This stuff is really gross. I can't believe I paid 2 bucks for it just now. Granted, I may have nuked it about 30 seconds longer than the directions I didn't bother to read advised, but I still think that's no reason for it to taste like a cat ate burnt rubber bands and then puked them into a bowl. God, even the smell is starting to interfere with my workplace productivity (which I was trying to improve by eating this crap in the first place!!) As much as my disdain for high fructose corn syrup can often be blamed for the cause of convenient foods being less edible than those your grandmother slaved over for hours... I'd have to say I'm letting the diabetes-inducing goop that is the basis of most American foods off the hook this time: Thanks mom, for never letting us eat Chef Boyardee when we were kids. Gross.

So, I guess I'm kind of a big deal... who knew?

As you may recall, I got paid a whopping $200 to blog several times a month for 4 months last year, and people came out of the woodwork responding to my posts. Apparently, kids were choosing to study in Barcelona simply because I made it sound so cool. Go me! A year later, IES is still psyched about my work; I just got this email from them (sans details not needing to be published here):

Hello Brynn,

I wanted to contact you about a new feature on the IES Abroad blog site. The new spotlight feature is titled “A Year Later” details what our former bloggers are up to and how studying abroad has affected their lives one year or more after completing their semester abroad. Based on the high quality of your past contributions to the site, I would like to ask you to share an update.

If you would be willing please share a few (3-4) paragraphs about how your life, attitude, world view, career goals, or future plans have changed because of your experiences abroad. You do not need to worry about logging back into the blog site, you can simple respond to this email with your update and I will be post it on your behalf. Once provided, your update will be featured prominently on the blogs homepage as well as the locations list in the right hand menu.

Thank you for your participation,

IES Abroad

I love you Texas, but you're dirty

So an environmental lobbyist group I used to canvass for is (alongside the Sierra Club) suing ExxonMobil for dumping out of its Baytown refinery over a million pounds of toxic air pollutants per year since 2005. Apparently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been bugging the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to tighten up its regulations on air quality and enforcement of current laws, but where government agencies drag their feet, hippy activists usually tend to bang their drums and whine a lot. "Hey, look at us! We're disgruntled! Grrr." This does not seem to be the case for Environment Texas and the Sierra club, however. The lawsuit is set to be filed in federal district court later this summer, and by the looks of the evidence that's been aired against ExxonMobile, BP is hardly alone in the department of negligence. According to the TCEQ, 85% of incidents at the three Baytown facilities were categorized as avoidable or preventable. Classy.

Check out this article for more info, if you aren't too busy picking oil blobs off your toes at the beach, or hacking up a lung in Baytown.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2215/