Lunch, a.k.a. Butter

What I Bought: Chicken chipotle sandwich from the Boston VA Hospital
Cost: $5.00 (with a 20 oz. "soda")
Suck of Not: Suck, although the "soda" was fine

Details: So yesterday I got roped into helping out some of my coworkers who are doing a clincal study at one of the hostpitals in Boston. Generally speaking, the hospitals around here are pretty swank (they actually import sick people in Massachusetts) and have correspondingly kickass cafeterias. I brought a lunch from home anyway, thinking that we'd be back on campus before lunch so I'd be able to heat up my leftover Indian chicken from the weekend (which definitely did NOT suck!). But the doctor couldn't find the hole in one guy's colon or something, blah blah blah, and we ended up being there all day. So, around 1:00, I decided to go get a sandwich from the cafeteria...

...And damn if it wasn't the worse-assed sandwich I've ever eaten! I guess being a VA hospital, the patrons at some point in their lives were all being sustained on military food, but even still, this was terrible! The sandwich was euphamistically called "chipotle chicken ciabbatta", which apparently means "boiled McNugget chicken with mayonnaise and 3 pounds of butter, covered in greasy fried onions, served on some white bread that was grilled in 3 more pounds of butter." This sandwich was the sandwich-world equivalent of calling the US President a "thoughtful and well-spoken individual with a balanced and not-hilariously-warped view of reality."

Don't eat at the VA!

But the root beer was good.

Chia Pet Disguise

The following is a guest post from BelieveITorNot8.

What I Bought: A Haircut
Cost: $8.29
Suck or Not: Suck
Details: I went to my regular mall hair cut joint. Some people pooh-pooh these places, preferring to lay down a thick wad of bills for their haute couture coiffures. Being frugal, I go to the mall. I'm happy with the cuts that my regular lady gives. But today I found out that she was in a car accident and wouldn't be back for months (more on that later). So I chose the next available stylist. Bad idea. Clearly green, she asked one of the other stylists what size clipper attachments to use on which part of my head. That should have been my cue to fake that my phone was vibrating and get the hell out of there. I decided to give her a chance; after all we've all got to start somewhere in our careers. Unfortuntately for me, I wear thick glasses and am blind as a bat without them. And all stylists have me take off my glasses. So there I was, in the chair, blissfully blurry-eyed. She, the rookie, diligently and methodically snip snipping away. After quite a while of snipping, she proclaimed she was done. I put on my glasses and woah... For pretty much my entire head, all the hairs were exactly and uniformly 1 inch long... I guess for some stylists, this would be perhaps a feat, a triumph(?), a display of scissorial mastery. For me, I felt I looked like Chia Pet. I choked out a "Thank-you it looks fine" and paid her. Even tipped her. I'm such a softie.

By the way, I was alarmed that my normal stylist was in a car accident, one that apparently was bad enough to warrant an absence from work for months. Turns out she's almost fine and is convalescing on the insurance companies dime while studying for her Nursing finals. Hmmm.

(Editorial comment: one time I got my hair cut by an obviously-pissed-off-at-the-world Vietnamese woman in Ottawa...I came out with 5mm of hair, but I felt thankful that I only asked her to cut it "kind of short" as opposed to "short". I also tipped her, but it was more out of fear than pity. Suck.)

Brains

What I Bought: 6 months of education at MIT
Cost: $100, although I keep getting nasty emails telling me that it's actually $18,563.98
Suck or Not: Indeterminate.
Details: Okay, I agree that $100 isn't THAT much to spend on a half-year of school. But that being said, there are lots of other things that I could have bought for the same money. Like a pair of Mike's cross-trainers, or 4.5 hockey sticks on sale at City Sports, or 3 copies of The Family Guy Volume 3 DVD. Or I could have bought something nice for the girlfriend, which would have made her happy and probably gotten me a nice little kiss in exchange. Also, my office is covered in a thick layer of dust and smells like old bananas mixed with onion bagels and Frosted Flakes. I'm not 100% sure, but this may be because the other guy in my office uses our filing cabinet to store old bananas, onion bagels, and Frosted Flakes. I'll keep you posted. Anyway, this could turn out to be a great purchase (if the onion bagels mysteriously "disappear") or an incredibly sucky purchase (if my officemate takes a liking to blue cheese). Only time will tell.