Tuesday Coffee Chat: Is It My Lucky Day Yet?

Rory Bore at Ink Interrupted hosts the Tuesday Coffee Chat, and this week she asks the question,   Where are your Lucky Charms?  It's St. Patricks Day this week, whether you are Irish or not, do you have any special totems or symbols of your culture?






Being that i'm more likely to pray for a blessing for you than to wish you good luck, i tend to agree with Obi-Wan, "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."

Then again, there's Cormac McCarthy's take on it, "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."

And there's always this:

That is one song i can relate to rather often.

If there is luck, it's scarce in these parts.  Humphrey the Honda is probably a total loss, Cicero suddenly needed repairs last week and Jalopy this week, we owe the tax man, we just found out yesterday that our escrow account with the mortgage company is short, and there are some outstanding bills that will come up soon.  It's one of those cases where i'm dancing as fast as i can, but the music is outpacing me.

Good things still happen, though, and i consider that i'm blessed beyond measure no matter what trials may come our way.

As for good luck charms, talismans, wearing your lucky shorts, doing the same ritual over and over, they've never seemed to work for me.  There's a poker chip in my wallet, but it is a reminder of a sermon once preached at a church i attended.  The theme of the sermon was about being "all in" for The Lord, and the poker chips were passed out to be a tangible something to hold on to when tempted to take short cuts in your spiritual life.

The only symbolic thing that might count in a discussion like this for me would be dimes.  Sometimes in the South a kiss is called a Yankee Dime, and once in a while Sweetie teases me and holds out a dime, asking for a kiss.  When i find a dime in a very unusual place, nowhere near any other change, i consider it a reminder from heaven that i'm not alone, and i do keep those.  They are all in a special box on my dresser.

In honor of St. Patrick and the Irish, one of my favorite Irish blessings:

Here's to your coffin!
May your coffin have six handles of finest silver!
May your coffin be carried by six fair young maids!
And may your coffin be make of finest wood
from a 100-year-old tree,
that I'll go plant tomorrow! 



Today is:

Cheltenham Hunt Festival -- Cheltenham Racecourse, Prestbury, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England (a four day Festival, with the big race on that final day)

Constitution Day -- Andorra

Dita e Veres -- Albania (Summer Day)

Festival of Veturius Mamurius -- Ancient Roman Calendar (festival of armor makers)

Genius Day -- for Einstein, of course

International Ask A Question Day -- because that's what geniuses do

Learn about Butterflies Day -- if you go looking for who started this holiday, you will find out lots about butterflies and nothing about him/her, which i guess makes it a success

Moth-er Day -- for all individuals and museums that have moth collections; some websites have this listed as the day before Mother's Day

Mother Tongue Day -- Estonia

National Heroes Day -- Saint Vincent and Grenadines

National Potato Chip Day

National Pi Day - Why today? Because today is 3.14, the value of Pi.

National Wildlife Week -- US (go learn how to safely observe wildlife this week; sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, this year sponsoring On The Road to the Final Fur, a fun game patterned after March Madness) 

Organize Your Home Office Day -- Lisa Kanarek wants everyone to organize their home office on the second Tuesday in March; my response is:  in one day!  is she out of her mind!

Runic Half Month Beorc (Birch) begins

Shopping Cart Day -- patent filed today in 1938 by Sylvan Goldman

St. Matilda, Queen of Germany's Day (Patron of dying children, disappointing children, falsely accused people, large families, people ridiculed for their piety, queens, second marriages, widows)

Ten Most Wanted Day -- the FBI started its list this day in 1950

White Day -- China; Japan; South Korea; Taiwan (One month after Valentine's Day, which is the day women give gifts to men; today, the men return the favor.)


Birthdays Today:

Justin Bieber, 1994
Colby O'Donis, 1989
Taylor Hanson, 1983
Grace Park, 1974
Kirby Puckett, 1961
Tamara Tunie, 1959
Rick Dees, 1951
Pam Ayres, 1947
Billy Crystal, 1947
Rita Tushingham, 1942
Michael Caine, 1933
Quincy Jones, 1933
Frank Borman, 1928
S. Truet Cathy, 1921
Hank Ketcham, 1920
Horton Foote, 1916
Les Brown, 1912
Albert Einstein, 1879
Casey Jones, 1864
Lucy Hobbs Taylor, 1833
Johann Strauss, Sr., 1804


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"10 Most Wanted"(FBI list), 1950
"The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu"(Comic Opera), 1885
"MacBeth"(Opera), 1847


Today in History:

The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice, 1489
England grants a patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island), 1644
Scotland dismisses Willem III & Mary Stuart as king & queen, 1689
Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin, 1794
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded in New York, 1821
Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado premiers in London, 1885
During the Great Blizzard of 1888, New York receives its second largest snowfall on record, 21", 1888
The United States goes on the gold standard, 1900
Hugo de Vries rediscovers Mendel's laws of genetics, 1900
The first theater for rear movie projection is built, in NYC, 1931
A jury in Dallas, Texas, finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy, 1964
Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released, 1994
Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle, 1995
The Chinese city of Chongqing (formerly Chunking) is upgraded to a centrally administered municipality, 1997
Over a million Lebanese people take to the streets of Beirut to protest against Syrian military presence, in what comes to be called the Cedar Revolution, 2005
After measuring its spin and parity, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider announce they firmly believe the particle discovered in July 2012 is a Higgs boson, 2013