Future Ted: [v.o.] Every architect can point to that one design that changed their career. For me, it was around the time of my 31st birthday. It wasn't a museum or a concert hall or a skyscraper. It was something else.
[flashback to Ted meeting the two cowboys:]
Cowboy #1: We're opening a restaurant called Rib Town, and we want it to be shaped...
[present: the gang at MacLaren's:]
Ted: Like a cowboy hat. Look, I need the work. I don't have any other options.
Robin: Well, there's always that teaching job.
Ted: Yeah, I didn't work this hard to be stuck in some crappy, dead-end teaching job. No offense, Lily.
Lily: I got peed on three times today. No arguments here.