i haven't posted anything significant here in a while because i spent Thursday through Sunday in Washington, D.C. trying to schmooze my way into graduate school while not freezing to death. this sounds much easier than it actually was, particularly the trying not to freeze to death part. in order to avoid belaboring the point let me just say that without the timely intervention of a hat and gloves your plucky hero would probably be lying somewhere along Connecticut Ave. with icicles growing from his nose and ears. yes, it was that cold.

on the meeting / greeting / greasing the application wheel front i am declaring victory. sure, it may be premature to celebrate before anyone has even looked at my application, but to be frank, i'm too busy practicing looking dignified, thinking up slogans to put on my victory banners and imagining myself (dressed in a flight suit) being helicoptered out to an aircraft carrier to be bothered with thinking about the possibility of failure.

to all of the theorists and economists out there who predicted that steady employement would result in a corresponding increase in my savings in preparation for graduate school: you did not count on the price of eating in Washington D.C. i can only theorize that the city's plan to reduce the murder rate involves raising the price of food to the point where the poor will be too hunger-starved to murder each other.

the cheapest meal I ate (not counting Cracker Barrel on the way out or McDonald's on the way home) was $12, and that was the Middle Eastern / Mediterranean equivalent of the MCL Cafeteria. The rest of my time I spent sipping wine and sake, gorging myself on tolerable but incredibly expensive sushi, and eating at a Brazillian restaurant called The Grill From Ipanema, wherein I ate something called tubara~o (shark). [note: i spent 30 seconds trying to get the "~" above the "a" in tubara~o, but gave up. crazy damned Brazillians.] my one possibility for a cheap meal was a $3.95 meal at a sketchy looking place called "Bruce Lee Restaurant". perhaps it was arrogant on my part to turn it down, but a $4 meal in a town where you can't eat for less than $10 seems like asking, nay, begging for trouble. am i wrong?

stay tuned for the rest of the AHA wrap-up some time later this week.