"That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it always makes one a little giddy at first--"
"Living backwards!" Alice repeated in great stonishment. "I never heard of such a thing!"
"--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways."

Reading. I can tell you something about reading. I don't know how to read food labels. I'm not good at it at all. So, after having tried very hard to like Oatmeal and failed, and having begun to wonder to myself whether the Kashi oat cereal that I do like might be just as good for me, I had no way to settle the question either way. Even forgetting the fact that I have no idea how many servings of cereal I consume--since I eat it now almost exclusively out of the box in handfuls, while drinking milk, rather than bothering combining the two, for which my friends and housemates have made some fun of me--if I did, I wouldn't know what to look for. I usually use the nutrition facts labels to check the amount of fat, see whether there's any protein, and vaguely monitor the sodium (I get into sodium lows and have fainting spells). I don't know how to tell whether something is good for me by reading that business!

In fact, I'm beginning to doubt whether anyone can. I suspect increasingly that the only way to tell how good something is for one is by listening to one's mother and reading a lot of summaries of recent food studies. I can retain that kind of information quite well, but it won't do me any good in this case, since oats are old news, and though I even asked my mother this particular question, she didn't seem to have any better idea than I did.

Anyway, with all the irresponsibility that comes along with being responsible for myself for the first time, (I'm living on campus this summer as a research student, so called, and making my own schedule if not really supporting myself) I have let the whole morning slip away doing very little and next to nothing in particular, and now I have a free lunch to get to, but have not showered.

I think I'll make it my resolution for the day to go out and do something interesting so that I will not need to further embarrass myself and everyone else by blogging about oats anymore.