Bigger in Texas

We went to Texas a couple weekends ago to look for housing for when we go off to Chiropractic school next summer. (We bought the tickets long before IVF was even on our radar and were planning to start school in January...clearly the plan has changed.) BUT, we had the plane tickets and weren't about to spend an extra $400 to reschedule the flights, so off to Dallas we went.

After a nice little delay that put us back about an hour and a half, we arrived in Dallas and took the shuttle to the car rental place. I stayed with our bags while Cam waited in line. I often joke about how Cam is an advertiser's dream. He sees an ad and immediately thinks "YES! We should buy that!" Luckily, I graduated in advertising, so he is an advertiser's dream in way more than one way. However, mixing Cam with salesmen is never a good idea. 40 minutes later I'm still waiting for him to pick up our already-paid-for-and-picked-out car. My texts went from "Hey, I'm totally checking out your butt right now." to "What is going on?" to "Honey, have you asked her to marry you yet? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT OVER THERE?! Let's go!" Apparently, he was being schmoozed. Before he had realized what was going on, the saleslady had upgraded us to a mid-sized SUV for "only" $140 more. Once that got straightened out, he got our original car choice, got the keys, and away we went. I put my foot down about renting a GPS from the car rental place and texted a friend to look up directions for me to the nearest WalMart, so we could just buy a GPS for $30 more than the rental would cost. We drove around the airport (and in and out of the parking pay stalls) 3 times before finally figuring out how to get out of there. Luckily, I was still laughing at this point. We made it to WalMart and made a decision on which GPS we wanted. Us naive Utahns tried to walk out of the electronics department with it. Apparently that's a no-no. The clerk held it at the electronics desk until we came back with the toothbrushes we also needed. Finally, we got back to the car. My job was to open, set-up, and program the GPS to get us to this cute girl's house.

Us naive Utahns did not account for the "YOU WILL NOT STEAL THIS" packaging the GPS came in. While I hacked away at the industrial strength plastic with a spare key, Cam chose a random freeway and headed out. (Impatience at its finest). I was getting nowhere fast, so Cam exited and pulled into a parking lot to try and save the day.

And then police lights and a spotlight were upon us. Literally, less than 1 minute later.

We had parked in a handicap stall.

Cops in Dallas are not near as nice as the ones in Utah.

After taking Cam's license for scrutiny and listening to us stumble over our story, the cop assured us that he did not, in fact, have a pair of scissors or a knife that would help us open our GPS system and giving us a warning, we set off to find a gas station that might be able to help us open the packaging.

We stopped at the nearest gas station and nearly turned into another handicapped stall, but this time we knew better. We went around the corner, parked (legally), and Cam went inside to open the GPS while I sat in the locked car and tried to avoid looking at all the interesting people in the parking lot. Cam returned triumphant (after a significant delay) which was due to the person in front of him wanting to know exactly how many cigarettes were in a particular carton. The clerk didn't know, so he opened the carton and counted each individual one. However, the brainiac had scissors. Cam returned to the car with the GPS system WITHOUT its #%$#( casing held high over his head.

I set it up, input the address, installed the windshield mount and we were on our way. But the happy little voice the declares the directions was nowhere to be heard. After reassuring Cam that I had already turned the volume up to full blast (3 times), we figured out that we had a faulty GPS. So we tried our best to read the map, made a few U-turns and finally made it to our beds a little after midnight.

Cam slept really well, though. lol. And the Dallas humidity greeted him with gusto the next morning. He had the best bed-head I've ever seen. I truly wish I could've gotten a 360 degree shot.

We spent the next 3 days visiting the school, talking to other students, finding a nice neighborhood to live in and touring apartment complex after apartment complex. We also dove right in to Texas culture and enjoyed some GREAT tex-mex, our first Texas High School Football game, and ate at Buffalo Wild Wings (twice).

Everyone in Texas is SO NICE. We walked up to the football stadium (which is unlike anything I've ever seen) got in line to buy tickets, and someone just handed us 2 for free. Did you know they have assigned seating at the HS football games? Well they do, and the tickets were for the first row!

Cam bought me a pickle and a pretzel at the concession stand (after we made it past all the tailgaters). And because the pretzel was only warm and not hot, they gave it to me for free. We took our seats and listened to all the parents of the players behind us. Mostly, we came to the conclusion that our high schools were, in fact, lame. They had inflatable tunnels in the shape of the mascots heads for the teams to run out of and dance line/cheerleaders (HUNDREDS OF THEM) lined the field. It blew the socks off most college games I've been to. No joke.

Oh yeah. And the marching band had 650 members in it.

Our new brother-in-law was in the band in high school. We razzed him about it a bit when we found out. He's from Dallas. We also came to the conclusion that we owe him an apology. There is nothing lame about band in Texas. Nothing.

We got home Monday around lunchtime and Cam took me to Taco Bell to get some nacho cheese sauce that I just had to have. Lucky man. He's been waiting for me to crave taco bell since we got married.