January 28, 2003
Bumpy financial stuff, but good crew looking at all the data. Very competent comrades. We’ll be fine.

Had lunch with Pam and Debbie from BookCrazyRadio.net. They are going gangbusters with over 350,000 hits a week, 16 countries, 29 shows and counting. A complete bookfest radio network online. Just amazing how these girls have made a mountain out of a molehill (meant in a very good way). We ate at El Encanto, and a Playboy playmate ate about five tables down from us. Really striking blond (looked like Faith Hill). Three problems (four, if you count that I’m married): first she had one of those damned barbed-wire-arm tattoos. Two, she was with her lesbian, butch, blond girlfriend, and three, she chain-smoked and it just looked—not sexy. Other than that, she was a knockout.

Started on Travel issue Classic Gunfight: Zip Wyatt Vs. Everybody in western Oklahoma. Going to be a good one. What a fight, what endurance some of these bad boys had.

Kathy decided she wants to take conversational Spanish, so we drove down to Paradise Valley Community College at 6:30. Jim Ramsay is the teacher ($100 each). “Yo soy Capitan. Yo soy de Kingman. Yo soy estudiante de Mexicano. Yo soy una humorista.” We talked about Mexican food (the final is in a Mexican food restaurant. How cool is that? “Donde esta el quarto del bano?” “Where is the bathroom?”). The teacher asked me one of my favorite Mexican cafes and I said Pepe’s Taco Villa. Then we went around the room. Unfortunately we have a woman from New Mexico in the class and like everyone I know from the Land of Enchantment (David K. Jones, Paul Northrop and Bob McCubbin come to mind) they have this pompous, irritating attitude about their Mexican food being superior to, well, everything on the planet. When someone said she should try Richardson’s on 16th Street, she scrunched up her nose and said, “Oh, I tried that, but it’s not the same.” I knew it was no use, but others tried to tell her different places to try but she said in a snotty voice, “I guess I’m just kind of spoiled.” And I said “No. You’re just kind of uninformed.” Maybe it was the tone of my screaming but she avoided eye-contact with me for the rest of the class.

Went to Rolberto’s afterwards and had the adobada burro and a chicklay drink. Kathy had the bean burro, enchilada style ($7.30 cash). Got home at ten, muy tired, but happy.

“Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.”
—Old Vaquero saying