I was surprised to wake up and discover that today is Ash Wednesday. Some latent Welsh-ophilic area of my brain was insisting that March 1st is meant to be St. David’s Day, and I was too pre-occupied wondering where the hell I was going to get a leek at 8am to realize that a mere patron saint is gonna get his big feast bumped a day when Lent rolls around.

Next thing I know, the wife’s trying to pin me down on some form of penance while I’m still humming Men of Harlech with a nationalistic zeal usually reserved for Dylan Thomas readings or T-Mobile commercials. I tried to weasel my way out of the obligation by promising to give up “the politics of failure” or “my pre-9/11 mentality,” but the woman is tenacious in the extreme and wouldn’t settle until I finally agreed to sacrifice chocolate for the next 40 days.

With my wife suitably assuaged and my penitent soul now cocoa-free, I’m re-assessing my St. David’s Day options. There don’t seem to be any Welsh celebrations happening in Austin, but March 2nd does offer Austinites another party of great social and political import. Texas’ own patron saint of prose, Kinky Friedman, is holding a Texas Independence Celebration tomorrow night at Mother Egan’s pub between 5-7pm. Let’s hope most of you Kinky supporters knew better than to give up beer for Lent.

This get-together is geared for fun, but Kinky’s got some serious work to do next week once the primaries have passed. More on that will certainly be posted at Metblogs as the time approaches.