An Update of Sorts

Well it seems like forever since I've updated because frankly it has been forever.  A lot has been going on this last month.  This biggest news is I got a roommate halfway through the month.  This is a huge help.  I also started my second job which has me running around like a mad woman.  I've got a third job in the works which will become my full time job and the other two will just be part time jobs.  I'm hoping that I will still be on track with the new job for a move in May.  I've got my finger crossed.

Despite being incredibly busy this month I still managed to get some changes made.  Here's a recap of the COMPLETED challenged from January:
✔Clean desk and reduce to one desk
✔Get roommate
✔Reduce debt by 25%
✔Replace eco-laundry detergent with lavender castle soap
✔Replace toothpowder with pepperment castle soap
✔Switch to recyclable razors

I moved to the smallest of the three original desk.  I still have a few things hanging around in the old desk, but for all intensive purposes I'm using just the one small desk.  :)

I got a roommate!

My debt is slowly decreasing.  I'm proud to say that minus my educational expenses I've reduced my debt by almost 25%.  Things are still rough, but I made it through January and I will make it thorough February.

I've totally switched the lavender castle soap for my laundry detergent.  I love love love it.  All my clothes smell great now and not too perfumey.

Peppermint castle sap as toothpaste rocks!

I totally switched to recyclable razors and am thrilled with the results!

The plan is to get some challenges up for February by the end of the week, but I've got a lot on my plate for the next couple of days.

January Challenges...and Changes Already Made

Alright I've got some challenges up and ready for this month.  Here's the list so far:
→Clean desk and reduce to one desk
→Reduce debt by 25%
→Switch to recyclable razors
→Take unused dresser and bed frame back to parents
→Use up pre-packaged items in apartment
And as this post goes one I'm sure I'll be adding to this least as I've already made some changes this month.

First up, I've gone from three desk, one with a hutch to two desk with no hutch.  Now in the next 21 days I want to go from two desk to one desk.  This will require me to get some desk stuff I have stored in the closet out and continue to evaluate what I have and what I really need.

Next up is to reduce my debt by 25%.  Selling my car as me almost to this goal.  I have one more payment this month and then I can officially say I've reduce my debt (ignoring my student loans for the moment) by 25%.

I've really wanted to switch to recyclable razors for a while and I've finally made it down to my last razor.  So now this is just a matter of me making it to Wegman's to pick up the razor or checking in the Natural Grocer again for them.  Hopefully in the next week or so this can be checked off.

I talked to my dad over Christmas and he said to continue to harass him and he'll borrow someone's truck from his hunting club and get the dresser and bed frame.  I might even have a desk ready for him if he waits til the end of the month.  He claims he didn't know I was waiting for him to get the furniture.  Oops daddy had a senior moment.

As always I'll continue to use up the prepackaged items in the apartment.  Slowly but surly this is getting done.

I found two wonderful new (to me) uses for castle soap.  A drop or two of peppermint castle soap makes wonderful toothpaste.  I like this much better than my toothpowder which still taste pretty bad.  I also found that a 1/4 a cup of lavender castle soap works just as well as laundry detergent and doesn't leave any perfumery smell on my clothes after they're dry.

Wrapping up 2009

Well 2009 is on it's way out the door and 2010 is promising to be filled with BIG adventures.  After spending a few days in (not so) sunny Florida, I'm relaxing (and job/apartment hunting) over in the Big Easy.  My parents dropped in on grandparents and greeted lots of DRAMA.  My mother made a fool out of herself getting piss ass drunk on her first night.  At least the family down here got to see it first hand and know how much my brother, sister and I weren't blowing it out of proportion.  Today I rented a moped and went looking at apartments.  Everything went well, despite the rain and my wipe out.  I'm still bruising at the moments, but only got minor raspberries on my knee and some scratches on my thigh.

Before heading off to the airport I did finally run out of deodorant and made my own solid using coconut oil.  The jury is still out on it's effectiveness, some days good, some days not so good.

I got a text from one of the waiters at the cafe and they're interested in renting out my master bedroom.  Hopefully this doesn't fall through, cause I could really use the help.

Sadly my dad has yet to come pick up the dresser out of my living room.  I did corner him and get him to commit to doing it some time in the near future.  I'll just have to harass him until it gets done.

On Monday I got a call for an interview.  So next Friday I'll be re-interviewing for a new position with Customs and Border Protection.  It's not really what I want to be doing, but I need some money until I get out of Virginia.

Bye Bye Baby Car

Well, it's official.  Baby Car is sold, and just as it decides to snow.  At least the guys at the cafe are looking out for me and making sure I have a ride to and from working this the horrid snow.  I can't wait to leave Virginia and all this sticky slippery white stuff behind me.  And to make everything else ok, my paper got approved so all I have to do to finish my masters is a power point presentation.  Life is good.

Moped/Scooter Purchased!

Well I did it.  I've got me a shiny new (to me) scooter.  Ok, technically Zoe is a motorcycle, but only cause she's got a 150 cc engine.

I've paid down Baby Car and am just waiting for the payment to clear (by Thursday) and then Baby Car is going to CarMax.

December Challenges

Alight, so I'm actually getting to posting my December Challenges in a timely manager this month. So without much futher ado, here they are:
→Clear out unused furniture
→Eat three meals a day
→Make own solid deodorant
→Reduce beauty routine (make the minimal used now even less)
→Sale baby car
→Use up pre-packaged items in apartment

First up is getting the bed frame and dresser that are no longer in use out of the apartment. Currently they are both sitting in my living room as a painful reminder to harass my dad to come pick them up or to ask one of the ladies from my women's group to help me take them to my parents house.

Next up is one of my new lifestyle/health changes.  The focus is on simply stopping and eating something three times a day.  I'm not worried about what exactly I'm eating or if it's enough, the focus is simple to get my body used to eating three times a day.

Next, I'll be making my own solid deodorant from coconut oil, provided I use up the last tube of deodorant that I still have hanging around the apartment

Then, it's on to my beauty routine.  I've finally found a no 'poo shampoo that my scalp likes and an amazing vinegar rinse that got my locks manageable.  Make up is down to chap-stick when my lips are dry or a touch of lip-gloss and eye-shadow when I want to feel like I'm glammed up.  I've forgone any extra moisturizer for my face, I just don't need it.  Now I'm still trying to find the perfect face wash: honey or LUSH's Baby Face solid.  Once I settle on this I can check this off my list.

The next big lifestyle change for me is selling baby car.  Now I can't go without any transportation, public transportation just isn't reliable enough and I'm not able to handle the hills on a bike (nor am I in any type of physical shape to manage biking locally...just not there yet).  So I've decided on a moped.  Much more economical (for the environment and my wallet) than baby car.  I've actually looked at one last week at a little mom and pop shop and will own it as soon as I've sold my car (will definitely have it in the next two weeks!!!!!!!!!).

And as always I'll continue using up the pre-packaged items in the apartment and replacing them with either homemade or Earth-friendly alternatives.

November Wrap Up (a little late)

November was a bit of an off month, to say the least.  The November Challenges that finally made there way up to the leader-board were:

→Make own solid deodorant
→Use up pre-packaged items in apartment
✔Cut my own hair and bangs
✔Make tooth powder instead of using tooth paste
✔Tolerate Green Smoothies

I'm going to give myself a pass for not completing four challenges since November turned into the "get Hope out of her depressed state" month and "get Hope working on her final paper" month.  Let's just say thank goddess for antidepressants, cause if you were depressed and had to pay for antidepressants without insurance it sure would make you depressed (nearly $400 0.o).  Towards the end of the month I began feeling like my old self and then completely freaked about my paper.  Though I'm happy to report that I'm currently at 34 pages of the 40 page requirement.  Alright, before I ramble on too much more lets get to the challenges that I attempted:

→Make own solid deodorant So this one didn't happen yet, only because I found more deodorant when I went on a middle of the night cleaning spree (more to come on this later), but I did finally find and acquire all the ingredients for this, so it's only a matter of time for this one.

→Use up pre-packaged items in apartment Still an on-going battle, but I am down to my last roll of paper towels and finally on the absolute last tube of deodorant.
✔Cut my own hair and bangs There were lots of hair trims this month, still not great but better than nothing
✔Make tooth powder instead of using tooth paste I definitely succeeded in this endeavor, though I had to add an extra 10 drops of peppermint oil and it's still a little on the icky side but I can definitely handle it better now.
✔Tolerate Green Smoothies nuff said about this already

I'm still struggling with my insomnia, and let me tell you depression and insomnia are not a fun combo.  But I'm back to my old ways of handling my insomnia: massive cleaning sprees.  Ok, so we all know how I've moved out of the master bedroom in my two bedroom apartment and into the smaller bedroom.  Well, I still had quiet a bit of stuff just hanging out in the master bedroom.  So since I still don't have a job I'm trying to rent out the master bedroom (still no luck there), which meant that I needed to finish cleaning out that room.  The biggest culprit of stuff still hanging out in there was the bathroom.  Remember when I said I thought I had successfully decluttered the majority of the bulk from the apartment?  Well apparently I was wrong when it came to the bathroom.  I found all sorts of stuff I had no idea was even in the bathroom, like a unopened back of cat litter. Well after three days of purging I'm happy to say everything fits in the one half bath without the counters and cabinets overflowing.  There are still somethings I could probably toss, like my caboodle and my make up that I only were once in a blue moon but I did empty the caboodle and only kept my green eye shadows and favorite lip glosses/chapsticks.

Middle of the Night Hair Adventures

Well, I'm constantly doing something to my hair.  Be it adventures with hair henna or grocery store aisle hair dye I'm not afraid to try it (and make a royal mess in the process).  So the rebel in me decided to try and dye a few purple streaks in the week leading up to Halloween as I was also "too conservative" to give wild colors a try in college.

After trying some purple gel I determined I'd need to add some blonde highlights for the purple to show up.  Off to Target I went in search of some blonde hair dye and what did I find?  Clairol Frost and Tip!  I thought, Sweet! This will be easy.  Not!  The first attempts to get the hook to pull at a few strands of hair either resulted in knots of huge chunks of hair escaping from the cap.  Off came the cap and I have my hair a good coming through with the smallest toothed comb I had in the apartment (actually I had to go out to the car to fetch it).  Back on went the cap and the tie broke.  Finally I somehow managed to get my hair to start cooperating and then another huge chunk (or two) decided to escape.  At this point I went whatever since the chunks thankfully weren't in my bangs and on went the frosting solution.  My roots looked nice and frosted, but the longer/chunker section went from blonde to green! o.0  On went the purple hair dye.  After the maximum time I prayed the highlights would turn out purple.  No such luck; they were blue/green.

So now that I've had blue/green hair for a few weeks I decided (in my all infinite wisdom while procrastinating) earlier this week to throw on another coat of purple to see what would happen.  Well, my bangs were purple for a day or two and the rest were more blue.  Now, after another wash, I'm just blue all over.

Since I've given away my blow dryer, curlers, curling irons and flat iron I've been experimenting with rag curls.  After making a batch of rags that were too short, I produced a batch that were a little too long (but better that than the previous).  Sunday night, after my shower I decided to do my hair up in rag curls while watching a movie before heading to bed.  Extra time is required both for putting in and taking out rag curls.  But the end result is crazy fun curls with no need for product.  My curls where still intake after two days thanks to sleeping with a messy bun which preserved the curls for yesterday.  Sadly the curls washed away in the shower.

Last night I tried to give my hair a trim, but it just wouldn't even up.  After cutting a large inverted v in one side of my hair I gave up and tried to go to bed.  But as insomnia would have it, sleep was not in my future.  Now while I don't advocate cutting your own hair if you're an insomniac, it seemed like a perfectly good idea for me.  Amazingly I managed to cut the bottom half of my hair (as in the hair left down after pulling my hair half up) perfectly straight at the exact length I was going for.  I attempted to go for the gold a second time only to be foiled, but luckily it doesn't look too terrible and there are no inverted v's missing from what I could tell.

Another Thing Checked Off...

Well, I finally added some November challenges to the right hand column:
→Make own solid deodorant
→Make tooth powder instead of using tooth paste

I also finally used up the last of the paper plates that were hanging out in my cabinet.

Still avoiding working on my paper today so I'll leave you with my new no 'poo shampoo recipe:

• 1 ounce of peppermint castle soap
• 1 2/3 cups of water
• 1/4 teaspoon of thyme

Directions: Boil water and thyme for 10 minutes, strain and combine with peppermint castle soap in desired bottle.

Tooth powder

Alright, I've been MIA for a few weeks while I tried to cope with everything that's going on.  I was hoping that a few weekend trips to see friends and be around people would be enough to pull me out of it, but it just made going back home that much harder.  After spending the last couple of days in bed until late in the afternoon, I convinced myself that I need to have another trip and work on my paper at the same time.

On a happier note, I finally finished all my tooth paste so I've finally made some tooth powder.  Here's the recipe I used:

• 3 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 6 drops of peppermint oil

Exciting News from my class

I logged in for my first day of my class and to my excitement I found the following message:  

Final DRP document should be a minimum of 40 pages, excluding appendices. This page reduction calls for a maximum of 2 to 3 sub-research questions.

Makes the next ten weeks a little less scary.

First up on my cleaning list is laundry.  Tomorrow the kitchen is getting a scrub down that it's been in need of for quite some time now.

I attempted to up the green in my green smoothie today and it was a little too green for my taste.  So I'll keep at it slow and steady before I attempt to up the spinach again.

I still feel like I'm a behind on my sleep, but I actually got a full eight hours of sleep last night.  Hopefully the rest will added up soon.

I'm a free woman, so to speak

I made it through the last days in the office and officially signed my termination release from my company. I'm a free woman, so to speak.  On Monday the fun and joys of my Directed Research Project begins, so I've given myself a few days to slack off and catch up on that much needed sleep that I just haven't had the luxury of having.  I met with my on campus adviser on Thursday and have a plan of attack for my DRP.  Today I hit the grocery store and got some more green smoothie supplies.  And I even managed to handle a little more spinach in my last one!  I've moved into the second bedroom and have just a few things left in the master bedroom and closet.  I'm slowly working on moving the remainder of my things from the master bedroom half bath to the hall half bath.  The decluttering effort is almost complete.  I'm extremely happy that I'm living in one less room and not tripping over crap.  I'm confident by the end of the month I'll be able to confidently check off "declutter apartment".

Green Smoothie, Take 1

Step 1. ingredients:  Banana, frozen blackberries, spinach
Step 2. mix mix mix baby
Step 3. pour
Step 4. enjoy

As obvious from my pictures, my green smoothie was rather purple and not so green.  I do admit I only put the tiniest bit of spinach inthere, but it was four whole leaves!  The banana overpowered any other taste, but the blackberries provided a nice color.  So lesson learned:  I can put more spinach in next time cause it didn't kill me (or taste like metal unlike my previsous spinach attempts which have).  The verdict:  I'll definately be trying it again and had I actually woken up early enough this morning I would have had another one for breakfast.

Check: Sale oversized desk in living room

It's day three and I'm still going strong! I've just completed the sale for my oversized L shaped desk in the living room, and at the first asking price! I'm so ecstatic. For the moment the living room looks bare, but I'm hoping to tackle the carpet with a good cleaning (and hopefully removal of stains) before I start moving things into the living room once again.

I've also so far kept my fast food ban and no meat challenges, though I had to get a little inventive when I had to go to a doctor's appointment yesterday during my lunch break. But I managed. The fast food ban is the one that really tempts me, though finding something healthy on the run did challenge my creativity. I now have to lunches out next week, so finding meatless options will definitely keep me on my toes.

Now that I have a little money in my pocket I'll be hitting the grocery store for some green smoothie ingredients.

Check In from Day 1 of October challenges

Today is the 274th day of 2009 and according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac there are 81 Days until Winter on this 1st day of October. And I have progress on the decluttering the apartment front! I have officially moved into the spare bedroom and am working on clearing out the master bedroom. And out goes the mattress tonight and in comes some $$. So far the futon couch has turned out to be very comfy and not bother my back even when insomnia sticks (like last night, which lead to a middle of the night bathroom cleaning spree). I’ve also got a potential buyer for my desk at my first asking price! I thought I may have to come down on the price. Hopefully this comes through and out the door it can go. One day in and I haven’t caved on the fast food ban, it will be harder next week when I have work, chiro appointment and then meditation with only about 1 hour total in between after traffic. But it will also be my last day of work as the funding issue is going to be ongoing for at least a couple of months. So I’m gonna work on my last paper for my masters and see what happens. I’m actually relieved that I can focus on that and getting me healthy. Reiki here I come.

October Challenges

Well, tomorrow starts a new day and it’s time for a new set of challenges to add to my 52 Weeks collection. First up will be the on-going challenges and my one carryover challenge:

→Declutter apartment room by room – Here I should probably differentiate between clutter and cleanliness. The two are not mutually exclusive, like I would consider my apartment to be clean but cluttered. So the goal here is to move to that more is less mind frame and actually reduce the amount of stuff I have. It’s about evaluating what I have into what I need and use or what I want but don’t use.
→DivaCup Mastery – October will be my second month of my DivaCup challenge. A recap is that I want to use my DivaCup for two full days of my cycle for two months before I make a decision to incorporate the DivaCup into my monthly routine or just break it out on occasion. I’ll give a full report on this either the end of October or early November.
→Give away/sale oversized desk in living room – This is my one carryover from last month that I was hoping to have completed by October 1. I have finally cleared away everything on the desk and posted the desk for sale, now it’s just a matter of getting a buyer. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this will be sold quickly.
→Use up pre-packaged items in apartment – Slowly but surely the pre-packaged, chemical filled items are being used up. I’ll continue to post on the bigger items that are replaced by eco-friendly alternatives.

On to the October specific challenges! This month it’s all about getting me healthy.
→Ban fast food – I have a fast food problem. It’s easy and convenient, but oh so bad for me and that’s why I have to declare a fast food ban.
→Begin a daily meditation – I do a guided meditation once a month and love how relaxed I feel even on the days that have been crazy. A daily meditation will force me to stop and slow down from the fast pace I tend to live at.
→Eliminate meat from my diet – This should be fairly easy since I have stopped preparing meat at home and with the fast food ban I will be enforcing. The only temptation will be when I eat at a restaurant (which I already know I will have to on the 7th) but should not be all that often.
→Introduce Green Smoothies into my diet – This will by far be my hardest challenge of the month as I do not like vegetables. Lettuce you can forget me even trying that one again, but I will give metallicy spinach another try with lots of berries to try to cover the taste and hide the color. My goal for this challenge is to do a 1-2-3-4 approach; 1 green smoothie in the first week, 2 green smoothies in the second week, etc. and hopefully by week 4 I’ll have changed my mind on spinach (as least in a smoothie).

September Wrap Up

Well, September is finally winding down. It feels like an incredibly long month with all the uncertainty and emotional ups and downs with the job situation. But I have survived, and I’m actually looking forward to an extended break from work to finish my masters and work on getting me healthy (which is the theme for October’s challenges). So on with the recap of how I’m doing with my challenges.

✔Get that body moving -- I have worked the Five Tibetan Rites in about 15 days this month. The idea was more, but I’m happy to have made progress. I will continue to try and work them into my new daily routine.
✔Shut down and unplug electronics -- I’m happy to report that this challenge turned out to be one of the easiest of the month with the exception of my desktop. This week the shut down script gets modified with an earlier time and I will be removing the desktop from my sleeping quarters at some point this week.
✔Switch to eco-friendly dish detergent -- This again was easy as I don’t use my dishwasher very often. I have noticed that I need to be more careful and pre rinse some items. But I am other wise happy with the switch and will continue to use it.
✔Turn down the AC and keep it down -- The positive effect this had on my electricity bill has proved that the heat is well worth the cost. I’m just hoping as the cold weather sets in I’ll be able to keep it up, maybe the down stairs neighbors will keep their heat up high and that will help. And I have my down comforter back and that will definitely keep me toast.
→Declutter apartment room by room -- Progress is still slow on the home front of decluttering, but I did finally manage to clean off the desk in the living room which was a huge feat. This one remains open but with the amount of time I will be spending at home starting in October I suspect this will quickly be managed. I also managed to sell a few things on Craig’s List that either I no longer needed (the TV stand) and items that had never been opened.
→DivaCup Mastery -- I’ll let you know how this goes after the two month experiment is over.
→Give away/sale oversized desk in living room -- The desk is going up on Craig’s List tonight. I can’t believe that it’s finally cleared off. That was probably the biggest battle in completing this challenged.
→Use up pre-packaged items in apartment -- Slowly but surely the prepackaged items are making their way out of my apartment. This morning I finished my mouth wash and my never ending supply of tooth paste is dwindling (though I actually got a travel size tube in the mail last month..crazy!).

I thought I’d also give an update on how I’ve progressed with my challenges from August.
✔Give away TV -- I have no regrets about this one. My desktop functions perfectly as my movie station and I didn’t have cable before so I’m not loosing access to anything.
✔Give up using handicap parking spaces -- I still struggle with this one as I try to use other spaces, but when pressed for time or just feeling lazy when there is a crowd I have used the handicap parking. I’m aware now and will double my efforts even on the crappies of days to look a little harder.
✔Switch to eco-friendly laundry detergent -- I love the smell of the laundry detergent. It last a good while and my clothes seem to be holding up with no new issues.
✔Take unused items to the Salvation Army -- I have a few boxes in the need to take now mode, but over all I’ve been doing good with continuing to donate to the Salvation Army.
✔Unplug and Freecycle flat iron -- The only times I miss the flat iron is on days I’m lazy and don’t feel like taking the time to do my hair. But I do enjoy the slight lessening of clutter in the bathroom.
✔Use Freecycle and Craig's List to declutter apartment -- See above, I’m making progress and I’m pleased as punch with myself for the effort.

Status on the AC

Well the AC has been off for 24 days and I haven’t died from heat exhaustion or frozen in my sleep. There have only been a handful of days when I was even tempted to turn on the AC due to the heat, but I have persevered and the proof of the saving is in black and white on my bill. The difference from last month’s bill to this month’s bill is over $20, and from this month and the month before that was over $35. The previous month I ran the AC only on the weekends and the occasional evening. I don’t ever recall my electricity bill for a full month being this low.

Going back and checking my bills since being at this apartment (Apr. 2008), this month’s bill is lower than my first partial month. The difference from 1 year ago is over $20 for September. I’d like to see my bills become more consistent over the next three months instead of jumping around as they have in the past from month to month. I know this past month was made easier for me to keep the AC off because I spent 8 hours a day five days a week in a cube directly under the AC vent on full blast and freezing my buns off, so the heat of the apartment was actually a welcomed retreat at the end of the day. The electricity bill history has been significantly higher during months in which I spent a great deal at home. Hopefully since I am now more conscious of it, I won’t be tempted to us abuse the AC.

The real challenge will come as it gets cooler and I will be at the apartment more. Thankfully my down comforter is being rescued from the cleaners and I can once again wrap myself up in my blanket of warmth as I piddle about the apartment. And I’m sure my sweatpants will see plenty of use in the coming months.

100 Hits!

I hit 100 yesterday on my counter!

In other news, I'm exhausted and dead tired from a roller coaster week. Thank goodness it was a short week and I had given myself an extra-long long weekend. The sinus infection is still raging war giving me a lovely sinus headache.

However, I am doing my best to keep my spirits up, and was kindly reminded last night at my women's circle to keep thinking in the positive. Set my intention that the job is mine and let the universe catch up to that kind of thinking.

So far I feel I'm doing good on my September challenges 10 days in. The AC at the apartment has not been touched since August 30th, and I haven't died from heat exhaustion yet, but that's probably because it seems the heat has finally given way to the beginnings of autumn (at least this week anyway). Lamps are now officially the only items continuously plugged in that are not on surge protectors, but do happen to be in the plugs connected to the light switches; everything else is unplugged until needed. I've also got a few things listed on Craig's List to help declutter the apartment, but after the initial posting buzz I haven't find a buyer (that actually shows up). I'll give them a couple more days before I give way to Freecycle. My goal for this weekend is to finally finish clearing off the desk in the living room. It's no where near as bad as it was originally, but it's still not cleared off so it can be sold. I did fantastic my first week doing the Five Tibetan Rites, but my long weekend saw me skip a few days and getting back in the habit felt a little off kilter. But I persisted and increase my reps and feeling good about my body moving.

My War on Junk Mail is still going strong, I'm taking one day a week to contact all the junk mail perpetrators. It's still a few weeks before my mailbox will see the benefits but it feels good to be contacting various offenders and telling them to cut it out.

Shut down and unplug electronics

I can officially say that the only thing that isn't plugged into a powerstrip or on a switch is my alarm clock. Everything else has been unplugged until it's needed and the computers are turned off while I'm away from the apartment with the exception of the kitchen appliances. I wasn't sure if this was going to be an easy change, but the reality is that most things were plugged in for convince but rarely used. New perspective. I'm happy to have made this change.