Spring and Freedom Drawing Near

It's forty one degrees in New Jersey, a nice change of pace after the last few weeks. The sun has been brightening things up nice and early this week too, I've noticed.

Between the warming up and the chirping sparrows by which I was greeted this morning, It's easy for me to be optimistic today. Optimistic about life and about quitting smoking this weekend for good.

I'm already spending the money I'll be saving in my head. Maybe I'll start giving the kids an allowance. Hmmm, maybe I'd better get them to start taking out the garbage first.

They say that things start tasting better after you've quit. I find myself wondering: how long does this take, and can a good homemade bunch of tacos really taste any better ?

Can I Take a Message?

The funniest thing just happened. My younger son wanted to call Mommy at work and feel her out on the possibility of going to a certain rodent-themed kids restaurant tonight. That's not the funny thing.

You ever put a six year old on the phone?

So he asked for her by name, and the poor girl who answered the phone didn't know who she was talking to, and it turns out that Mommy was in a meeting. If he wanted to leave a message though, she offered...

Poor girl had no idea the can of worms she was opening. She now knows more than she could ever need to know about fundraising night, and getting a bunch of extra tokens, and how 15% will be contributed to the PTA or whatever, etc.

I considered, just for a brief moment, jumping in and rescuing her, but ultimately decided I didn't want to be responsible for ruining the potential the whole thing has to like on one of those while you were out slips.

Looking back now (and laughing my ass off), I'm confident I made the right choice.

Giving Up Smoking, Giving Up Trying, Giving Up Hoping

I must apologize to you, my loyal reader, for I have been misleading you. I have posted here that I will try to stop smoking in five days. I've even gone so far with my deception as to mention that maybe I will succeed.

That's a bunch of crap. What I'm actually going to do on Sunday is just stop smoking. I'm also going to stop trying to quit and hoping I quit. Surely these three activities will drive me to an early grave should I continue them.

No more attempting for me, I'm calling it quits.

Still Gearing Up To Quit

I've managed to get some work done on the site template. I'm thinking that I have to make sure I don't drag it out too long, as I tend to do with most things. Since it never usually takes more than a week or so for me to bang out a site, I think I can reasonably give myself a deadline of Sunday.

That's that, then. I will stop smoking cold turkey no later than sometime Sunday, March 4. Either that or I will look like a big jerk for putting all this time into dedicating a blog to it.

Wish me luck.

How am I Going to Quit Smoking?

I Need To quit smoking! My kids are going to turn out to be smokers just like me if I don't. That's my biggest motivation, and hopefully their happy, healthy little faces will be proper motivation to help me kick this habit for good this time. I thought the cost of smoking would do it, but so far that hasn't happened.

This particular addiction does a very effective job of convincing me that I enjoy it. All my friends are smokers (good thing there ain't too many, I guess), and my wife is a smoker. She is not ready to quit just yet.

Still, I'm going to try again to dig real deep and do this. I'll be using this blog as a tool, and hopefully it will become a success story. You may have taken notice that I haven't actually taken the plunge here yet, and are perhaps wondering what I'm waiting for. I'm wondering a little myself, but this smoking thing is a toughie, and after several failed attempts, I want to quit for good this time.

I've tried a few different things, including figuring out the amount of money it costs to smoke (which changes often, but is always more than the cost of my heating oil. At the time of our most recent delivery, that was $2.44/gallon) and making the new years resolution to quit smoking. I think I've tried to quit maybe three or four times, but it's always been pretty half-hearted and I have only made it longer than 24 hours one time. That was around three days.

So here's the plan: I have this blog that I've been sitting on for awhile, with one of the default templates and everything. Ick. I'm making it a project. I've already started working on a master plan to make it pretty. When I am done with the design, I'll just stop smoking with the official blog launch. Ha, I snapped my fingers just then, like somebody can hear me.

I have a real nice header image, but am having a hell of a time deciding what colors to go with. I'll post the phases as I go. Maybe if I make it a fun and challenging project, I'll be more likely to do well. Using the blogger platform is automatically a challenge, I like wordpress much better.

Anyway, it shouldn't take me more than around a week, so I should have a quit date coming soon. And a fatter wallet to go with it.