Overkill

Every day I walk to school along a partially randomized route. The partial randomization is so that it won't be as easy to ambush me, but I spend a lot of time sitting next to a computer, which puts me in front of but not facing a window from which you can see the bell tower of a nearby church, so if someone with the sophistication to set an ambush was trying to kill me they could just pay someone to pick me off from a few blocks away.

Anyway, even though the route is partially randomized some significant portion of it usually takes me along the ave, and for a long time now I've been stopping somewhere along the way for breakfast. That was nearly always subway but I've run the numbers on that and it turns out it's fucking stupid.

I was paying way too much for what I was getting. So, a few boxes of smart start and a nicely trimmed food budget later I've begun eating breakfast before leaving. I've found that I still have the desire to get something along the way though. There's an easy obvious solution to this but I'm one of the six people who live in Seattle that don't regularly drink coffee.

I settled eventually on Vitamin Water, for a few reasons. First of all it's the only drink that comes with a supposed attached to it's flavor. I only kind of believe that, but I like this feature because it allows me to pick a flavor based on my emotional state. It's mood drink. Am I feeling worried about a test? I can grab a bottle of "Focus," and let the awesome power of the placebo effect wash over me. If I'm feeling tired I can grab a bottle of "Energy," or possibly "Revive," depending on what kind of tired it is.

So all well and good, kinda, but the price of vitamin water isn't what I'm here to question. I just felt the need to address just how many vitamins I was getting.

Each morning I get up and take

54 mg of Concerta
400 mg of Resveratrol
250 mg of Green Tea extract
1000 mg of Fish oil

And too much to list from my multi-vitamin, which apparently also includes 8,333% of my daily B-12 needs.

After doing all that I eat smart start, which according to the box provides 100% of my daily need for 10 separate things in one serving. I eat least two servings, meaning that I'm getting at least 200% of my daily needs in those things, not to mention that by that point I'm up to eighty five times the amount of B-12 I apparently need in a day.

It seems like the last thing I would need at that point is more vitamins. I have to wonder if the vitamin water is even having any effect, or if it just goes directly into the waste bin.

However, all is not lost. I may be wasting a lot of vitamins, and slowly polluting our water supply with several tons of B-12, but I finally found a definitive gain from drinking so much vitamin water. When I got sick I had five bottles just laying around, including one bottle of "Defense" sitting chilled in my Eric's 'fridge, which would've been appropriate if I had drank it the day before I got sick. So definitely an overkill on the vitamins, but the bottles are crazy handy.