Every once in a great while, the complicated scheduling that makes up our lives just comes together perfectly...and who are we to not take advantage of the gift?
Trinity Hall is a terrific Irish pub in Dallas, down in Mockingbird Station hard by Southern Methodist University. Built by Irishman Marius Donnelly, he imported all kinds of hardware from there, so it does have the look and feel of a traditional place (and I've been fortunate enough to have sampled quite a number of them). The place plays a variety of live music, though its background sound system rock doesn't seem to match the atmosphere too much. And they do serve the Guinness at the right temperature!
On Sunday afternoons the place completes the transformation to a rural pub by playing traditional Irish folk music (aka "trad"). Unfortunately, up in Plano I can count on making it down to central Dallas on a Thursday night or Sunday afternoon maybe once a year. I don't know about you, but once in the throes of weekend projects it's a bit impractical for me to nip off to the pub a half-hour away on freeways for a quick pint. Not to mention the aforementioned projects mysteriously don't get done upon return, either.
Enter the GDYO, the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. My talented but unmotivated son was accepted to play with them, and so we must take him down to SMU on...every Sunday afternoon. Oh. Darn. As it happens, his rehearsal and the Trinity Hall session overlaps from 5 to 6 PM, so I can catch an hour's worth of playing. After that, the session's over and the Celtic Cinderella turns back into a piped-in pop-music pumpkin.
So, on Sunday afternoons it's off to the coal mines for me, abandoning whatever worthy project I'm working on at the time - thinning papers out of the filing cabinet, folding clothes, excavating a dead rat out of the insulation above the master bedroom closet - to take Connor off to SMU.
And if you should happen to find yourself at Trinity Hall between 5 and 6, the odds are good you'll find me somewhere near the band with a Guinness or Smithwicks and a plate of chicken curry, tapping my foot with the rest of the patrons as the session players turn out "The Hut On Staffen Island".
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