Of New Mexico?

So when the border patrol stops your car at a checkpoint sixty miles north of the Mexican border because the paint's falling off, the backseat is obviously full of contraband, you have Oregon plates but are traveling from Virginia to Washington (via Texas, of course), and your driver's window won't roll down, here's a tip: he's not going to ask you if you're a citizen of New Mexico. Nobody cares, frankly. He wants to know if you're USA material. So rather than staring at your own reflection in his sunglasses for a few seconds and trying to remember when the last time you shaved was, just say yes when he asks if you're "a citizen." Because if instead of giving the quick and useful answer you say, "Uh, you mean of New Mexico?" he's going to smirk as if he knows you're joking, but the smirk will fade quickly when he realizes you're actually a complete idiot. Then have fun trying to explain the whole Oregon-Virginia-Washington thing. But don't worry, it's not as if the drivers of the seven hundred cars backed up behind you are all rolling their eyes in unison. At least one of them's bound not to be paying attention. 

Aside from the border patrol (why their checkpoint is an hour north of the border we still haven't figured out), the drive across the rest of Texas was swell, in part because this is what you see on the side of the road in Texas. Nice, eh? Supposedly there was a fantastic burger joint right on the border between Texas and New Mexico, but we lost the name of it and couldn't get ahold of the people who told us about it. so we had to drive through. We did drive past a town called Truth or Consequences, however. Does Bob know about this? We spent about ten hours driving today in an attempt to make up some distance, and as it sits right now we're at roughly the halfway point, distance-wise, of our trip. Wish us and our car well. 

So tonight we reside in Albuquerque at our friend's house. She's making a movie and I'm jealous. On the plus side, I have managed to convince her that it's a good idea for me to take her laptop with me under the guise of fixing it. You remember the scene from How the Grinch Stole Christmas where he gets caught by the little Who girl while trying to stuff a tree up a chimney? He says something to the extent of one of the lights is out and he has to take it back to his workshop to fix it on account of not having the proper equipment with him. (I may have aggrandized the last bit.) Same sort of deal. Maybe. 

We had dinner tonight at a place called Frontier, which was recommended to us by a librarian at a Baptist Seminary in New Orleans. Naturally. Not bad, though as far as I can tell there was nothing "New" Mexican about it. 

Unfortunately there'll be no pictures posted tonight because I can't get my laptop to connect to the house's wireless network, so I'm using a sibling of my former computer (a lovely Intel-based iMac) to post this and I don't particularly feel like swapping all the pictures to a thumb drive and transferring them over, etc. So tomorrow. Maybe. In the morning we're off to Arizona to see Anna's brother Trevor and his family and deliver some miniscule upholstered furniture to their young daughter. 

Oh, and to all our friends with Oregon plates, I'm very sorry that the border patrol will automatically assume you're a moron. Oops.