Nicole, are you still here?

How can you say "I have the basic celtic hornpipe rhythm down" when there are two different hornpipe rhythms in circulation? One is 2/4 and one (older) is 3/2.

If you have been working on a tune in 3/2, perhaps the quarter notes that are bothering you occur at the end of a measure and should be treated like pickup notes to the phrase that follows. To test this, think of a phrase that fits the notes and give the pesky quarter note an unimportant word like "the" or "when" and see what happens.