Oh, my stars and garters!

Treat

Ok, I took these at the same time with the camera settings as close as I could get them and tried very hard to hold the camera as steady as I could. No Photoshop or anything like that.

 

Canon E1. Fun to use, cute. Looks like a bar of light blue soap. Small enough to take everywhere. Takes great pictures outside at noon.

Canon S90. Compact, black block that fits in my pocket; has a cool ring around the lens to customize settings without wading through back-of-the-camera menus; extremely satisfying to use.

I didn't need a new camera, exactly, but I really, really, really wanted this particular one. My only regret is that the S90 wasn't out in time for me to take one on our trip last month.

I haven't had a cigarette in four weeks.

I got that joy joy joy joy...

On and on and onandonandon

I haven't had a cigarette in three weeks. That's 21 days! 504 hours! 30,240 minutes! One million, eight hundred and fourteen thousand, four hundred seconds! 1.8144e+15 nanoseconds!

Etc.

So that is good. Good for me! Now comes the hard part, when the novelty wears off and is replaced by aimlessness, dysphoria, and occasional free-floating dread. On top of that, I really need to stop cramming in the salty snacks and candy at such an alarming rate; the money I am saving by not buying smokes, while significant, is not nearly enough to fund a new, larger wardrobe. Too bad. The snacking part is extremely fun.

You know, really, as much as this has sucked it hasn't been nearly as awful as I had built it up to be in my mind. I've quit a few times before, though, and the settling-in-for-real part is a special kind of bitch all its own. It doesn't help that it seems like by now the whole thing should be easier, but some things actually get a lot worse for a while.

I'm hoping that if all goes well and I am diligent about getting my shit together, though, pretty soon I will be able to talk about something--god, anything--else, and won't that be exciting?

Hee hee hee

Mameshiba!

The Bean-Dogs are here to teach us all and make everyone sad.

These videos were playing on a loop while I was in a Kiddy Land toy store in Japan. I heard them about a million times while I was browsing, but I never actually bothered to look up and watch them.

That turned out to be a big mistake because I've had the little song at the end stuck in my head for an entire month. I knew I'd heard it in the toy store, but other than that I had no idea what it was for or about, and it's been kind of driving me completely crazy: Blah dee blah shee shee la la la!

But now the mystery is solved, and I feel much better. I hope you feel better too.

Cuz

I forgot (ok, I didn't forget, but I hadn't thought about it in a while) how whip-smart and funny my cousins are. And there are nine of them, so that's a lot of smart funny people to have around.

Also, I have a first cousin, once removed who has had 16 kidney stones. It's a fact!

I recommend reading up on cousins and double cousins and half cousins, because the whole cousin thing can get pretty twisted. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin?wasRedirected=true

Cough

Hi. It's been 11 days and still haven't smoked, although I did almost choke to death on a mouthful of Skittles. I have the broken blood vessel under my eye to prove it.

That doesn't really seem fair, as I had only crammed that many Skittles in my mouth to keep from smoking in the first place. My friend Bryan says if I do end up dying in some ironic non-smoking fashion (choking on compensatory candy, nicotine gum poisoning) he will see to it they play the sad trombone at my funeral.

It's probably about time to stop eating so many Skittles anyway. The rainbow of fruit flavor appears to shoot directly to my ass and stay there. What a pleasant person I am lately! Luckily, I get to spread the joy: tomorrow I leave for Nashville to spend the weekend with my entire extended family. I am actually looking forward to this a great deal, although be warned: the first family member to hint that I'm wasting my life gets it in the neck.

Jive

I haven't had a cigarette in just two hours shy of a week. That's 166 hours of no cigarettes. And I'm not going to lie, even with all the nicotine gum I can chew, it fuckin' sucks. At some point soon I will start to experience all those much-vaunted benefits, like increased lung capacity and not dying of emphysema, and then I will be happier about all this, but for now it's pure downside. All I have to show for my trouble is a week of being clogged, snotty, testy, sleep-deprived, bloated, confused, whiny, pissy, pimply, and weird. Oh, and occasionally emitting gas that smells like a tire fire. Nobody ever mentions the gas, but it is epic.

Most of the advice online is terrible, by the way. If you are quitting, do not ever go online. They employ terms like "your quit" and "Nicodemon" and make a huge deal about getting plenty of rest, which you simply can't do because every system in your body is in absolute riot. On top of that you'll be completely stressed out about not getting enough rest because you read those stupid websites, which causes you to sleep even less. Thanks for the tip, you shitsticks.

(Why, hello! I'm so glad you could make it to my gigantic pity party! Can I get you anything? Gum? Skittles? A brief but intense crying jag?) 

They also tell you to avoid "triggers," like caffeine and alcohol. Listen, I have smoked a pack a day for almost 20 years. Everything is a trigger. Waking up is a trigger. Driving to work is a trigger. Eating is a trigger. Just being outside is a trigger. If you think I'm giving up everything in my life that gives me pleasure, you're out of your damn mind. So coffee and beer remain on the menu. Really, about the only piece of conventional wisdom I have found useful is to eat whatever you want and worry about the weight later. I like that part a lot. 

The hardest part for me is managing time. What the hell do you non-smokers do when you complete a task? What do you look forward to from hour to hour? How do you block out your day? It's like I'm waiting for something, always, that never happens. It's messing me up, and it's also incredibly depressing to be confronted with how much time I spend either smoking or thinking about smoking. Which is why I think it would be awfully nice to stop.

All aboard the sushi train

I've started to post stuff from our trip on flickr. Today's installment: crappy iPhone photos and a couple of videos too.

Eric continues to add to his set as well. His food and drink batch is my favorite so far.

It's a lot of fun to go through and select my favorites and tweak and tag them, but with 750+ files, it's going to take a while. 

Chinese red lanterns

On dreary days it is nice to have a husband with a florist friend who hooks him up with day-old bouquets. Not pictured: black calla lilies, black hydrangeas, green chrysanthemums, and pink tea roses. I guess no one else wanted beautiful flowers today.