these kinds of budgeting skills you learn in grad school will both exhaust you but also serve you well in life.

source: me! i did something similar when i went to grad school, but back then the dollar also went further. still a cheapskate 25 years later.

funny story. a friend of mine from high school told me a long time ago (mid 90s era) a lisa loeb story. he finished school in nyc and tells me this story about a woman he meets at a party. she's all "don't you know who i am?" "no, not a clue" he tells her. "i'm lisa loeb." he tells me she's miffed and for decades i chalk it up to "wow she's full of herself."

fast forward to a few years ago and this oral history of the movie reality bites. so it turns out that lisa loeb got her break through ethan hawke, who lived in her building. something like how she passed him a demo tape, he shared it with the producers and they picked up her song for the movie, giving her a big break.

this was the missing link. my buddy mitchell was a dead ringer for ethan hawke, and when i read that story i began to think "maybe she really thought it was ethan and she felt like they should know each other and he was snubbing her."

mitchell, and lisa, if you're out there i wonder if that's what happened.