Day 10

Pancho Eats A Burrito.

Estimados,

Today I visited the barber for the first time since I was 10 or so.  Just to be clear, I have had a few haircuts since my 11th birthday, but from family and friends mostly.  I guess since losing a decent chunk of my hairline I've done most of my own barbering.  Regardless, my friend needed a haircut, so we went to the barber he has gone to his entire life, the same barber his dad has been going to as long as anyone can remember.  The man had some serious skills.  While at it, I also opted for a shave.  Meet my cartel-proof disguise, Pancho:

Sarah, please note the smile.  I think it might have had the opposite affect.

Good news:  if you would also like to sport the season's hottest trend, all you need to tell your barber is: "Yo quiero un digote como Pancho Villa."  This literally translates "I want a mustache like Pancho Villa," and is literally what I told the man.  You might want to make sure your barber is capable of delivering first.  A sure sign that he can give you un digote magnifico is that he himself is wearing a finely manicured flavor-saver.  This was just my luck.  The trip to the Mexican barber represents a first for me in many ways:

1. First time on this trip that something went exceptionally well.
2. First time I've ever paid a barber to cut my hair (Grandpa dragged me to the barber when I was young and simply told the man: "Give him the boys' cut."  Grandpa kindly did not make me pay for the unwanted buzz-cut.)
3. First time I've ever received a shave from a straight razor.

In other news, I have quasi-successfully made myself a pot of beans.  Anyone who knows me very well knows that this means everything is going to be okay.  So, you might be asking yourself, "Why only quasi-successful, Pancho?"  I ran out of gas about 10-20 minutes before the beans were done.  It's roughly a 3 hour operation to cook a pot of pinto beans, a little longer for me because I'm around 2000m above sea level.  It's been my experience that the last 10-20 minutes are where the beans really soften up and reach burritability.  I was exhausted yesterday from a long day of xbox and napping, but I stayed up late to finish cooking the beans.  I was wasting my life away on facebook when I noticed that the burner had gone out under the beans.  When I tried to re-light it, the best I got was an unsustainable, flickering flame that danced around the burner.

So at this point I'm sweating bullets, positive that the universe is conspiring against me (which it totally was).  The hot water tank is just on the other side of the kitchen wall (and for some unfathomable reason still can't deliver hot water to the sink less than 2ft away), so I decided to see if the pilot was still lit.  Negatory.  Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that this meant no more hot showers til I get the natural gas refilled.  Which should be about the same time pigs fly, and/or Satan is giving away free sleigh rides in a snowy hell.  Can we agree that this constitutes a literal addition of insult to injury?

Let me admit that I had assumed there was a Pan-American natural gas pipeline that fed directly into my kitchen.  Turns out I have a small tank on the top of my house, not an inter-continental funnel.  Could've sworn I saw that in the lease somewhere...

So now goal #1 is to get that stupid tank refilled, so that I can finish cooking this pot of beans to perfection (oh yeah, and take a hot shower).  I stole enough beans out of the fridge to make myself a couple burritos tonight, via the microwave, one of two appliances in my kitchen that doesn't rely on gas.  The beans are still harder than I'd like them to be, but with some homemade salsa on top, they made some darn good burritos.  Some people say that hunger is the best sauce, but I think a compelling argument could be made for some fresh salsa.

I have a big day ahead tomorrow, so buenas noches and sueños dulces.


Yours truly,
Pancho