It's in Owlbuquerque, of Course!

My mom and I ate lunch at the Owl Cafe this weekend.  I may have mentioned before that this is one of my favorite restaurants, not least because of its theme.  We went because I was wearing one of my myriad of Owl Cafe T-shirts.

"Oh, look," I pointed out to my mom, "They have a new T-shirt design."  Since a friend in high school dubbed me "the man with a T-shirt from everywhere"*, and since it's an owl T-shirt, how could I resist?  (I really need to gather all my owl shirts, count them, and photograph them, to see if there are any the restaurant has which I missed.)

While we were there, our waitress commented that she had never seen the design of the shirt I was wearing.  Nor had any of the other waitresses, the hostess, nor even the manager.  (To be fair, the manager hasn't worked there all that many years.)

I started pondering how long we've been going to that restaurant.  Well, I moved to ABQ...  Oh, dear God, has it been that many years ago?  Let's see, my dad discovered the place when he went to ABQ for his job interview back in the fall of 1987.  Yes, that was 29.5 years ago.  (Ouch!)  The shirt isn't older than any of the restaurant staff (at least on that shift), but I can't be surprised that they've never seen it.

Along those lines, I have to confess an incident that occurred at work earlier last week.  A salesman stopped by with some information, and a coworker asked me what company he represented.  "He's with [Z], which used to be [Y].  Before that, it was [X]."  I paused, then added, "Have I been in the business that long?"

* I had (and still have) so many T-shirts from other places (London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Hawaii, etc.) because my dad often traveled on business, and he always brought me back a T-shirt.  (To be honest, I can't remember at all what he might have brought my brothers.)  I think it started when I was very young, and he came back from Las Vegas, NV with a T-shirt which read, "My dad went to Las Vegas, and all he brought me was this lousy T-shirt."  (This should also clue you in that I came by my sense of humor naturally.)