A Confession

I have a confession to make. It is in regards to the post My Irish Odyssey. I've had feedback from a few people already. One thought the article was great fun to read (they got the point), another wondered if I bought the girls breakfast, and the others thought it sounded like a great time. So here's the confession: the story is not true. I decided to try my hand at fiction (I think I did a modestly good job for a first timer). I'm sorry I misled you. In my defense, there are (at least) five hints, of varying obscurity and subtlety. If you don't believe me, here they are:

1. The title - I'm a really big nerd, so I like to do nerdy things like reference ancient Greek epic poems in my blog. If you're familiar with your ancient Greek epic poems, you know Homer's Odyssey is a mythical story - it is fictional, just like My Irish Odyssey.
2. The first pub we visit - One of my favourite TV shows is How I Met Your Mother. The characters in that show frequent a pub called McLaren's. Ergo, I picked that name for my pub. I referenced a second work of fiction. (If there is an Irish pub called McLaren's in downtown Chicago, that's a hell of a coincidence.)
3. The green man - Another of my favourite TV shows is According to Jim. In one St Patrick's Day episode, the title character, Jim, turns himself into the green man for the night. Also, the show is set in Chicago, just like my story. A third reference to a work of fiction.
4. The bold letters - Unfortunately, the bold letters didn't translate into my Facebook feed, so if you only read the story in its Facebook form, you can't have caught this clue. If you read it here (at Kerr's Comments), you can see the seven bold letters. Extract them from the story, and line them up next to each other (in the order they appear) and they read "fiction".
5. Me - If you know me, you know some of the specifics in the story are very uncharacteristic of me. More importantly, you know nothing in the world would make me miss a Habs-Leafs game.

Hey, I'll admit I'm no Dan Brown, but those were the clues I added to belie the appearance that this post was a narrative of actual events. If you noticed any of these clues, kudos. I didn't much expect many people would (except perhaps the bold letters, but I put them there, I knew they were there, and I still have problems finding them all). Sorry to mislead you.

The moral of the story: don't take anything I write at face value, and (more importantly) don't take anything I write seriously (except the last three congratulatory posts...and any future congratulatory posts). I give links to my sources so you can take those sources seriously. What I write is usually a joke - and a bad joke at that.

I hope you at least enjoyed my story. If you still don't believe me, you can ask my mom, with whom I spent St Paddy's Day watching hockey (Habs beat the Leafs! Oh yeah!).

Thanks.