I showed the statuesque Mrs. RNE pictures from the NYC 'Do and she said "We HAVE to go to the next one!" (Can you tell she doesn't get out much?) We are available mid-March. Nothing like St. Patrick's Day in an "Irish" town like Houston!
Just so I understand, when you say the 16th (Friday), do you mean late night? 'Cause the missus and I work*; we'd have to fly down Friday after work.
*That's what happens for 40 years after your graduate from college, J.Edward.
As we have not yet set a definite date or time, I would imagine we could be flexible with timing at this point. The way these things usually go, the early-birds end up at the Flying Saucer around 5:30pm or so (some of us work downtown), and a crowd slowly trickles in. We generally remain as long as we feel like it, or until we've become inebriated to the point of near-paralysis.
If it looks like this will be a fairly sizeable gathering (i.e. 10+) I'll look into reserving the upstairs portion of the bar for our event. If that's the case, a more formal meeting/ending time may be in order. I'm there just about every night, so I'll ask about how they handle such reservations.
At the moment, it would appear most votes lean towards the 16th (with the exception of Jeffie). However, no need to set this in stone quite yet.
EDIT - Just noted that the 16th would be the day before St. Patty's day. Though H-Town may not be the best place in the world to celebrate...The Flying Saucer is definitely the best place in the whole city for such celebrations. It may not be an Irish Pub, but they have more types of beer available than any other bar I have ever been to. If I recall correctly from last year, they usually have special events around St. Patty's day, such as brewery nights with several micro-brewers (both foreign and domestic) touting their brews, live music, pub trivia, etc...