It's always easy to make excuses, so I'll go right ahead.  I registered for an event, accompanied by free dinner, at Heritage tonight, but just couldn't sneak out of our awesome film festival.  Returning home after that to come up with an amazing, on-the-spot scheme would seemingly be a realistic plan -- if my house didn't get the Food Network and someone weren't always watching it.

My stomach, growling uncontrollably as it is confronted by a 6-foot tall edible monkey-shaped construction on Extreme Cake Challenge, overrides all my competitive instincts. There is a frozen pizza in the freezer, and it is calling me.  Pouches of Instant Breakfast, that magical, nearly-free wonderfood, are readily available.  I break down and eat my housemates' and girlfriends' food, and begin to understand what it feels like to be a total sellout.

While I am not a lawyer and this should not be read as legal advice, this would seem not to be a technical violation of the rules (my girlfriend and I do not have a joint bank account, and I do not intend to repay my housemates).  It is nonetheless pretty pathetic, and it is with shame that I must report that the tall were today thoroughly schooled by the short.

 

Breakdown:

• Meal: Breakfast
  Foodstuffs: Coffee, 8 creamers
  Courtesy of: Center for American Progress
  Adventurousness level: -10
• Meal: Lunch
  Foodstuffs: Salad, wrap, chips
  Courtesy of: American Enterprise Institute
  Adventurousness level: Mediocre
• Meal: Post-lunch inedible snack
  Item: Approx. 1 square inch glossy paper torn from vegetarian propaganda booklet
  Courtesy of: Really nice unnamed vegetarian outside Farragut West
  Adventurousness level: Subjective
• Meal: Dinner
  Item: Frozen pizza, no longer frozen, Instant Breakfast
  Courtesy of: Largely unaware housemates
  Adventurousness level: Just abysmal

Analysis: Even if the coffee pot seems far from your cubicle, drinking coffee at work is roughly as interesting as the Google-DoubleClick merger.  The American Enterprise Institute can afford to give out wraps, chips, and seltzer.  Magazine ink tastes unpleasant.  Instant Breakfast is terrible and almost free, but at a certain point (like when you eat/drink it every day) it is difficult to argue for its overall risk and extreme-ness.