Back when I was 10 years old, I started watching General Hospital with my mom. These were the years of Anna Devane, Duke Lavery, the WSB, and DVX. I loved the show for many reasons; the drama, spending time with my mom, and the history that when my mom was 10 herself she watched General Hospital. Both of us cringed whenever Felicia spoke in that Minnie Mouse voice and both of us were supremely pissed off that Duke was killed off before he was able to reunite with Anna after his "death".

General Hospital was appointment television for the next 10 years. In college a bunch of my dorm-mates and I gathered to weep over Stone's death. Bringing Luke and Laura back in the 90's was surprisingly well-done. I scheduled my college classes so I had the hour of three to four free. I liked the show because it focused on history and characters. And when they introduced new characters, it was done very well - like Carly, Brenda, and Alexis.

In the 10 years since college, I've tuned in occasionally. When I was unemployed, I watched regularly not out of enjoyment but out of sheer horror of how bad the show has become. The mob story lines are repetitive and poorly acted (sorry Maurice Bernard, you ain't Pacino no matter how hard you try). The Quartermaines have basically been all killed off and barely get any screen-time. Don't get me started on the Spencers (a drunk, a lunkhead, and two crazy women) Carly is a shrieking shrew and they shot a 12 year old character in the head for what reason? A lesson about violence? Nope - considering how many shootings have happened since. But on the up side, Robin Scorpio still rocks and thank goodness she had her own show: Night Shift.

Sadly, it looks like I will not watch General Hospital with my own daughter. I doubt it will still be on the air in the next 20 years, I hate how misogynistic and violent the show is.

Dating Hazards: Uh Oh Moments

I've been dipping my toe back into the dating waters for the last couple of months. It's a lot easier having the stress of finding a job off my mind. Today, I have encountered my first uh oh moment with a potential guy. You know those moments when the whole getting to know you process comes to a grinding halt? It's like in you're head you are thinking, "This is is good. We have no much in common. I'm going to have a blast. Did he just mention a parole officer? Uh oh..."

Past uh oh moments have been:
- a guy who built a computer to tell him when his laundry is done. Rather than, you know, actually going down to check.

- a guy who refused to eat vegetables and constantly complimented my vocabulary.

- a guy who wouldn't shut up about his ex.

The most recent uh oh moment was that I realized this guy has huge control and Madonna/whore issues. He doesn't want his woman to even think about other men. Run away!!!

Anna, Mainecoon Hunter

Since I have a humongous 15.5lb Mainecoon cat and I take aspirin daily for blood thinning, I realized that I needed to do some kind of behavioral training. Yeah, it isn't fun to be at work and realize your arm is still dripping blood from a "playful" night time attack.

I embarked on this mission the usual way, by doing a lot of research and reading. The main gist I got was that I need to teach Rasputin that my hands aren't toys and they only help and soothe. Technically, I should have been doing this from the time I brought him home but I thought later is better than never.

I have this pair of pink fuzzy gloves which I use as attack/play hand. He gets really into it, latching on my arm so hard that I can completely pick him up. I do the insane alien face sucker move, random mousey pinches, and finally the shudder of death when he's getting worn out. This has been going on for months. I usually glove play with him at night and once I get the glove off, I pet and soothe him with my hand and he licks me. So, he gets it.

It has gotten to the point where if he sees me getting the glove on my hand, he does a trill meow and his tail starts swishing. I wish I could video this but it's kinda rough and tumble - too much to hold a camera. My hands and arms are scratch free. Even when he's feeling perverse and does attack me, I just make a whimpering sound of pain. Within seconds he licks me to say sorry.

Bedroom Redone

For the past 6 years, my bedroom has been pretty much the same. Same red and orange sheers, same red and orange sheets. Recently, I decided to get new sheets and all I could find were blue sheets. So, I made the decision to redo the entire color scheme of my bedroom. It makes sense since blue is a very soothing color for me. So, I got:

Sheets



A very soft duvet cover

New curtains.

It actually wasn't too expensive! There are upsides and downsides. The duvet cover doesn't attract cat hair like my old red one so my bed is cleaner. The curtains I got are blue suede light block which is awesome for heating and cooling efficiency but getting out of bed in the morning with absolutely no light seeping through is HARD! The only thing left I need to redo is get a blue cover for an ottoman.

I was woken up this morning at 5AM by Rasputin's snoring. Hee!

I Am A Moron, Reason 1

For years, I thought Brita filtered water tasted disgusting. This was based upon my experience with Brita filtered water jugs. The water came out with gunk in it and tasted chalky.

Gee, guess what? My little habit of not reading directions can be really stupid. I didn't soak the carbon filter or throw out the first two filtered water jugs.

Now, I have a Brita jug that tastes awesome and I can feel like a less hypocritical environmentalist.

I Love Teachers

Year after year, I am continually reminded how awesome my education has been and how much I appreciate the teachers/professors who taught/inspired me. In my perfect world, teachers would be paid the movie star/sports hero salaries.

I definitely remember all my elementary school teachers but I was so young, I wasn't really learning. I was basically being molded. So, my first shout out skips to 7th grade.

7th grade French teacher - she was really old and Dutch. She was also the perfect first teacher for a language. I got excellent fundamentals to French and also she let me sneak by a little cheat on a quiz once. I blanked on the French word for sleep but I could remember the German one, schlafen, so I put it down. I blew her mind and amused her enough to pass the quiz.

7th grade history teacher - taking history from him coincided with the first gulf war and the run up to elections. I'm sure he first ingrained the seeds of me becoming a history major. He definitely made history feel alive and something we're living in.

9th grade science teacher - I learned a ton from him about Earth Sciences (sadly a subject no longer taught at my high school). I can still name all the types of clouds, understand weather and topographical maps. Wind blows from high to low pressure and a cold front is drawn with spiky triangles, warm front is half circles.

9th grade French teacher - awesome and loony with a lot of bad French puns. My favorite was her trying to tell a waiter that she was full by saying, "Je suis plein." which means I am pregnant.

All my high school gym teachers - I wasn't very athletic but I always enjoyed gym classes from step aerobics to yoga. Granted, I didn't need to hear messy divorce details or stuff about family massages but I always value a character! I also learned a ton about sports medicine and health (I'm always able to spot the chick with an eating disorder).

High school chorus teacher - unfortunately his later teaching career was ruined by allegations of improper conduct but during my years he was proper and a hoot. He was very encouraging and had a wide taste of music so our biannual concerts and yearly musicals were always interesting and tough. Here is a smattering of what I sang under his direction in 4 years: Charpentier's Messe de Minuit, a collection of songs from Mozart's magic flute, Libeslieder Waltzes, Vaughn Williams, Mozart's Regina Coeli, and the Hallelujah chorus every year.

10th grade history teacher - I still think about the awesome exercise that he had our class work through regarding WWI to teach us about the downfalls of multiple treaties and conflicting allegiances. Sadly, our class wound up heading to world war anyways but we learned our lesson! Also, each week we had two teams debating topics. I remember that I had to debate about Adam Smith and laissez faire economics and whether dropping the bomb on Japan was racially motivated.

11th grade history teacher - again another teaching career ruined by allegations of improper conduct but she was always awesome my year with her. She taught us AP history and got us the furthest in history. Heck, we got to find out what happened after WWII! Granted, it was a 3 page chapter with a lot of pictures... I kicked ass on my AP exam thanks to her.

11th grade English teacher - a scary, tough ex-nun who made me work my ass off and enjoy it. I was able to forget Ethan Frome while I enjoyed Wharton's "The Age of Innocence". It was also so cool to learn about the Fisher King myth before we read "The Natural". I also fell in love with "The Wasteland" thanks to this class. Maybe she was the reason I entered Umass as a declared English major?

11th grade science teacher - he was very old fashioned borderline racist/sexist but man o' man I learned my moles and atomic weights! He also had a penchant for pop quizzes - which never stressed me out but always helped me learn.

12th grade humanities - once the history AP was over, history was no longer a required subject at my high school. So, I took Humanities which was like a combo of history, English and art appreciation. Basically, it was a class designed to my strengths and yet I wound up skipping it a lot. The teacher was always awesome. Every year, he had this huge grade-wide project that took half a day. Half of our grade did the AM and the other half did the PM shift. We all gathered in a gym and built a city with tape of construction paper according to instructions handed to only a couple of students. At the end, it turned out to be a big exercise to teach about racism and inequality. I remember I had a little square of a house and I had to crouch on it for a long time and if I was caught going outside the lines, I was sent to jail. If you got fed up enough about your house size, you could get money from the bank to expand but no one from my neighborhood could get loans and most of us wound up in jail.

Anna Said Knock You Out

It has been 5 personal training sessions in and I am already feeling and seeing results! Last night was incredible and the variety of exercises I was able to do without feeling I was going to collapse made me so happy.

After warming up, I told my personal trainer that I'd like to try the split squats again since my Tuesday session didn't give me enough quad burn. Then we moved onto bench presses. I don't know what the weight is but I know the weight was increased between sets. The final exercise in this circuit was a sideways hop/step on one aerobics step. That got my heart rate really up there. I did this rotation 3 times until I wobbled over doing a split squat.

My next circuit was trunk rotations with a resistance band. I like to call this gondola rowing. Then I did overhead presses which was pretty good but by rep 8/10 my poor left arm craps out and gets all wobbly. Next I used the fitness cable machine to work my trapezius by doing pullbacks. I liked this exercise because the stance is a good hamstring stretch and kinda gives the lower back a rest. 3 times with this rotation.

The final rotation was tough and fun. I used resistance bands to push forward - kinda like a standing push up with the bands being the resistance, not body weight (it was my idea to do this since I had been doing a lot of pulling exercises, I thought pushing would be good). The next exercise was a doozy because it worked a ton of muscles. I sat on a stack of step benches, pulled 25lbs on the cable machine while I stood up. My trainer told me it's like doing a dead lift but in a back friendly safer manner. The final exercise was awesome because it was a workout hidden in a stretch. I was given a 25lb grab bar, bent over, lowered it to my toes, and then straightened up with straight arms. It stretches the hamstrings and works the lower back.

All this took 45 minutes and I was pretty sweaty but functional. I was able to carry on a conversation the entire time. Plus, today my quads aren't hurting from the split squats! Which means that I ripped enough muscle tissue to actually create strength. Woohoo!

Random Musings

I found this online about McCain's campaign and it tickled me.

So, the government is buying shares of banks, huh? Isn't that basically socialism? Why aren't the Commie hating right wingers screaming bloody murder?

Is it possible to be retroactively outraged? I saw "Recount" this weekend and man oh man... BTW, Laura Dern's Katherine Harris is so spot on crazy, it's awesome.

4 personal training sessions in, I've learned a lot. First off, the hobbling pain that hits 24 hours after working out is called DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). Ways to deal with it are a hot bath with epsom salts or spending 10 minutes at the end of the workout to cool down. Also, eating a banana helps. I also learned that I am damn strong which makes me reluctant to ask for a breather or back down from an exercise. Last night I learned that when I am drenched, purple in the face, dizzy, and my heart is pounding; a good way to calm my heart down is to hit the treadmill for 2 minute increments. It was really cool - I felt like I was going to die and 2 minutes later, my heart was better and I was raring to go.

There are a lot of commonalities across working situations with Indian co-workers. I know, it's a horrible stereotype but I won't list out the commonalities I've noticed.

Also, Linens N'Things is going bankrupt and needs to liquidate their stores. Impending sales people!

Television Report Card: Fall 2008

Sundays
Mad Men - continues to kick ass. Betty's story lines tend to bore me and I'm aching for Peggy's pregnancy to come out.
Dexter - has become pretty meh with Rita's pregnancy and the convoluted storyline with Jimmy Smits. No season pass just leisurely catch up with OnDemand
Californication - is even better this season! It is so cool seeing Leoben (BSG) as a music producer druggie has-been. Introducing coke into Charlie and Marcy's marriage has been brilliant. So sweaty, scattered, and yelly...

Mondays
Heroes - lost me this season. I deleted my season pass. I think my main problem with the show is that character motivations are so illogical and obviously motivated by the need for drama in the show (i.e. the whole Future Peter BS).
Chuck - not watching anymore. The show is really repetitive but I do still love Adam Baldwin.
How I Met Your Mother - a new favorite of mine. It's kinda funny that the main character, Ted, is my least favorite character. We all need our own personal Barneys.

Tuesdays
House - I got back into this show when they killed Amber last season.
Fringe - surprisingly good show! I might enjoy it a smidge more because it's based in Boston. The lead chick, the Cate Blanchett lookalike, is so blah we basically don't need her. Just give me a Peter and Walter show!

Wednesdays
Bones - I almost stopped watching this show due to the awful season premiere (gee let's trot out every Ugly American stereotype). But it has gotten better over the weeks. Sweets has gotten less amusing though. I'm glad we got to see Zack once!
Private Practice - SUCKS! I ditched it after one episode. I tried watching it but kept thinking, "Why am I watching a show where all the adults act like teenagers?" Buh-bye.

Thursdays
The Office - makes me happy. Jim and Pam are getting married!
Supernatural - has started out the season very strongly. Plus, I love anything that deals with angel mythology.
Life on Mars - I caught a couple episodes from the British original and liked it so I thought the American remake could be decent. People, the MUSIC! I think I could just ignore all the plot lines and just listen to the soundtrack.

Fridays
The Ex List - is very bad. I thought the clunkiness was just due to the pilot. Nope!
Numb3rs - is pretty uneven so far. They definitely need to get Charlie back in the FBI ASAP. The new girl is pretty okay. Anyone want to bet when Don winds up sleeping with her?

So, in summary I kicked to the curb Dexter, Heroes, Chuck, Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, and the Ex List.

How Nstar Simply Doesn't Get It

A couple months ago, I switched my electricity to Nstar's green program. My bill has been basically the same and I didn't think much about it. This weekend I got a flag and letter thanking me for going green. Gee, I wonder how many thank you for going green mailings they sent out? Think about it:

-mass mailing = additional fuel usage and more pollution.

- customer letters = additional paper usage and negative effect on forests

- lame "Gone Green" flags = wooden poles which require trees and unrecyclable plastic woven flags.

Man, Nstar better have invested a ton of money into carbon offsets for this little campaign!

The 'hood

In general, I live in a good neighborhood but it's individual jackasses who bring it down a notch.

I live in a 4 apartment duplex. The apartment below me has had 4 tenants in the 6 years I've lived here: awesome friendly couple, good orgasm giver guy, hippy loud movie guy, and now loud aloof couple. I've lost count of the tenants right next to me. I'm a lifer in this little building. The other tenant downstairs next door is a jackass. Plus I don't think he has a job. He runs his air conditioning 24/7 and I've lost count how many times our building has lost power thanks to him.

I have other jack ass neighbors - the people who live behind my building whose yard borders our yard. They are the same neighbors who had a rotting oak crash through our apartment roof three years ago. They have a couple kids who seem decent enough. The parents are the worst neighbors ever. They throw raging parties until the morning hours. I have a theory that they drug their kids to get them to sleep through the night. Sure enough, at 1AM this morning I was woken up by the neighbors loudly and drunkenly discussing work over a campfire in their backyard. 1 AM people. Thanks to a sinus infection, I need all the sleep I can get so my patience was thin. So, I wound up yelling out the window, "It's 1 AM can you take it inside." And they did. Man, why did I suffer in silence for YEARS?

The New Great Depression

Wow, what a roller coaster ride we've been on lately! The last week at work, I've been hitting refresh on the stock market charts and shaking my head. A lot of talking heads in the media are talking about the U.S. economy in apocalyptic terms. I tried to think positively and shrug it off since we've gone through years of fear mongering. But peeps, I have finally come to the conclusion that we are in for some deep shit and this is only the beginning.

I heard about TED spread on NPR this evening. This explains what a TED spread means.

I started wondering how a Depression nowadays would differ from the Depression in the 30's. First off, migrant workers picking grapes in CA to escape the dust-bowl doesn't sound like something we would be dealing with. But that brings up two points:

#1 Illegal immigration. If unemployment gets bad enough and we have Americans willing to do any job for any pay, immigration will become a hot button topic nationwide. Considering there has been an argument that Americans don't want to do the type of work illegal immigrants do, that would disappear in economic hardship.

#2 If there is any kind of natural disaster, the lack of response would make Katrina look good. The lack of response would be due to no federal or local funding. It is going to be crunch-time fiscally.

If China can survive the economic upheaval, it may wind up saving our country. Think about it, if Americans cut down their consumption of goods and the rest of the Western world does the same, who is going to buy the crap we make? China. That is if we can avoid dumb ass protectionist politics like the Hawley Smoot Act.

Financing anything is going to be tough for a while. Conspicuous consumerism will grind to a halt. There will be a lot more gray hairs on people (because $200 for a dye job doesn't really seem necessary when you need food and have no job). Of course, as a debt carrying former student I am hoping for Sallie Mae to crash and burn so my student loans would magically disappear. But on the flip side, that would hurt an entire generation of college bound kids...

And finally on the up side of this crisis, at least we don't have Prohibition! I'll have a gin and tonic.

P.S. I detected a flaw in my logic regarding China. Basically, so much of our manufacturing has been shipped offshore, what DOES the US still make? I know our farming industry exports a lot and we still have an auto industry (horribly crippled at that). And we have entertainment. Do we manufacture anything anymore? So what could we produce that would be in demand? Hmmm...

Sudden Onset Sinus Infection

Last Friday my nose suddenly started running in the middle of the afternoon at work. By the time I got home, my entire head was congested. I guess a neti pot can fight off sinus problems only for so long.

Saturday was hellish with aches sweats, shivers, and tremendous sinus pressure. It's like my sinuses were saving themselves for a year for the mother of all infections. That or going a year helped wipe my memory how awful this can be. I loaded up on vitamin C and chicken soup. I spent all day on the sofa catching up on "How I Met Your Mother". A surprisingly good show! My poor nose was raw by bedtime.

Today, I bought Tylenol Sinus Congestion & Pain medication. My goodness, I can't believe how well the medication works! Sinus pressure is gone and I am decongesting like no one's business. Sadly, my ears are pretty plugged up but I still have the neti pot to help.

So, the moral of the story is that don't let a cold linger untreated and being sick on a weekend SUCKS!

This Apartment is Clean

Today, I shipped off all my Mary Kay inventory as my final step for quitting the biz. On the up side, I'll get 90% retail price back. Mary Kay was nice when my job situation was up in the air and I really do believe that they have quality products. But I simply don't have the time, energy or space to continue selling Mary Kay part time with a full-time job. Plus, I bet fewer and fewer people will have enough disposable income to splurge on Mary Kay. There were a couple things that I didn't like about the organization:

1. Weekly meetings are glazed eyed Kool Aid drinkers gatherings. Plus, you aren't supposed to wear pants. A skirt or dress is recommended. Yes, it is the 21st century . I was in a sorority and we didn't even have that ridiculous dress code!

2. The minimum inventory requirements are insane. If I just wanted to order a single item for my inventory, I had to buy an extra $200-worth of inventory to actually get the Mary Kay discount. I blame Mary Kay for my enormous credit card debt.

Luckily getting out is as easy as getting in. Just a phone call, some forms, and shipping inventory back. I didn't get any guilt or begging from my sponsor and chapter director thank goodness.

I really do like their products so I'll probably become a customer. The Timewise line is absolutely amazing. My skin hasn't felt any better. Plus, their makeup is top notch. I love their foundation, mineral eye shadow, and lip gloss.

Things I Learned at Umass Amherst::

* Liquor before beer, all clear
* Schedule all your classes between Tuesday and Thursday
* If the class has over 50 people, you only need to attend it a couple times per semester.
* First snowfall = riot
* Classes are never cancelled due to weather
* Try to ace at least one class per semester so your social calendar can be full and uninterrupted.
* That amassing $500-worth of parking tickets could endanger your graduation
* Pufton Village is within stumble distance of campus.
* Orchard Hill, naked, mud bowl
* Rudy was never shown on the college movie channel due to an epic tower war.
* If you live in a tower, you'll get at least 1 fire alarm at 3AM per semester.
* If Umass makes it to the final game for any sport, there will be riots win or lose (watch out for airborne lounge furniture).
* Try to enroll in classes that do not have final exams - hello going home early.
* Southwest lawn in Sept/May lots of eye candy tanning.
* Seven-O's makes a strong drink
* Thank God for the PVTA
* If you are a Liberal Arts major, you will be assigned Machiavelli's The Prince at least 3 times.
* There is a underground tunnel between Herter and Hicks
* Building names make good puns. Whitmore = Whitless. Herter, I barely knew her!
* The best dining commons is Franklin
* Dubois Library has a fence around it because engineers didn't take into account the weight of books so bricks fall off the building.
* There will always be construction on campus.

Fashion Timeline

Being born in 1976, I was surrounded by un-natural fabrics and loud patterns but as time went by, I was lucky enough to dodge or embrace some fashion faux pas. Graduating high school in 1995 means that you don't have any embarrassing photos in the yearbook - no big hair, shoulder pads or weird denim washes. What's shameful about plaid flannel? I do admit, I have an ingrained love of patterns and avocado green appliances. Good times!

When I was in first grade, leotards and headbands were big and boy did I embrace the trend! By second grade, jelly bracelets and shoes had come into fashion. I had an armful of bracelets I arranged them in order of willingness to trade - lots of black toward my hand but my favorite sparkley/colorful ones were near the elbow. That was the year of the Cabbage Patch doll craze. My grandma got me an ugly one named Johanna Between second and fifth grade, I wasn't that fashionable. But by 5th grade, I had hit puberty and was the tallest kid in my grade ( 5'1"). So, I had stretched out of my chubbiness which opened up lots of fashion options. These were the banana clip years and weird shirt layering with one shoulder showing. I also crimped my hair a LOT.

Middle school started out strong fashion-wise but as everyone else hit puberty and I put on more weight, these were black hole years. I was still skinny in 6th grade and I had these awesome black jeans with ankle zippers that cost a lot of money. They were stolen from my gym locker. Middle school was also the time of hyper color shirts. Cool idea but they definitely looked lame. I was a fashion disaster in middle school. The only cool thing about me was my hair - I learned how to give myself a French braid in 8th grade and that got me my first appearance compliment ever in middle school. Ugh, I was the kid who didn't understand deodorant - I wore it but sometimes it didn't work or my wreak overpowered it. I was nicknamed Bacteria because of that. Whatever, I survived it and even now I have no clue how to tell people who have deodorant problems.

In high school fashion was heavily determined by what groups you hung out with. Since I was in the artsy fartsy group, I grew out my bangs, had looong hair and wore just as long skirts with leggings of course. Remember those nylon broomstick skirts that were recalled for being fire hazards? I had a closet full of them. I shopped at Urban Oufitters to supplement my tragically hip wardrobe. That is until grunge started which had me raiding my father and brothers closets for flannel which I paired with long skirts.

College was still a lot of flannel and overalls came into play. Sigh... I miss overalls but not the farmer look. I'm getting fashion nostalgic today because I realized my jeans were too long for flats when I got to work, so I pegged them.

Movie Walkouts

The firsts movie I ever walked out of was Bram Stoker's Dracula. I saw it with a friend in my teens. The scene that lead us to leave was the werewolf sex one. So, we walked out and snuck in to see The Last of the Mohicans for about the millionth time.

The next movie I walked out of was Pulp Fiction. It was totally against my will. I went with a group of friends on opening weekend and one of my friends reached her limit at the hypodermic needle scene. No matter how much we begged, she refused to go back. I finally saw the ending years later when I rented the movie.

The last movie I walked out of was Ronin. It was in college with my brother. I don't know if we were drunk or just feeling silly but the entire movie made no sense. In the scene where a character threw up for no reason, my brother and I were howling with laughter. We couldn't stop laughing and calm down so we left. The entire ride home we were shrieking laughing about the unprovoked puking.

Personal Training

For my last job, I wound up commuting past a Fitness Together gym that I didn't know existed near my apartment. Luckily, they were running a free consultation and fitness assessment offer last month. So, I signed up and have been assessed and run through my paces. I loved doing sit-ups on a stability ball with weights. I have deceptively strong abs. Sadly, that is where all my weight settles.

The other night, I was introduced to these exercises:




This is called a split squat. I didn't do them with the weights but my goodness, I am so sore. I've been limping all day and doing the old person groan sitting down and standing up. On the flip side, I was able to do a lot of reps! I was kinda proud considering how my knees used to be such messes. Now my quads are so strong, they are basically stapled on.

The personal trainers are really good. I've only observed one asshole trainer but so far, I haven't been assigned to him so no big deal. He's the kind of trainer who treats his clients as lazy fatties who know nothing. For some reason, he automatically assumed I hadn't been working out hard enough when he encountered me on the treadmill. He advised me that I can ask to increase reps/weight as I go along. Gee, that is SO HELPFUL. It wasn't like I had already increased the weights I was lifting for each set of reps. He also mentioned that he was the former gym manager. Thank goodness for the former part of that sentence!