Leveraged Intelligence

My Little Warrior

She isn’t very big, just a smidge over 5 ft. tall (about 153 centimeters).  A smidge is just about this much – ||.  And, she can seem quite civilized as you can see above.

Yet, we find that going to New Zealand has brought out a different side: a mini Maori Warrior Princess!  She texted this message to me on Sunday:

I’m about to dress in warrior clothes, get my face painted with traditional markings, and do the haka!

I show you the Maori Haka from YouTube:

She said that only the men stick out their tongues – as though that would make me feel better.   Her group was videotaped performing it (not the group above, no) and then put on a DVD that she will be bringing home in June.

But … I’m almost afraid to bring her home …

Big Event Coming!

Carly Turns 20!

This is timed to release at the precise minute Carly turns 20.

Happy Birthday Carly!!

How Unsuspecting Students Gain the Freshman 15

Note to readers: The above picture is NOT a result of the freshman 15.  Carly had just had her wisdom teeth removed and that caused chipmunk cheeks!  Sorry, Carly … couldn’t resist.

This is a very good entry that she submitted and has implications for more than just her university:

Most of us assume that college students gain the dreaded freshman 15 because suddenly we can eat whatever we want and we usually don’t choose the healthiest options. On top of that, we study until the middle of the night and snacks become a necessity. But what about those students, like me, who go off to college absolutely determined not to gain weight? Is it POSSIBLE to maintain your weight or even try to lose those 10-15 pounds from your freshman year when you eat all of your meals on campus? I thought eating healthier and making better choices would be a no-brainer until SDSU added a “Nutritional Information” link to their website and I found out what’s really in the food that I’m eating and where those mysterious new pounds are coming from. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Weight Watchers points, it is an easier way to count a combination of the calories, fat, and fiber that we consume every day. To give you a reference point, a person my size – 5’1” and 115 pounds who walks regularly throughout the day – should be eating 20-22 points worth of food each day. I thought I was making pretty healthy choices until I realized that college food can be pretty misleading…

At SDSU:

• 1 small turkey and cheese sandwich = 7 points
• 1 turkey and cheese pita = 10.5 points
• 1 grilled chicken breast = 8 points
• 1 veggie burger = 7 points
• 1 turkey and avocado sandwich = 9 points

Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well remember, a 7 point food item is 1/3 of a normal day’s worth of food for me, and I’m just getting warmed up.

At SDSU:

• 1 California Grilled Chicken Sandwich = 14.5 points
• 1 small bowl of penne pasta with marinara = 15 points
• 1 cheese quesadilla = 18 points
• 1 cup of bowtie pesto pasta salad = 14 points
• 1 bean and cheese burrito = 16 points
• 1 Waldorf Chicken Pita = 17 points

So as you can see, eating one of these items alone takes care of almost an entire day worth of calories for a person my size. So while we college students think we’re eating fairly healthy food, like a grilled chicken sandwich, we’re packing on the pounds. But the mother of all surprises hit me when I looked up the nutritional information for the ultimate health food – my favorite salad: spinach and romaine lettuce, almonds, avocado, black beans, olives, broccoli, carrots, cucumber, a small scoop of hardboiled eggs, mushrooms, walnuts, grilled shrimp, and Light Ranch dressing on the side. I figured it was basically a pile of veggies and protein packed together into a dish. SURPRISE! My favorite SDSU salad is a whopping 21 POINTS. That salad is my entire allowance of calories during the day, and I had no idea. So the next time you think the freshman 15 is due to laziness, think again. Although some college students become lazy with their eating habits and exercise routines, some of us gain the freshman 15 because of a lack of knowledge and a lack of nutritional labels. So what’s the trick to avoiding, or at least minimizing the freshman 15? Live at the gym, don’t ever keep tempting snacks in your dorm room, and eat the smallest portion you possibly can to fill yourself up and keep your brain working until the next round of tests. Then when you get the chance to go home, hopefully you have a mom like mine who makes really good low calorie, low sodium, low fat vegetable soup.

Reasons Why College Students Aren’t Like the Rest of the World

As you probably know by now, my pride and joy thinks for herself.  This just came in – and I’m glad to see the college experience is still quite the weird trip!

Reasons Why College Students Aren’t Like the Rest of the World:

1. They dress up in vagina costumes to battle violence against women (yes, this really happened).

2. They can buy five hours of energy for $2.99.

3. They think Thursday night is the beginning of the weekend.

4. They work 3 jobs so that they can spend their entire paycheck on coffee because the 3 jobs have deprived them of so much sleep.

5. They spend time writing for their dad’s blogs when they should be studying for 8am quizzes!

Introducing My Daughter to the Universe!

My daughter, Carly, is going to San Diego State University and this is her first contribution to my blog.  Need I say that she is my pride and joy?

• Hello universe. My name is Carly, and 5 months ago I moved 500 miles away from my family, friends, and fiancée to go to San Diego State University. Tough, right? Yea, but I’m having the time of my life even though I’m practically the only college student in the world who doesn’t find alcohol appealing and probably one of the only college students ever that has been asked to write in her dad’s blog. Seriously. Most of my friends’ parents don’t even know how to use a computer. So while my roommate’s mom is bugging her for hours on end about how to set up an e-mail account, my dad is publishing his own website. Weird. Well, here’s the deal – between 17 units of classes, the University Honors Program, the Student Nutrition Organization, a long distance love, and an ongoing battle to fight off the freshman 15 (it looks even worse on a nutrition major, believe me) I don’t have a whole lot of free time, so my entries in here won’t be incredibly long. This might even be the longest one you’ll read from me, but from time to time I’m going to try to throw something out there. It might be a thought I had, or something weird that happened to me, or maybe just something I think is interesting. Believe it or not, I think college students can teach their parents a thing or two, so watch out – maybe, just MAYBE, you can learn something from a kid. WAIT – I’m not a kid. I just turned 19 years old. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll be a kid forever – a kid who can vote, drive, and attempt to figure out credit cards. So anyway, before I leave you all to work on my sociology homework, I’ll throw out a few things that I discovered today that you might find interesting.
  
  

  1. It feels AMAZING to start your day off with an hour on the treadmill, even if you have to wake up at the crack of dawn to do it.

  2. There is at least one blind person attending San Diego State University and I almost ran right into her today. How a blind person can navigate herself through a campus of 35,000 students astounds me, but apparently she makes it work. Be thankful for your vision – it makes it a lot easier not to run into people, even though I do it quite often anyway.

  3. Statistically speaking, you are safer at a strip club than at a fast food restaurant. Yes, this really is true. My sociology teacher told me today and she’s super smart. So the next time you’re trying to decide between going to a fast food restaurant and a strip club, well, I’ll let you make your own decision…

That’s all for today, but hopefully I’ll be back soon. For those of you who know me at all, you know I proofread this about a million times, so if there are any typos, please hold back the urge to criticize the younger generation and don’t point out the mistakes made by a weary undergrad.

Y ahora, tengo que decir adios a los amigos de mi padre. Hasta luego

Ah, To Be 18…er, 19 Again!

At precisely 4:54 PM, PST, the Hake clan will celebrate the glorious birth of our daughter precisely nineteen years earlier.  She was due Christmas Day, but after acting like she was going to be right on time at Uncle Charlie’s Christmas dinner, she decided to hang out another four days at the spa.  I mean, it was winter outside – or, at least what passes for winter in Northern California – and the water was so nice and warm.  I mean, a kid could hang out there til Summer, right?

Now, that brought us to an interesting question: If she were born on the 31st and we stayed into the 1st, would the insurance company charge us a deductible for just 1989, or the deductible for 1989 and 1990?  Couldn’t believe the answer; two deductibles!  Doctors and insurance companies weren’t always on the same page back then, either, so the doctor told us he would induce rather than let that happen.  He said Carly was ready to come out, anyway.  She claimed she wasn’t ready quite yet and that we should all mind our own business.

But, around 9:00 the morning of December 29th, it all became a moot point when Carol went into labor.  Having already had one kid, she was cool as a cucumber and said she would tell me when the right time to go to the hospital was.  Around 3:30, she said it was time.  Having been around her easy attitude all day, I sauntered around getting things together for the car – when she told me to hurry my ass up, didn’t I get that it was time?!!

Thank God the traffic wasn’t worse than it was.  We got to the hospital at 4:00 and they said that the way Carol looked they were going to dispense with a lot of the paperwork and get her to the delivery room right away.  Zip, zoom, we are up there and they tell her she is dilated four and that it won’t be long.  She asked if she could have the pain blocker and they checked her again.  She was dilated ten!  They told her to get ready for that natural childbirth that she hadn’t sought!

Well, they had the neatest machine at the hospital attached to the mom’s head.  It showed what the imagery was of the mind as the mother entered the birth process.  I have that image today of her first impression of Carly:

Carol said it felt like she rode in on an elephant!  I asked a woman about what childbirth felt like once and she told me that it was like passing a Volkswagen – and she wasn’t talking about traffic!  Essentially, that doctor sat down there with a catcher’s mitt and caught that little late Christmas gift as she barreled out.  None of this “Push, push, push!!” urging I always see on TV.

Actually, this picture is of Carly taken yesterday with her fiancée.   They went to Great America and took a ride on Valerie, which Carly says is the nicest elephant she’s ever ridden.  Like she rides an elephant every Thursday.

My, they do grow up so quickly!  It really does seem like yesterday…

Any great birth stories, Moms?