Kon Chau Chinese Restaurant and Fifteenth Street Books

Don't let me order at restaurants anymore.  Please.  I don't care if I'm to be the death of feminism, please, just order for me like they did in the olden days.   It's definitely a universal law of some kind, like the Law of Attraction or Murphy's Law or something - whatever my dinner companion orders will be far better than what I order.  Went in for some dim sum at Kon Chau Chinese Restaurant with GS a whiles ago.  I dutifully compiled a list from Yelp reviews and used that to order.  BIG MISTAKE.  We basically ended up with a mishmash of starches that just didn't go together at all.  I guess it's kind of funny.  I had a bunch of leftovers.  Like Argentinians say, there's nothing that a fried egg can't improve.  The place was described as shabby on Yelp but I thought it was fine, though GS did mention the men's restroom smelled like a cat litter box.  I went to smell the women's room to compare and it wasn't so bad.  What do you guys do in there anyway?  We walked over to Lucky Oriental Market, which is in the same strip mall, to look for something that could wash the taste of failure out of my mouth.  God, I love that place - talk about local color.  It's run by Chinese Cubans who only speak Chinese or Spanish; to hear a wrinkled old Chinese lady call someone, "Caballero" is a freaking treat, let me tell you.  They have a whole bunch of weird things with undecipherable labels, it's a blast to visit.  I think that whole strip mall is being taken over by Chinese, actually.  There is an acupuncture place there, and since my last visit they opened the seediest looking Chinese Massage parlor.  For reals!  It looks straight out of Amsterdam.

GS likes used bookstores so we checked out Fifteenth Street Books in the Gables.  It's the location of the old Books and Books and on the same street as the new location.  Newish, I guess it's been like ten years by now.  The place is one of those utterly charming, wacky places that you can't figure out how they make enough money to pay the rent.  Obviously, they're laundering money.  Half bookstore, half antique store, it's run by a whispery gentleman who is in charge of the used books section, and by a pair of Hispanic ladies who run the antiques section.  Poor GS doesn't understand much Spanish so he was not able to appreciate the most awesomest lady there who made us Cuban coffee (in glass cups!  with saucers!) and proceeded to tell me the most hilarious details about her work relationship with the used books guy.  He asked me later what she and I were giggling about so much.  Ah, again, local color.