: going to karaoke at The Wicked Wolf.

So off to The Wicked Wolf we went. Upon arrival we were greeted by several singers in a row taking on a various Michael Buble songs. Yeah, not quite what we had pictured as the Irish karaoke scene, but I guess he's pretty popular here. Still having a grand time and making light of the situation, I decided to lip sync to some guy's version of "I Wanna Go Home." Adi took video of this - but let me say, it will never be made available for viewing.

After a little while Holly and the rest of the Blackrock Residence crew showed up, which resulted in us all basically taking over the bar and karaoke scene. Adi kicked it off with "Sunshine of Your Love" and got the crowd going. Unfortunately, Holly, Colleen, and I soon followed that up with Bonnie Raitt's "Something to Talk About," which apparently none of the other students knew. Either she's not popular over here or we're really just that old...probably the latter. Regardless, there are videos of these two performances that will also not be shared ha.

From there on out, the major karaoke staples came up one after another -Mama Mia, YMCA, etc. For YMCA Adi and I did our best at crowd participation. This photo would have worked if we'd just switched spots and Holly and Colleen had properly participated. Alas, we just looked like fools. But fools that were having a grand time.

Since the karaoke was ending and the bars would soon be closing, the four of us decided to head across to the street to Flannigan's (**The name of the pub has been changed so they can't get in any trouble for what happened that evening**). Upon arrival, the bartender/owner gave us some grief for not having been at his pub all night. We profusely apologized and convinced him to serve us all a drink, even though it was past last call. That was when Holly made a new friend - no idea what his name is, but apparently he was Nelson Mandela's cook. Yeah, isn't that a great pickup line?

As we sat around chatting and meeting some of the others in the pub, we didn't seem to notice the majority of the staff leave. Suddenly, the lone bartender was asking us to move into the back bar area and it became official: we were experiencing our first "lock-in." That's when the bar has to legally close, but doesn't actually kick everyone out. Instead, they have everyone go to the back area, "close" the front of the bar in case any Gardia (police) go by, lock all the doors, and continue to serve the customers. Some lock-ins have been known to go all the way until dawn the next morning. After realizing what was happening, we decided it was probably a good time to go home. And so ended a great evening.