The worst lunch ever

Two posts in one night. Yeah, completely different topics.

Worst... lunch... ever. This past Thursday.

My class schedule is such that I have classes from 9:30 until practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I have practice until dark. Between Russian and International History of the Cold War, I have one hour to get lunch. Plenty of time, seriously.

First stop, Au Bon Pain (ABP? No. Au Bon Pain. They're both three syllables. Deal with it.) As many of you may know, I prefer to have soup for lunch before practices. It gives you some electrolytes, some extra water, a bunch of carbs, a little protein, and it certainly doesn't weigh you down. What kind of soups do they have? Potato Leek. Some horrid Southwest Bean somethingorother that looked like Montezuma's Revenge isolated to a crock pot. Where is the chicken noodle, or French Onion, or even a pussy Minestrone? How can this place possibly think that it can make more money selling Potato Leek than chicken noodle? I don't even know what a leek is! And for $4.80-something a bowl, I want to know what's in my god damn soup!

Next stop, J-Street. This... was a bad choice. I walk in, looking at the Jamba Juice line as the first line I can see in the food court. Not bad, I say to myself, foolishly making the number of people in the Jamba Juice line the standard for the establishment. I walk around, check out what's in the District Market Express ($6 for a ham and swiss? I'll district your market...). Subway line? Pff. In your dreams kiddo. The morass of Aramark has allowed the line to grow to lengths surpassed only by the infuriatingly ever-present line at package services.

Then I find one of my best friends at GW. Pleasentries are exchanged, rudimentary conversation is initiated, then someone else we know is just walking in - several meters away. Like a fat kid ditching a stale cupcake, I am physically left flapping in the wind in favor of the newcomer. Rude? Maybe. At the time, given my increasing alarm at the prospect of going to practice lunch-less, yeah, I was pissed. In retrospect, an "excuse me," or "hey, it's [that person]," would have significantly improved my day. But once I turned around, and saw that the Jamba Juice line, my last fruity resort, had grown to elephantine proportions, I knew the street vendor hot dog was inevitable. And so it was. Thus, the worst lunch ever, and the rest of the day followed in that mold.

But now is no time for bitching. A well-cooked meal of marinated chicken, noodles, and cut corn - plus my all-time favorite movie, The Usual Suspects on AMC - has improved my mood significantly. Now it is truly time to put this week, and Thursday's lunch, behind me.