The Texas-Shaped Tortilla Chip Says It All

Each Monday evening, a group of us friends gather for Mexican food.  "Mexican Monday"  It started years ago with my best friend.  She, her partner and all the other homos in town ate at a specific restaurant that was deigned as the "place to be" every Monday.  As time passed, it became less important for my best friend and her partner io be seen at the "it" place.  So they began to shake it up and move the Monday tradition around the city.  When I joined the group, we had about five regular restaurants in the rotation (but we did not include the original "it" place in the mix).  I've been going to Mexican Monday for about 13 years now.  I think they've been doing it for about 15 or 16 years.
Mexican Mondays are very special to me.  A way, each week, to ease into work and touch base with the most important people in your life (the ones that you chose to be there).  I've risked getting fired over the gathering.  A director once demanded that I stay late on a Monday.  I just told her that I always get together with my friends on Mondays, and that I'd just come in early the next morning.  She said that she strongly suggested that I stay late and that she hardly ever had the chance to see her friends.  To which, red-faced I threw out the old standard, "But I've got my priorities straight!" (quite loudly too).  And turned off my computer.  I heard later through the department grapevine that she had marched directly to her boss's office and said "The Queer does not want to give you what you need to get your job done!"  And Ladies and Gentlemen ... there is a name for a person who does something like that...but I digress.
And damn, I'm long-winded.  All that to set up that I was eating tortilla chips at Mexican Monday this evening.  And I received a vision ... a sign ... a portent.  Whatever.  In an earlier post, we've established that I cannot be a true fatalist.  But I pulled this chip out of the basket, and honestly, with completely no breakage, it looked just like this:

It was strange.  And it was just the timing of the conversation that made it so.  I know ... no fate, no destiny (if I keep saying it, one day I'll completely believe it - he's working on me).  But everyone had been talking about a subject that all of our friends hate:  The Man and The Queer moving to Toronto.  He and I had fallen in love with the city on an earlier trip (that I wrote about here).  And we're always talking about relocating there.  So ... c'mon, any logical man would see the chip as a sign.

So I considered the chip.  And this was what immediately came to mind. 

Here's what I would miss about living in Texas:

• the strong awesome Texas people

where else would you have women who gives you a chicken recipe where cook-timing is based on how long it takes to smoke a cigarette?   where else would you get those awesome redneck businessmen who actually can carry a boardroom and break a stallion?  where else do you get people who welcome you warmly, without really caring (like in the Old South) about your "family name?"

• the incredible weather

complain if you need to, but we really do have awesome weather here in Texas.  about three months - July, August, and September are unbearable.  But we have super-mild winters and perfect autumns and springs. (And air conditioning -- have you been up North in the summer to those place where they don't believe in air conditioning, and then lets talk about unbearable)  Also, you can swim comfortably in the Gulf from April until November.

• countless other things (but I don't want to lose y'all...)

•  Mexican Monday

I can't imagine starting my weeks without sharing Monday evening with my close friends.  It's crazy and comfortable.  It's safe and it's scary.  I almost got my butt kicked tonight ... (we'll talk about that later).

So trips to Toronto are certain.  And hopefully frequent.  I guess the jury's still out on our moving there.
But the chips don't lie...