Chicken Feta Orzo Salad

When you’re a broke college student, pasta is a God-send. You can make it a thousand ways, make it healthy (or as caloric as you want), put whatever you feel like in it, and it always seems to make enough to eat off of for at least three days. When I was working on my graduate degree and living with my sister, we probably should have just bought stock in Barilla.

When looking for something new to try, I came across a pasta salad using orzo pasta on Pinterest. I tweaked the recipe to add veggies we liked, and it went over so well we had it at least once a month from there out. The awesome thing about this recipe, besides being super easy and guaranteeing you leftovers, is that you can change out the veggies and pasta for whatever you prefer. Take the chicken out, and it’s now vegetarian. Don’t like tomatoes? Toss ’em out, and add something like red pepper. We have made a version before that includes olives. Prefer something over orzo? Try that! In the rest of this post, the example I use I actually used gluten-free rotini instead of orzo (if you’ve ever managed to find gluten free orzo, please tell me where!) since the diners included my boyfriend.

The Budget Inn – Rawlins, WY

Being unemployed means that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in my hometown. While Rawlins is a small enough place that I pretty much know every nook and cranny already from growing up here, I have noticed a few places I’ve never gotten to explore in detail. Namely, abandoned buildings that I vaguely remember being operational when I was younger.

There are a good number of abandoned buildings and run down places in town, but one that has caught my eye as of late is the Budget Inn motel near where I live. I remember seeing hotel guests here at least when I was in elementary/middle school, and remember it being a different color at one point. The front portion of the site used to be a gas station before being converted into a motel. From my understanding, the motel was originally shut down due to a serious need for major renovations. The front office has a building permit from 2012 on the door, but any efforts to remodel the place have apparently been halted awhile ago.

Book Review |It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

Book Finished: August 17th, 2014

Rating: 4/5 Stars

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I have been interested in reading this book for awhile, but had been putting it off because of the subject manner – depression. Unemployment doesn’t necessarily put someone in the greatest state of mind. However, with Robin Williams’ recent death, I felt like now might be an important time to pick it up. I am very glad I did.

The story follows Craig, a teenager who has just gotten into a very competitive professional-prep high school and is also dealing with clinical depression.