Given that I am now hovering around 158 lbs (with a lower fat content of 17.5%, though), I decided on a whim to try something drastic. I'll go away for two weeks to Indonesia, hoping that they don't have there as many amazing desserts as in the cafeteria where I work. It is drastic, but as a side effect I will see S. there.
Last night I went to see the Streb SLAM show, that takes place in the warehouse where I take my trapeze classes. It was delightful.
The coincidence is this: There was a raffle with four prizes. The flying trapeze class, the pop action class, and the gift certificate for a restaurant closeby were all won by the three women closest to me.
Was it that the audience was all male but for three women sprinkled around? Not so. These three women were also my friends.
Was it that I used my acquaintance with some of the performers to bias the results of the raffle? Not so.
The explanation is more mundane: the kids who sold the raffle tickets and drew them from the pot hadn't shuffled properly. The winning tickets were 4213403, 4213401 and 4213384. The first two were bought by N and S within seconds of each other. The third one... that's a coincidence. Unless M noticed that nobody was checking the numbers, and cunningly declared herself the winner so that the real winner didn't bother looking at his ticket. I am impressed.
But consider this: M was the fourth winner. Everybody had had the time to look at their tickets thrice. I myself had time to check my ticket number before M screamed with excitement. It was 4213385. I had bought six tickets and given three to M, one to T and one to K. One of those I gave to M was the winner.
Later in the evening, M was able to convince N to trade her flying trapeze lesson against the restaurant gift certificate. That was cunning. N was so thrilled that she had won something "for the first time in [her] life" that she didn't mind what it was: "It could have been a pencil, I would have been as happy."
As for myself, I felt proud to have brought twenty people to the show (out of an audience of about eighty), to have won by proxy three fourth of the prizes, and finally to be able to feed excellent cheese to the ten friends who ended up at my place: the cheese store on Bedford Avenue was just a few minutes away from closing when I passed in front.
Allthis to say that maybe it is time to switch career.
My dire predictions did not come to pass. On Wednesday morning, I woke up, removed the two ice packs from my leg -- They seemed warmer than me. I got out of bed. I walked. And hence the universal law suffers some exceptions, and therefore I will be in good enough physical condition to show off again next week.
And in the meanwhile, my weight is going up, up, up. 157.6 this morning. If only, once again, I had Skinny Bunny's will, I would run like she does.
At the same time, I have an advantage over her: I will spend the holidays in Indonesia, where Christmas will be an occasion for a delirious second serving of peanut chicken, but no more.
I stumbled upon a universal law this evening: Working out with a group of young and attractive women is not conducive to working out with care.
During the conditioning part of my Fly/Bounce/Crunch class, we did some exercises on the silk, where I could show off (I am very strong... for a woman). But when it came to stretching, I came to forget that the show off time was over. One leg in the silk, the other on the ground, doing as much of a split as I could, first on my good side, hearing my workout-mates say: "whao". Then on my bad side, hearing my leg say: "Tchonk".
It doesn't hurt at this time, but if I remember well from a similar mishap in my extreme stretching class, as my body cools down, it will barely be able to walk, and same with me, as I never walk without my body. For now: ibuprofen by the truckload and, as the ice pack pamphlet says: RICE -- Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate. Much less conspicuous than if it had said: IIII - Ice, Ice, Ice, Ice.
Tomorrow is the day: I am supposed to do ten chin-ups. I have been practicing with ten extra pounds: five on my ankles that I will shed on the last day, and five in my belly that alas will take some time to get rid of.
It is a understatement to say that I am extremely excited. The trapeze rigger just left. We discussed installing a static trapeze in my apartment. It is completely doable, and it should be all done by January end.
What does this have to do with the theme of this blog? Well, this means I will have my daily dose of workout, and hence will go towards 0 at a faster pace, maybe even going towards it rather than away from it.
There is a restaurant one block from my new place. It's called Fada. It's French. Very French. The steak au poivre with fries I had on Sunday night with R. was very French. It was also fatteningly fattening. And no red wine to conterbalance its effects.
Skinny Bunny gave me a set of healthy foods to either apologize for having woken me up last night or to thank me for having opened my door to give her the keys to her place, that she had given me when we used to live a stone throw from each other, as it appears she had locked herself out. The present was touching. I had felt a dip in our relationship after the last trapeze class. It seemed our eating habits were diverging. But we are now back in the best of terms, and the walnuts, porcini mushrooms, wholewheat crackers, fingerling potatoes and others that I found in my little present are a sign of the renewed friendship.
I know I shouldn't look at individual numbers. I know I shouldn't mind nor celebrate that my body fat was 16.4% this morning.
On the other hand, I know I shouldn't guilty that, faced with a grand opening of a new cafe at work, with a resident chef exactly like at the headquarters, I ate a little too much: endives with cheese, vegetables marinara, beef bourguignon, salmon curry, cassoulet, potato gratin, all this in no small quantities.
Housewarming party last night. Apparently a success -- I wouldn't know: I was to busy to notice. About seventy people, and many cakes, lemon pies, cookies. I am left with three half cakes of the sweetest kind. They are looking at me, like Dori: "Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!" I had bought a box of cut vegetables -- the healthy choice -- for a heavy price at Fresh Direct. This morning, I discovered I had forgotten it on the balcony. I ate celery all day today.
A recipe to lose weight: organize a party, dance all night, go to bed late, drink a bit maybe: by the next morning, you are three pounds lighter. Dehydration, Skinny Bunny tells me.
Two days ago, I received the video of my static trapeze show. I watched it. I watched it again. The laughters heard over the music during the performance, the applause at the end. Intoxicating.
Last night, I digitized it and put it on YouTube. It got immediately three viewings: all by me. Alas, the initial elation is now replaced by pain: a low-level, internal pain, each time I fail to keep my legs completely straight, each time my feet flex, each time the trapeze wobbles. And of course each time my tight T-shirt chooses to tighten over a blob than over a taut muscle.
I also learn that gestures can be bigger, that I can slow down. All important information, to be applied to my next show, where I will explore my priestly side.
Friday night to Saturday night at M&B: coffee, chocolate, sugar, risotto by the pound. But also some exercise: helped them build their closet, fixed some doors, readjusted the curtains.
- Backend straddle whip: missed the catch.
- Uprise shoot: my belly is red and blue.
- Swinging: The timing is still wrong and my heels are sinking after theforce out.
In other words, I have reached a plateau.
But at the same time, I have started losing weight again, and I really don't know why (why would I care?), because I have been absolutely careless about eating. Maybe DDR is already doing its magic? I ordered a pad, it doesn't seem to be enough to justify losing three pounds.
event though the dessert chef at work is not the best in the world -- creating such horrors as a cinnamon flan -- there is still dessert everyday for lunch and it has the effect of a siren song.
So, the plan is now this: do a lot of aerobic exercise. And the one and only one way to do that is: get a Dance Dance Revolution at home. That's D.'s advice, and I trust him.
Stepmania is a free clone of DDR that runs on PC. I can simply buy a dance pad and use the PC. However, I tried with the keyboard and I am not sure it is responsive enough. If there is any delay in the transmission between the input and the processing, then all is lost, as one of the side effects of this plan should be to learn rhythm.
I am just back from a dinner with Skinny Hare Bunny. I don't remember if she mentioned it, but in any case, from her menus, it is fairly easy to infer that she is a vegetarian. It is not absolutely obvious, however, that she is one by birth and has never tasted meat.
We shared:
1. Buffalo Wings
2. Chicken Satay
3. Chicken salad
4. Something else
Only proteins, no carbs. All soy, in various in-carnations.
Skinny Bunny recently posted some numbers. Time to post mine.
I stopped taking Wellbutrin around September 23rd. In other words, whatever I called 'my will to lose weight' was amounting for naught. Well, I decided to stop being so careful after my trapeze show, and I had numerous desserts. That "decision', too, is suspect. It was simply too hard to resist dessert. Before the 23rd, I could watch the dessert table (very consequential at the cafeteria at work -- and it's free) without a second thought. Wellbutrin was acting directly on my desire to eat. Time to eat some horribly bitter pill after each dessert.
The kind souls will notice that my body fat has not gone back up to it's starting 18.5%. The less kind soul will look at (unpublished) data and point to the average body fat over the past six months: oscillating between 17.5% and 18%. In other words, my attempt to lose weight has failed miserably, and once again I must turn to Skinny Bunny, whose trend is down without chemicals and hence with only the force of her will. I don't believe I have free will, but it doesn't mean she doesn't either. She probably does. How could she be so opinionated otherwise?
When one talks about diet, it is only natural that the subject of transubstantiation come to the table: if all steaks and food could be replaced by a wafer each, so many pounds would melt!
And this brings me to the question of the belief in life after death. "It provides comfort," people say. No no no: This is not enough to explain the widespread belief in life after death. There is no reason why we should innately fear death. The fear of losing a limb would do as well for providing the extra zing that will make you run faster than the tiger. Losing a limb is much worse than death, from the prospective of the tri-limbed. Anything is worse than a quick death, even the feeling of dissatisfaction that comes after eating your third wafer.
If you ever lost a loved one, you will notice how easy it is to mistakenly recognize him in the street, to feel that he is behind you as you are working on your algebra homework. We are trained to recognized our loved ones from minute clues, and we generate false positives all the time, even when we know well that the person's body is no more. And thus, while the loved one is dead and well dead, he still seems to be around. A ghost. See Pascal Boyer, "Religion Explained."
All Darwinian explanations of the origins of religion are fine and well -- Dawkins, in "The God Delusion," promotes the idea that it is a side-effect of other well-adapted features of our brain, as opposed to something that is or ever was useful. OK, fine and well, but there is only one way to measure how reasonable a theory is concerning the origin of religious feelings: it is by devising a cure. And don't mention reason: it is too complex a treatment to vindicate any one theory.
All this killed my appetite. No more wafer tonight.
I recently purchased a Roomba, a vacuum cleaning robot that goes around the apartment and swallows all the dust it can find. There is a light called 'dust detector' that lights up when it detects some particularly crunchy and deliciously dirty spot. I have seen the same mechanism in people's eyes, it's called a 'sugar detector' in that case.
Alas, Roomba often stops in the middle of its meal with another light blinking: 'Dieting'.
My father (A) and step-mother (M) were visiting for ten days, until this evening. I survived. I brought them to the intensive trapeze workshop this weekend. I was not the only one who encouraged them to try, but they remained screwed to the grass, although enjoying every minute of the weekend at 'Club Getaway'. Club Getaway is exactly like a Club Med, but the latter has a bad name in France. A & M refused to accept any similarity. Not that they have ever been to Club Med, as far as I know.
A & M were wondering about why Skinny Bunny's was so cool towards them. M, with her usual depth of analysis, suggested that Skinny Bunny had constructed a fantasmatic scenario construing them (A & M) as some kind of... there was no elaboration, but the conclusion was: they don't hold anything against her.
Little did they know that it had nothing to do with them. Little did I know that it had so much to do with me and my unbearable pride. In nay case, who wants to bother spending time seeking the answer to such a question? Not me. I'll remain proud and unbearable in any case.
A crepe filled with caramelized banana and melted chocolate. That was my dessert at lunch.
Skinny Bunny sent me an email today: "Add a task in your task list to update your blog." There it is.
My first subtask was to read Skinny Bunny's blog. She has made progress not only in trapeze but also in writing. Her blog is funnier, lighter. It was a pleasure to read one month worth (I had indeed stopped reading).
First, weight. Here are the graphs. Weight is:
And body fat is:
And Excel doesn't want to remove the furnerary border, but let it be known that horizontal lines appear every half point, and that it starts at 16. The average line is at 17.5.
Notice how the weight went down until my first trapeze show (I did two of them, the second one was attended by Skinny Bunny, my girlfriend, and about twenty other fans), then shot up. Crisis of will? Job done? Anxiety provoked by visiting father and stepmother (with whom I have very little contact otherwise)? Having stopped Wellbutrin, the miracle antidepressant that makes you lose weight?
Am I asking a why question?
Let's review the facts: the body fat hasn't really gone back up. I gained a lot of strength in the past few weeks. I can now do six pull ups in a row for the first time in my life. Delighted with this result, I got a pull up bar today (the 'Door Gym' kind, that you install and remove at will, the one that doesn't damage the door frame), and set up a task to be able to do ten in a row by Dec 4th. Skinny Bunny will have one too soon, I'm sure.
Skinny Bunny complains about her mental block regarding the pull over shoot. I was impressed about how hard she worked on it, how she wouldn't let go. I suspect that something else happened that she didn't talk about: The first few times, the guy on the line helped her by pulling as she did her pull over. The third time she tried on Saturday morning, the first time she was not able to complete her pull over, the guy on the line had stopped giving the little extra help, and I believe that he never did it again. So, in summary, and I may be wrong, I believe that Skinny Bunny did not regress, but is just struggling with a difficult move.
I tried the pull over shoot twice a few months ago. I was able to pull over without any problem. Most likely the line guy helped me too at the time.
Did I mention that my static trapeze show went very well? It was only 2 minutes and 46 seconds, as the remastered Pink Panther theme on which I was performing Clouzeaux-in-the-air can attest, but I loved it, and can't wait for a the next show in March. Maybe a spy story this time?
I started the diet and hence the blog in order to get ready for the show. I could say: mission accomplished. I got under 150 lbs for a few fleeting days. However, I feel compelled to continue, to get back to this far gone 150, to reduce my body fat to under 16%. Why do I feel this compulsion? Don't you ever learn? Never ask why because you can ask why forever.
Today was our first flying trapeze session for the intensive flying workshop -- Skinny Bunny will tell you all about it, I am sure. She is doing extremely well, learned a new trick today that she executed perfectly. This is yet another motivation to be fit and lose weight. We need to have more power and less flab to fly higher and better.
The New York Times has an article on Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who lost 100 lbs and want everybody else to do the same:
"And while the campaign may have raised Mr. Huckabee’s national profile, not everyone here appreciates a governor whose policies include weighing schoolchildren and sending home report cards on their body mass index."Splendid idea.
Sunday is, as Skinny Bunny would say, 'number day'. So, here is the graph since the beginning of this endeavor. The y-axis is my weight in pounds in the morning.
The second most interesting about this graph is that I went under 150 lbs for the first time since I started recording my weight in 2003.
The most intersting thing about this graph is that, at last, I was able to generate a picture from an Excel graph. It took me ten years.
I woke up at 6:30am, but can't seem to gather enough energy to do something. My task list is sitting in front of me refusing to help me. I remember that Skinny Bunny recommends oatmeal. I have a bowl in front of me. It tastes like cardboard. I read Skinny Bunny's blog entry on the matter. Once again, she has already done all the thorough research: instant oatmeal is indeed supposed to taste like cardboard. At least I am eating mine unflavored, so as far as carbohydrates are concerned, it's all fiber, and the glycemic load is fairly low.
I just finished my bowl. It was edible. Now I can proceed to my daily ten minutes of ear training.
The quote of the day in the New York Times daily email:
"Even though we might assume some patients are not aware, I think we should always talk to them, always explain what's going on, always make them comfortable, because maybe they are there, inside, aware of everything."
I just came back from watching a movie with two of the lobsters' friends. The plot is very fitting to our current endeavor, Skinny Bunny and me.
Alicia is a young woman who eats very little and goes to a clinic. She is treated by a professional nurse, Benigno, who is slightly overweight. Marco's girlfriend suffers from the same condition and is treated at the same clinic. Benigno and Marco become friends, but never have lunch or dinner together. Marco and Lydia break up over an argument about Valencia squid -- is it prepared 'a la plancha' or roasted? Marco leaves Spain to write another of his famous culinary guides, about the cuisine of Jordan. In the meanwhile, Benigno watches a movie about a scientist who invents a formula to lose weight. He tells Alicia about it, who eats healthily everafter.
In case you want to see it: it's called 'Talk to her' by Pedro Almodovar.
Under Skinny Bunny's watch, home fries are but a decorative element on a plate. In the evening, however, without her, without N. who has left for Washington DC this morning, sharing the dinner table with six people, two lobsters and a crab, and not in a talkative mood, I feasted and regretted it at each bite.
Skinny Bunny asked why she eats. Most of the time, I snub a question that starts with 'why', following the precept I learned in acting class once: 'Never ask why, because you can ask why forever.' The question, however, can lead to charming and even touching narratives. Skinny Bunny's was such a narrative. And I felt she was right.
Enough time wasted with this 'why' nonsense. 'How' is the question. Eat more slowly, put down your fork between bites, recite 'Pater Noster' every two, and sing 'La Marseillaise' in its entirety and in full voice every four. That should be enough to discourage me from overeating. And never again a friendly lobster or crab at my table.
Time to go to bed. I have been toying with the idea of going running every morning at 6:45am for two reservoir rounds. Nice toy.
Skinny Bunny is right, what a mistake to look too carefully at the numbers on a daily basis. This morning, for instance, I discovered that my weight was 153.6 lbs. I started crying. "What have I done? What have I done?" It is not only the American Cheese, I need to be more careful. How could I imagine that loss would happen by just willing it to be?
I went back on the scale after I stopped crying: 153.4 lbs. Crying is good.
Skinny Bunny, on the other hand, is a model of determination. All she said she would do, she is doing, and Almighty God is rewarding her with three pounds whisked off her body. It is time to get back to my initial plan and stick to it, i.e: snoop on her blog and copy.
I will try to copy Skinny Bunny and write everything I ate yesterday:
Breakfast:
This morning, 152.4 lbs, once more confirming the trend. 18.5% body fat. Obviously I should continue to eat as I did last night, at dinner at M&B: No ice cream. Just chicken Moroccan style with rice, cheese (five types) with bread, and after a healthy serving of strawberries, five or six dragees. And halva too, but I don't remember how much as the serving dish was just within a foot of my right hand. It is also hard to measure how much halva one is ingesting, as you can perchance grab a big clump, or just a few grains.
Last night, my trapeze class went very well. There are two tricks in my routine that I am still not smooth with: side saddle roll up, and stand roll to a sit. The first one, I get stuck in the middle, with rope around my legs, in a very clumsy position. The second one, I am only very scared, as I let my feet get off the trapeze to slowly roll in the air, holding the ropes firmly with my hands. I hold my breath when I start, so scared that I am. It doesn't help. Not surprising that trapeze is going better: there is so much less weight to carry. I interpret this as such: chicken (Moroccan style), cheese, dragees and halva is a perfect diet for a trapezist. And don't forget the one and a half cliff bar I had during trapeze.
This morning: 153.0 lbs, confirming the downwards trend. Body fat: 19.5%, confirming the unreliability of the Tanita.
I don't know of this story first hand. What I mean is that I didn't know personally the mice who were part of the experiment. I don't know the scientists who conducted the experiment either. I read about it in a book.
Some mice drink from a bowl, and are given a shot so that a few hours later, they become nauseous. They learn very quickly not to drink from the bowl anymore. Some other mice drink from the same bowl, and two hours later they are given an electric shock. They do not learn not to drink from the bowl. The interpretation is that the mice are prewired to associate certain stimuli with certain reactions. It makes perfect sense.
(My girlfriend just gave me a present: some nougats from Le Pain Quotidien. I had to have one out of appreciation. Then I learned that she had bought them a long time ago and had just found them buried under papers in a drawer.)
On November 30, 1984, I went to the birthday party of a friend of my cousin. We were young, then, less than 21, even less than 18, in a country where you didn't have to wait. In the sense that I had gin with Coke, then more, and so much so that I had a black out. I couldn't drink gin for fifteen years after that. The smell was enough to make me feel like a mouse drinking from the wrong bowl.
I imagine a radical new diet, with a pill, that we will call N, that gives you nausea. You can eat as many sweets as you desire. Each time you do, you also swallow an N. If we follow the teaching of the mice, you should quickly stop going towards the sweets. On the other hand, please do not try to achieve the same with an electric chair. The mice would smirk at you.
It is a sin to look at noisy data without averaging. Yet I cannot help but notice that my weight today is 152.8 lbs, down from an average of 156 between August 8 and August 25. The body fat is 18.1% down from a 18.6% computed over the same period.
It is not completely a sin. There is a correlation between the amount of food one ate the day before and the weight in the morning, even if this correlation is not perfect as it depends on the amount of dehydration. In any case, because of this correlation, I get direct feedback, both negative and positive. If I ate a lot the night before, I see within ten hours. Without an obsessive weight recording program, it would take several months before I would see the effects of drifting eating habits.
Skinny Bunny is tempted to throw the towel. Please, Skinny Bunny, don't do that. You are my motivation and my inspiration.
Establishing a new routine is the second most difficult endeavor in one's life. I am French and hence grew up without hygiene. You can imagine how hard it was to learn to floss everyday. I am still fighting for it. It is precisely because it is so hard that I need to have a daily task in my Outlook to remind me to do it. The only routine that I have been able to establish firmly is to look at my due tasks on Outlook everyday. Call this the mother-of-all-routines.
Getting rid of a well-established routine is the first most difficult endeavor in one's life: thought patterns, behaviors in relationships, nail-biting. How much would I give to be a blank slate and only have to establish new routines rather than getting rid of old ones.
Last night, I had some 'soy chips' before leaving the office. It is a slippery slope, as the real chips are less than a foot away. When one extends one's hand, who is in control of what it will grab?
Skinny Bunny, we will get together to the promisedland of low girth. Only twenty-five more days to go.
We are now firmly established in a daily routine, after two days. Routine is rather boring, actually, and I am thinking of moving on soon to another goal. Soon could be tomorrow. The goal could be set so as to answer the question: 'How does it feel to weigh 200 pounds?'
I have a spreadsheet that records my weight since March 1st 2003, sometimes on a daily basis, sometimes with long periods of silence, like when I was in India for a few months. Sometimes, I show it proudly to an acquaintance. They think I am crazy. More data is better than less, I say. And: Look, here I went from 164 pounds to 154 in three months. This means I can do it again. If I didn't have this data, I couldn't know for sure I had been able to do that. I don't trust memory.
Indian food tonight with N. I ate thirty grains of rice.
Skinny Bunny, I noticed you left some comments on my previous postings. How kind of you.
Skinny Bunny IM'd me a little earlier today. She wrote:
I just ate a piece of cake - cheese cake with chocolate mousse and chocolate cake and icing."You deserve it," I replied. That's just because I am nice. In fact, I don't think she does.
I am invited for dinner tonight. These friends cook well. They like wine. Skinny Bunny will be there too. We are going to watch over each other.
'I don't think I can resist the desert,' says my colleague L. after we've had our usual orange (we are members of the citrus club). "I won't have any, I am losing weight," I reply. Yet I insist that we pass by the desert table to see what's there.
S., who sits just outside my office, has a white board above her desk. An arrow drawn on it points to her left. It bears the legend: "Cookies and Chocolate," and indeed points to cookies -- and chocolate.
And so it is that L. and I go to the desert table. There is a strawberry mousse, chocolate cookies, and an apple cobbler. That's what the labels say. However, this is not what I see. I see a fluorescent pinkish cream that, when applied to your legs, removes hair painlessly. I see some clogs of sand. I see small yellow trays with epoxy glue laid on them.
The arrow. It points down. I look up. There is no cookie there, no chocolate. And even if there were, they would be too high to reach.
Skinny Bunny and I have decided to lose 5 pounds over the next five weeks. Skinny Bunny, who for mysterious reasons still sticks to her old name -- Fat Bunny -- can be reached at her blog. And yes, I am the one who called her fat over IM. I would never have dared do that in her face.
A long part of our IM discussion revolved around body fat, and the much controversial Tanita scale, which is to body fat measurement what the electric chair is to the death penalty, that is, an unreliable method that uses electricity. However unreliable it is, you can eliminate the noise by averaging over enough days, and you can hope that the bias is constant so that the changes really mean something.
For your information, Skinny Bunny, I computed my body fat from my BMI according to the site you mention (please, use links, you will save three seconds to each of your ten thousand readers), and I get 20.25%, which is more than Tanita's claim about my lipidic self, that hovers around 18%.
There is a good reason why I want to lose weight. It is easier to lift 97 pounds than 100 pounds, and hence it is easier to lift oneself on a trapeze if one is 3% lighter. It is also more elegant not to have flabby shapes emphasized by the tight top I will wear during my forthcoming trapeze recital. At last, I would like to see what it's like to be less than 150 pounds. Just to see what it's like. It is difficult to imagine a better reason.
If you want to lose 5 pounds out of 139, and you want this to be fat only, you need to reduce your body fat percentage by 5/139. It happens to be 3.6%. This assumes that the Tanita doesn't have a bias, and we know it has, so if Skinny Bunny succeeds in this reduction, it probably means that she will have lost more than five pounds.
As a treat, at the end of these four weeks, we will do the same measurement in the evening, in a very humid bathroom. This should give us good numbers.
Strategy: snoop on Skinny Bunny's blog, steal her best ideas. Not a single sweet thing, no more fast carbs, and running (I went this morning, for the first time in months).
