22nd January - The Compensation Principle

Today was the first Starbucks day I've had since re-starting the effort to Disappear. Strange day, all in all, and I got very little that was productive done. But you might remember I mentioned that I had a cold 'usual' in Starbucks, which I'd recently taken to having in its unreconstructed, non-Disappearing-friendly, cream-topped form.

I went in and asked for it with 'all the pleasure taken out' - which seems to be how my brain processes it, even if it's not an especially helpful description for my barista pals.

'Oh right,' said Naz, one of those pals, 'so decaff, skinny, light base...'
'That's the one,' I agreed.
'But keep the cream, right?'
I chuckled. 'Nope - all the pleasure, Naz,' I insisted.
She forwned. 'Really?'
'Really.'
She got busy making the drink, but there was a frown of puzzlement on her face. When the drink was nearly finished, she looked across at me again.
'Reeeeeeally?' she double-checked, her hand already on the cream siphon. 'You're sure?'
'I'm absolutely sure,' I told her. 'Absolutely.'
She looked at me with sweet bemusement - to be fair, it's a look that she often wears when I tell her things, a kind of 'what planet are you from, you strange, strange man?' look that makes you want to chuckle and pretty much hug her, because in that moment, she's not the confident woman in control of her own destiny that she actually is, but a wide-eyed five year-old, blinking at the madness of the grown-ups when they try and explain some silly nonsense to her.
'Oh, he's trying to be good,' put in Tania, a relative newbie to my Starbucks world, who appears to have had all natural human badness siphoned out of her nature at an early age, and who makes a damn fine Christmas elf. 'You should read his blog.'
Now Naz, to be fair, has always been supportive of my Disappearing efforts, and has read the blog previously. In fact, this is Naz - when she first discovered I was trying to lose weight, she'd write little inspiring pep-talks on my to-go cups. That's the level of sweet and helpful humanity we're dealing with here. Pure class.
'Oh,' said Naz, in response to this advice. 'Oh, all right.' And before any of us really knew what was happening, she'd caramel syruped what I think it's only fair to call 'the bejesus' out of the faux frap, the usual recipe for which is really more or less ice, skinny milk and desperation.
I chuckled. 'Thanks Naz.'
'Wellllll,' she explained, 'we've got to compensate you somehow.'
Made me grin, that one.

What's more, it tasted damn good, I'll admit, the compensation.
Generally, the rest of yesterday went pretty much as planned - mostly milk-light, sugar-free hot drinks, Starbucks plain porridge for breakfast, a bowl of soup and two rolls for dinner, no lunch (calorific compensation for the fact that I put rather a lot of milky liquid into myself yesterday), and home just in time to bike my ass off for an hour before walking over to collect d from work.

Now, I swear I wasn't trying to do this. In fact, just yesterday, I mention specifically not trying to do this, but after my West Wing bikefest, a geek-pal of mine named Adam mentioned a show to me that I'd always meant to catch but never had, and which - I daresay much to d's delight - I'm under absolutely no obligation to review either. The show is Gotham, and since Adam mentioned it was available on Netflix, I've been inhaling the thing in any spare moments I get.

Believe me when I tell you that no moments in life will ever be sparer than the moments you spend sweating your life away on an exercise bike, so I fired up the Flix on the phone, and Gothamed myself into a frantic sweaty oblivion for an hour, topping out at a calorie-burn of 613. 600 always used to be my racing target, because of course it works out at ten calories per minute, which is the kind of thing you need to know if you're on an exercise bike bored out of your brain and trying to make the time past faster. But an episode of Gotham burned away the boredom and let me hit a mark I wasn't even trying to hit.

We like this. A lot.
Onward! Bring on the Gotham, and the pain and the sweat and, whatever else is coming. I've still yet to complete week one of this Disappearance, so the trick at this stage is not to get too full of myself and think I've  somehow 'done it,' somehow conquered the insatiable nature of  self-permission. Clearly though, not my first rodeo, this. So far, so good, so positive.