Reverend Ken's Blog: June 22, 2012: Post 528 (2012 Day 174)

June 22, 2012

Daily Comment

I began yesterday's writing by saying, "In the second phase of my college life, college was the smallest part of my life."

I ended that same post backwards, with a comment about high school, and never really finished discussing my 'phase 2'. I will do that here and now.

While I was more engaged in my college career this second time around, and had completely re-contextualized my college activities, most of the forces at play in my new environment were pulling me away from school.

For one thing, only one of my two new roommates was a student. He was studying to become a teacher, but doing it while maintaining a pot high and a party environment. When things got difficult at school, he left. The roommate that replaced him had dropped out of CCNY in his freshman year, with no plans on ever going back (he later invented one of the first optical mice [the computer input device] and snagged a job recording train sounds for Neal Young's Lionel Trains company, so I'm not of a mind to second-guess that decision). And the partying was continuous - we lived in a bad neighborhood in New York, but rarely locked our doors, because someone was always home, always up.

We were all hippies. No need to qualify it or soft-pedal it, although it has become a joke and a cliche and it is no longer fashionable to identify yourself as having been that. The 'Summer of Love' in San Francisco was about to happen. There were rock magazines. There were birth control pills, and women were re-thinking the conventional morality. There were psychedelics and there was pot. There was an antiwar movement. There was a sense of cool, of identifying with a group that was not looking at the post-World War II adults running things. FM radio was just catching on, and television wasn't part of the experience. The media hadn't caught on the way it would only a little later; nothing had been co-opted yet.

My apartment was a gathering place that concentrated all this radical-seeming change. There was constant music. There were lots of drugs around. There was a lot of sexual tension getting resolved.

And, at least for me, there was school. I was pretty good at showing up for class. Homework had to be done at school - it wasn't going to happen at home. I spent a lot of time in the South Campus cafeteria, but only a little time with my textbooks. Most of my time, on- and off-campus, was spent socializing. New friends, old friends, students and non-students, it was quite a scene.

There was a constant pull away from school. I couldn't answer the question of what I was hoping to get out of attending. I was still doing it out of a sense of inevitability and legacy, rather than with a purpose. School seemed less and less relevant. Then, one day, it was not.

The one class that I was struggling with was French. I had decided to take it to overcome my perceived disability with languages. Possibly, if I could have given it more concentrated effort, I might have succeeded, but one day, my teacher told me to withdraw from the class - I was not going to pass. I decided to drop out (again). I told my favorite teacher (European history), and she tried to dissuade me.

I mentioned it to the one older student I had befriended, and got a lecture on how difficult it would be to come back - and that I would want to come back. I thanked him. It took me quite a few years to discover how right he was - and where he was, in my case, wrong.

And, so, just before Thanksgiving, 1967, education phase 2 ended. The party I started when I got home that day lasted almost exactly 10 years.

Please leave a comment if you visit my blog. Thank you!

Food and Diet Section

Today's Weight: 205.6 lbs
Yesterday's Weight: 203.0 lbs
Day Net Loss/Gain: + 2.6 lbs

Year 2012 daily weight from December 31, 2011.

Diet Comment:

I don't want to give the impression that I am discouraged or dispirited, but really: Double ugh - I wasn't expecting today's weight gain at all. I thought I had a loss in the bag. Which just goes to show you. I may have to double down in the next week: No pepperoni, no snacking on home-made mayonnaise.

For those of you who are thinking, well, of course, eating that stuff will make you fat; I humbly disagree. I'm not sure what is going on here, but I know that eating fat doesn't make you fat. There is a miniscule amount of sugar used to make the pepperoni - I'm more likely to suspect that.

And my home-made mayonnaise, while by definition being nearly pure fat, is all good fat (grapeseed, walnut and macadamia nut oil, if you must know); and the spices that I use do not include any sugar, but do include quite a bit of black and red pepper.

I also know that calories are pretty meaningless in determining whether weight will go up or down - whether you stimulate a fat-storing or fat-burning hormonal response is more important.

So, I am still dispassionate, but I also haven't broken this 6-week weight-increase trend, either. The chart shows that it is broke, so it needs fixing.

Food Log

Breakfast
A cocoa-kale protein shake (almond milk, whey protein (36g protein), kale, chia seeds, cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, stevia-inulin blend).

Lunch