A mucho happy Cinco de Mayo

Cinco De Mayo
Originally uploaded by Southernpixel.

The fact that L&D have moved in around the corner from me is great news for a whole stack of reasons, not the least of which that they helped me celebrate Cinco de Mayo 2007 in spectacular fashion.

I originally thought that Cinco de Mayo (literally 5th of May) celebrated Mexican Independence Day but that's not in fact true. Cinco de Mayo actually commemorates a Mexican battle victory from 1862. Given that ANZAC Day was not so long ago, I was in full swing to commemorate battles so I thought, "bring it on".

L&D joined me at Las Mananitas in Boystown to enjoy two glorious pitchers of margaritas and some food besides. The restaurant was packed, and D ended up walking out with some dude's sombrero, which was pretty good.

It proved to be the hat that kept on giving, the very spirit of Cinco de Mayo in our neighbourhood. I donned the sombrero for the walk to the Brown Elephant, and L and me decided that reclining on the secondhand sofas was a pretty good idea while D shopped around and haggled with the salespeople.

Then we went to Walgreens and I was bailed up by a lady and her boyfriend, the lady having taken quite a shine to my headwear. What followed was some hefty discussion about the origins of our hat, and when I confessed that we basically pinched it from some guy in a restaurant, I started to wonder how tightly I could claim ownership of "my" headgear.

And so, like the proverbial Olympic torch, and with D's blessing, we released the sombrero to its new owner, who happily shoved it on her head and shimmied out of Walgreens into the night.

Clearly not having had enough tequila, we continued the celebrations at my place, with home made margaritas and a hookah pipe (ahh how the memories of Turkey came flooding back). And at 2am, I kicked the boys out and finally crashed.

I had a very happy Cinco de Mayo this year and can fully appreciate the newspaper article I read on Friday just gone why people in Chicago call it "Drunko de Mayo" because that, my friends, is exactly what happens when you literally try and get into the "spirits" of the occasion....tequila is the very devil, but what a way to go, eh?!