I enter Night Two with an inviting cup of broken-leaf Darjeeling tea at the conn. It is from an inexpensive sample from Upton tea that I didn't know I had on hand. There just remains sad, tinny knocks in the canister of my typical Darjeeling, Badamtam Estate 2nd Flush FTGFOP1 from Upton. It's a simple luxury that I steep twice to cut the costs in half. And if I'm pressed, I don't know if I could justify paying the double per cup of my usual fare.

I began drinking tea in 2011—wait, I've been drinking sweet tea my entire life, I did mention the southern thing, right? I've been drinking loose leaf teas since 2011 as I was in grad school. I don't recall what unplugged me like Neo from that bagged tea nonsense. I can remember where I was when I first began drinking coffee (a late bloomer at age 20), but I don't recall the details with tea. In a way, it was counter-cultural as an American and/or not a grandmother. Yes, the plucky, non-traditional, MA student fighting the Man by taking shots of grandma's rose tea—seriously, it's actual rose petals and its Odin-awful!

Sometimes when I don't buy a 100-125 oz bag to refill my stock, I'll order a mass of $1-$2.50 samples that I've never had. Each packet generally provides enough leaves for 10 cups total if it's just a single steep. Then when the shipment arrives, it's like a geeky party of one! No vomitorium required!

It's not that I dislike coffee. Coffee is...like arena rock. It pounds; it screams; it explodes into a pyrotechnics. Tea is a laser light show with a fog machine. Tea sinks into my mind, twirls, and swirls through my consciousness whereas coffee slaps me across the face like a scorned lover.

I've been fighting off the trials of fasting by...SURPRISE, drinking tea. Earlier tonight, I wore a helmet of headache. It's never something I look forward to because like in other pursuits of life, I don't enjoy beating myself over the head with a tack hammer. Tea has largely kept those hounds in abeyance. Furthermore, this has been one of the smoothest transitions away from the ordinary world that I've experienced. There has been a lot of setup for it—this site and such, but it seems to be pushing me over into successful territory. Indeed, it is challenging to deny ourselves a pleasure that we literally feast on 3...4...5 times a day. But, unlike a 2003 fast, at least I don't have friends who swing by my place to heat up a Papa John's pizza in my own oven as I watch them eat it before they leave.

True, the water fasting purists glower at me, but I just hand over a tack hammer and tell them to go open for AC/DC.