The Greening of Ghent

Tonight is the Greening of Ghent neighborhood block party, which is held annually sometime around St. Patrick's Day. Over the last few years it's become quite popular and draws crowds from all over Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and the other neighboring localities. It's quite the affair with all types of Irish beer, live bands, and throngs of people. The city even closes the main street to vehicular traffic (which I suppose is done to prevent drunkards staggering around in the street from getting run down by a bus).

As I tend to avoid such public displays of foolishness, I kept with my tradition of not going. Hearing the bands and boisterous crowd from the comfort of my apartment two blocks away is quite enough for me. Besides, it's cold and misting rain. Some of my friends were talking earlier about going and I suppose it was a few of them knocking on my door earlier this evening. As I was otherwise occupied, I didn't even bother answering the door.

So instead of taking part in rain-drenched bouts of alcohol consumption, I kept busy with paying a few bills, reading, and preparing dinner. The latter task was somewhat daunting in that I'm practially out of groceries. Obviously this poses a problem to culinary efforts, but it also presents a creative challenge: making good use of whatever you have on hand. I managed to scrounge up enough basic ingredients to make baked spinach stuffed pasta with zesty tomato sauce, which turned out exceptionally well. I may have to serve it sometime at one of my dinner gatherings so I might want to jot down the "recipe."

Ahhh...the music down the street has finally stopped. Time to think about heading off to bed.