rhymes with spoon

So the joys of law students are few and far between. On top of rarely getting out to see the light of day, I'm subjected to a very paltry and depressing selection of places to eat, when I forget to bring a lunch or when I'm trapped here all hours. (What saddens me even more is that the number of food options here has probably doubled in the past four years, so I can only imagine what people were doing before then. Probably hunting and gathering.)
One by one, I've ruled out my food options as I've become tired of giving up my hard-won student loan dollars to various establishments. I will die a happy woman if I never eat another Chipotle burrito or another Quiznos sub. As of yesterday, I can now also add to the list of blacklisted places Noodles & Company. I admit I am a sucker for advertising so inevitably, I was lured into trying their new "braised beef and gnocchi," which is easily the worst decision I've made all week. (In my defense, a) I love gnocchi, b) I've tried just about everything else there and it was at least passable, c) they had damn good advertising.) Imagine dinty moore beef stew poured onto overboiled, insipid gnocchi. Then imagine that mixture heavily salted, but deceptively hidden under a pretty sprinkling of fresh parsley and peppers. I was, I am outraged. This, coming from a girl who has eaten TV dinners almost exclusively for the last week.
In spite of my beef stew woes, life seems surprisingly stable. I'm getting better at taking rejections, although I know I'm not completely immune from it b/c I've been avoiding my mailbox the past couple of days. I have insane amounts of work to do, but that's nothing new. I've been trying to block out a good chunk of time to work on my article, but to no avail. At least I have Thai food to look forward to tonight and Broken Social Scene tomorrow night at First Avenue.
The countdown to my birthday begins...Stacey's already booked Darren and Sonia for my birthday dinner so it promises to be an awesome evening of food and long, rambling stories beginning "So my buddy and I were...." Still nervously awaiting news whether Jeff will be able to escape for a few days to join in the festivities. I can't believe I will be 26....I feel more like 12 and/or 65.

Birthday wishes to Alex, who is *ONLY* 25 today and a shout out to Jess who is in NY this weekend to celebrate. Wish I was there.....

Well, after a lovely round of rejection letters from firms far and wide, I've decided to take a big step back from the job search and return my focus to classes and my article. I'm out of money (from airfares), out of energy, and out of ideas. I've pulled every string I got, called every person I can think of, and finagled a few interviews but the response is the same. Great resume but your grades suck. Sorry, you're not what we're looking for. Thanks, I really needed to spend $600+ in airfares to figure that out. We could've hashed that out over the phone. While I have entertained thoughts of bumming on futons in LA (thanks Jess), housesitting in Ithaca, NY (Derrick, I know I was just assumming...), hiding out in a dark basement in the Pacific NW, I've already been refused squatting rights in Baltimore, which really brings me back to obvious point, which is: as nice as a true summer vacation might be, blowing off my 2L summer completely is near career suicide, at least in the short term. The more sobering reality is that I haven't had a real summer of unemployment since I was 14, so if I can't find a job with lots more education (and gobs more debt), then well I really am up s*** creek with no paddle.

But hopefully this posting will be my last shard of self-pity (at least for now). Thankfully, I don't have many friends around to let me wallow in it...a couple of quick kicks to the head (via email and over the phone), resulted in a more productive evening. The sudafed (which I had to sign my life away for at the local Target, thanks to all the meth labs out there making cold medicine damn near impossible to get) and my new vaporizer certainly helped. (My first choice humidifier was outta stock at the local Target. sniffle, sniffle.) And then there was lovely news via email about a possible invite to a rather special house on Pennsylvania Avenue. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed.) Finally rounding out the list of things making me feel better was listening to a certain Beach Boys ditty that a very clairvoyant Jeff put on a thoughtful mix CD, knowing that I was most certainly going to have one of these "moments" this fall.

On a completely unrelated note, yesterday marked the passing of a Civil Rights legend.

Well, after a long hiatus from the blogging world, I decided to take another stab in the faint hope that I could keep my scattered friends informed, have an emotional outlet, all the while, maintaining some semblance of anonymity. (I understand the last hope is just ludicrous...for those of you in the know, I'll refer you to blog related drama of last year).

So yes, the flan has returned...and let's be honest, when flan's being thrown around, things are bound to get messy.