Sunday June 24th, 2007.
I woke up at 8:00 am. I rushed to meet Gisela at 8:10 to go to church at 9:00. I don’t remember if the alarm clock went on and I just turned it off, or if I didn’t even set it in the first place. I didn’t shower nor had breakfast. We took two busses to get to church; even though it would have been a 5 minute drive if we had a car. If only.
When we came back from church, (and after taking a shower and having breakfast) we decided that this time we were going to go to Galleria for real. So we took the number 4 bus again and waited for the 33. This time it actually showed up and in a moment or two (more like 40 minutes) we were in Galleria.
The mall was really nice. I bought I shirt and a little something at the Disney store for my 5 (almost 6) months-old nephew Eduardo (a.k.a. “Eddy”). Before we knew it, it was already past 2pm, and we rushed for a bar to watch the final of the soccer Gold Cup tournament: Mexico – USA. The bar was full of Mexicans watching the game, aside for a couple of gringos watching baseball on a different TV. Service was less than O.K. because no waiter would pay any attention to us. In a moment, one of the two bartenders turned the TV volume down to a point that we couldn’t hear the game! We were all pissed. He argued that “there were other customers that weren’t there to watch the soccer game”. What a moron. Seriously, we were easily 20 to 1 in ratio. Then the bartender broke some glasses like 3 times so that was funny. When we were ordering, he told us that the chicken quesadillas were more that enough for the three of us: “more than what you three could eat” in his own words. “Swear on it” I told him and he said “It’s a pretty big dish”. What a mistake. I mean they were good but nowhere near “more than what we could eat”. I had two beers and the girls both had lemonades. All this is important. Regarding the game, both teams played fairly good. Mexico’s goal was awesome, but the lame-ass referee from Guatemala gave away a penalty shot. Mexico lost 2 to 1. When the game was over, I asked for the bill but no waiter would pay any attention to us! At this time there weren’t that many people in the bar, probably 20 or 30. When the bill finally came we read it to find out that they had forgotten to bill the lemonades. I handed it over to the bar tender with a credit card in it. After a little while, I was still waiting for the bill to come back, so the bartender looked at me and said “What?” to which I replied “Well, I handed you my bill! There was a credit card inside!!” And after looking for it for a while, he finally found it. When he handed over the receipt to be signed he told me “Is the game already over? Huh, I didn’t even notice”. So I remember someone once told me in Colorado that for cases like this, if you want to tell your waiter he’s done a lousy job, you just have to leave a dollar and a penny. So that’s the amount we left for tip, and we left.
We waited for the number 49 bus that would take us back home but never came. While we were waiting, a skinny black guy wearing a long t-shirt (long, long t-shirt) came to us, asking for money. Even though it was true that in the beginning we didn’t understand a word he said, we were pretty damn sure he was asking for money. We pretended we didn’t know any English and after a while he left. “Un dinero” he kept on saying, “un dinero”.
We kinda got lost for a while, there on our way back. Since we didn’t get on the bus we were supposed to (because of the lame bus schedules that end at 6 or earlier), we weren’t exactly sure when to get off the bus we were on. When we saw that the bus was taking a turn in the opposite direction, we did. We then guessed where we were based on our knowledge and orientation in Houston. That, until we saw “You are now reaching Houston city limits”. Where the hell where we?! After walking for about 5 blocks we discovered we weren’t actually far from a known place. We ended up finding Beechnut street and a bus stop that would take us home.
At night I did laundry. There was a huge storm going on; the kind of storm you don’t even dare to cross the street. Lightning was striking really near every second or so. After that I played some good ol’ Texas Hold’em with Carlos and JC. JC won but I was so close; I had more than twice the chips any one else had for almost all night. We’ll play again on Wednesday.
Another day over. Seems to me that these past few weeks have been going away faster that usual. In no-time I’ll be back in Monterrey. What’ll happen with my plans to go to Colorado?
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