And so it ended in Game 7, after a month of big-hitting and mass t-shirt sales, the Astros went down to the Cardinals last night – one win away from the World Series, and probably half the town is wallowing in misery this morning. Perhaps it’s a good thing, as I was beginning to spend most of my nights in front of the TV, as I watched the Cinderella story unfold. Instead, it was time for the Red Sox to break a few curses, and rise above those cursed Yankees. Now the Astros are out of it, to quote an American “I could care less”. I picked up my rental car last night, and after the immediate things like trying to find out how to move my seat forward (only when the car is running) and turn off the headlights during the day (you can’t), I plotted the simplest possible ride home in peak hour traffic. A bit unnerving, as even though I knew the way, sitting on the left side made things harder. Since I’m driving Roman, my Russian co-worker to the airport tommorrow, I want to make sure I at least can enter an on-ramp or two, otherwise all he’ll remember about his trip is a nightmarish trip to George Bush International doing 40mph in the far right lane on I-45. For lunch today, Bill took me to the Goode Company Barbeque restaurant on Kirby, and it was quite an experience. They pick out some old shed (for authenticity) and load it up with huge open air coolers, fill them with beer, iced tea, and tiny wine bottles, then pile on 6 inches of ice. It’s Mexican-run cafeteria-style eating, with delicious soft meats (in my case a chopped meat sandwich), in a jalapeno bun, and load up on sloppy potato salad and brown rice. The cups are milkshake size. Music is 60’s Country and Western. If I didn’t have Bill, I’d have been lost with all the choices and the rapdifire questions by the servers and cashier. Now I know what’s going on – I’ll be back, and there’s no way I’m ordering from the dinner menu – the lunch sandwich was plenty big enough (like my local slang?).