NCAA 360. And Pie.
Local reader JT and I are a loosely-formed early release gang for NCAA.Yes, as Flight of the Conchords made clear just a few episodes ago, "two" is technically the smallest number that can comprise a gang.
Last year, we found the game at a Blockbuster in Pflugerville (incredibly, that's not misspelled) four days before the official release. This year, he'd been checking retail locations, while I focused on Blockbuster stores. We also both monitored the Operation Sports "hunting" thread closely.
By Saturday, I'd given up on getting the game early. Most of the stores that had widely broken street date last year (I'm talking about you, Target) seemed to have a much tighter handle on operations this year.
Saturday afternoon, though, after seeing a message on the OS boards that someone bought the game in San Antonio, JT sent me this:
I’m on my way. Will contact you if I get it via cell.
San Antonio, in case you're wondering, is 100+ miles from where JT lives. I'd thought about driving down there, but realized that the "auto screw you" function would kick in when I was at the register--the clerk would realize that they shouldn't be selling the game, he'd hand my money back, and my head would explode.
Almost two hours later, though, I got a phone call. JT had to endure two clerks arguing about selling the game while one of them was holding his cash, but he managed to get out of there with the game. He was sure that was the last copy they were selling.
When he got back into town, he met us at Z Tejas by the Arboretum, which is where we'd gone for dinner.
So I've met JT in-person twice in two years. In parking lots.
That's how I got the game on Saturday night.
On to part two, which is about pie.
We had a long and wide-ranging conversation Saturday night at dinner, but I forgot everything except what I said about Bill Clinton: "Bill Clinton's mistake, with men, was not just cheating on his wife. It was cheating on his wife with a fat chick wearing a beret."
Z Tejas has this dessert called "ancho chile pie," and it's basically chocolate pie with just a little bit of heat. It's wicked, wicked good, and we almost always order a piece to share.
We ordered the pie and I got up to go to the bathroom. When I come back, the pie was there, and it was already missing a huge chunk.
"Look at that pie!" I said. "It looks like it's been hit by a shark! Did he tear out a piece of the table, too?"
"Oh, stop it," she said. "It's just a little bite."
"Okay, let me explain something about the pie shape," I said. "A single 'slice' of the pie has a 'point,' not a two-inch wide gash. A little bite? This pie's been strip-mined."
"You are totally ridiculous," she said. "Here, I'll show you." She got two forks and started to angle them from the remaining pie into the missing space.
"There you go," I said, when the forks indicated a large chunk missing.
"Oh, that's wrong," she said, narrowing the gap.
"There's a reason that the people who cause traffic accidents don't reconstruct them," I said. "That's the job of the police. Seriously, based on how you've moved those forks around, if you ever ran over a pedestrian and they let you do the chalk outline, it would be the size of an elf."
On the way home, we went to a Randall's grocery store. There are two primary grocery franchises in Austin--Randall's and H.E.B.
I can't stand H.E.B. She can't stand Randall's.
I can't stand H.E.B. because they don't have my staples. They don't have Cinammon Roll Pop Tarts, and they're always out of Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt. The stores are always crowded and you're always waiting in line.
Gloria dislikes Randall's because it's superior in absolutely every way to H.E.B., and she can't stand to to be wrong.
So we picked up two boxes of my Pop Tarts, and as we headed down the salsa aisle (note to salsa manufactureres: if the product label on your jar says "Destiny brought these three ingredients together in a smoky rendezvous," I will not be buying your product. Your salsa wears a beret.), Gloria saw all these sauces and things she wanted to try.
"Load up," I said. "Welcome to the world of flavor."
"Stuff it," she said, grabbing a jar of honey and ginger chicken marinade. Ginger, by the way, does not wear a beret.
"It's just better here," I said, as we walked down the almost-empty area in front of the checkout stands. "Better selection, better cared for, better service"--we walked past a bread table--"better bread."
"The bread is not better," Gloria said.
"Clearly better!" I said. "Crusty, bursting with flavor. We're buying a loaf and you will EAT YOUR WORDS."
"Oh, shut up," she said.
"EATING!" I said.
"You idiot."
"YOUR WORDS!"
So a pretty typical Saturday night for us.
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