Gig, soup and toilet paper

So, life remains interesting in Staylyn-land - both good interesting and not-awesome interesting.

On the good side, this past Friday was my (Suzy's) last day at my 9-to-5 office job. This is a very good thing. I will still be working a non-band job, but the new job will have more flexibility than the old one, which means The Staylyns now have more flexibility as well. Hurrah!

We also got very lucky on Saturday with the weather for our gig playing the Kemah Boardwalk. Not only did it rain every day leading up to our gig, but as we were playing in the sunshine in Kemah on Saturday, the other side of Houston was getting soaked. I think God decided to give us a break since we were rained out of this same gig in March. So, to all you folks who got the benefit of the sunshine that we were personally responsible for on Saturday, you're welcome.

Less cool was the cold that Johnny woke up with on Sunday. To be accurate, the cold had been coming on for days, so it didn't actually just appear on Sunday, but he was definitely feeling full-on crappy that morning. We had spent the night with my very generous family the night before, but when he woke up feeling bad, we loaded up and headed home as soon as we could get Joey vertical. Have we mentioned before that Joe can sleep? Anywhere, anytime, for as long as you'll let him. But I'll save that for another post.

We did make one stop on the way home, and that was for lunch. Johnny needed soup - possibly soup with a little sinus-clearing kick. So, we stopped in Columbus at this fine establishment for some tortilla soup:

As soon as we were seated, I noticed a cool old-timey map on the wall that had this on it:

Since we play Hotel California in our band, I took it as a sign that we had made a good decision.

In fact, it was an excellent decision. Johnny and Joe both got the soup, which seemed pricey until we saw the enormous bowls delivered to our table. These people hook you UP with some soup! And even better, Johnny said it was officially the best chicken tortilla soup (he added chicken, because you're supposed to when you're sick) he'd ever had. Here it is about halfway eaten:

To give some perspective, that's not a teaspoon - it's a tablespoon. Somehow the picture doesn't do it justice, but trust me, it was a lot of soup.

One more point of interest came as we were getting ready to leave. I went to the bathroom, because you should always do that at all possible opportunities when you're on a road trip, and as I was washing my hands, I saw another woman enter, go into one of the stalls and then do this:

What the...? I saw her hang this piece of toilet paper over the door before getting to business. But...why? Is she trying to signal that the stall is ocupado? Because your feet under the door are a pretty good indicator. And, of course, there's the whole DOOR LOCK thing to keep urgent strangers from busting in on you. So, what could that be? Oooo - I sense a game opportunity. Let's all come up with theories! Here's mine:

She's a germophobe, and she's afraid that the last person who touched the toilet paper had dirty hands. So, she pulls a foot or so of paper out to get to the clean paper. But she's also OCD, so she has to hang the pulled paper on the outside of the stall where she can see it when she washes her hands so she knows she did, in fact, remember to pull the first foot of paper and, therefore, only has to wash her hands - not her hoohah, too, which she would surely have to do if she had used the first foot of contaminated paper. And that is NOT something she wants to have to do again in a public restroom.

Your turn - put your theory in the comments!