WOW! Three In a Row!

Claire is pretty much crawling -- she especially loves (and will do anything to get to) the baby rattle app I downloaded just for her on my iPhone! Claire also started saying DaDa today! Every time she says it I come bouncing into the room. I'm so glad I was here for this! She is growing up so fast!

Now about Los Cucos!

Just in front of the Wal-Mart near the airport is a little Mexican establishment. Amy and I love Mexican food! (Funny story -- I HATED it until I met Amy. Turns out I was just always ordering the wrong things.) So one day when I was on a layover Amy picked me up for dinner, and we decided to give this little joint a whirl.

No doubt due to the royal aura that we emit, we were seated just immediately outside the kitchen. This was, of course, to ensure we received our food at its absolute freshest - that is -- food that hasn't been paraded around Lord knows who on its way to our table. So far, so good!

Amy orders cheese enchiladas, and I order some other crazy dish that did not contain cheese. Shortly after we place our orders we start noticing an occasional whiff of horridness. It almost smelled like a rotting rat. It wasn't a constant smell, just an occasional waft. After some time I began using my pro statistical skills and developed an association with a waiter walking by with a steaming hot tray of food and the putrid aroma.

Then came our food -- the instant our food was delivered we were able to get a nice good deep sampling of the offending scent, and we quickly traced it to Amy's plate. She declared "I think my cheese might be bad." Then, as if I were some sort of rent-a-groom, she pushes her plate towards me and instructs "Here, taste it!" Like any good husband, I cut a bite off and put it in my mouth. And then I spit it out of my mouth.

I call the waiter over (the server didn't wait around to ensure everything was to our satisfaction), and tell him we can't eat that, and we order something else that doesn't contain cheese with the instruction to leave off any potential cheese, we will accept nothing with cheese I remember declaring.

As our dining experience goes on the occasional wafts continue -- at this point we know the culprit and we follow the food with our eyes to see happy diners all over the restaurant just gobbling the rancidness up as if it was the best thing they have ever put in their mouths. I didn't see one person send their food back. Perplexed we finished our meal and as we were having our after dinner discussion of the day I decided to stop a passing manager. I informed him of the events of the evening, fully expecting an "I'll look into this immediately, thank for sharing your concern." Instead I got sass, smarty farty remarks, and grief. This guy was so argumentative about the quality of his cheese, it was almost funny if he wasn't trying to kill everyone in the place.

After I argued with him for probably about a minute, I finally said "I'm done talking to you about this, I'm simply suggesting you check your cheese, I have no other motive --- have a good evening!" I'm guessing the guy thought we were just whining to get a discount, I don't know but if the cheese didn't ruin the place for us his attitude sure did.

After about a minute or less he comes running to our a table a humbled man. "You were right!" he exclaimed. "I don't know how it happened but there is something really wrong with our cheese, I threw it all away -- can I bring you to the kitchen to show you that I threw it away?" I assured him that wasn't necessary, the last thing I wanted to do was get another whiff of the stuff. Even though our meal that night did end up being free of charge -- I was still disappointed in the fact that the wait staff wasn't collecting plates from all the poor diners with no sense of smell -- we won't be back!