After 20+ years of smoking, I have made the decision to be a non-smoker.

I am not going to attempt to be a big brave soul and conquer this on my own (I dread any emotional turmoil), instead I am giving this wonderdrug, Chantix, a shot.

Three years ago I gave Wellbutrin (sp?) a go and damn if that stuff wasn't evil! After a couple weeks I gave up and from that experience, I have been very skeptical about Chanix until.... I heard 2 success stories from people I know.

After 30 years of smoking nearly 2 packs a day, a friend is smoke free now for 8 months. Damn it...if HE can do it. Certainly I can. Another chronic chain-smoker is several months smoke-free and says he doesn't even think about it. Now that is what I am talking about! No fits of cravings and fighting the desire? Count me in.

So starting at 12:00 tomorrow I will be on the path. Wish me luck

Update 5/29/08

The Dr. Visit was going well until......"you look exceptionally tan for this time of year.  And your hands...they are..."

Yes, swollen.  I went into the ordeal of tests 3 years ago- blood work that (twice - 20 viles or so in total) returned a clear positive ANA (very high count twice) but negative on EVERYTHING else, the talk (and elimination of) Lupus and other autoimmune diseases.  An Echocardiogram, 6 hours in a vascular lab with 4 techs using Dopplar and Ultrasound on my upper extremities, plus some other test involving dye in my blood and CT scans.  Oh yes, and one old guy that talked religion and wanted to do a breast exam.

The result?  Quit smoking - you have Buerger's disease.  Oh yes, and try this drug, try that drug, let's see what this will do.  I have to admit I lied to every one of the them stating that the "drugs" didn't have an effect, when in fact - I never took one.  I had no desire to mask or bring on a sympton while I was the pharmacological guinea pig; when nobody could come up with a slight reason other than "let's see" to take a drug.  I asked about my positive ANA (that started the whole thing) and they just pushed it aside.  That means nothing.  But I suppose it means enough that the first mention of disease was lupus.  End of converstation.

So today the talk of Addison's is on the table (and 6 more viles of bloodletting).  Except....

"Your blood pressure is really high".  110/98.  This is not a sign of Addison's....just the opposite.

Normally my blood pressure is very low - so this surprised the shit out of me.  I will go tomorrow and have it checked again - just in case the strong coffee and 1/2 pack of cigs I smoked prior had an effect (ya' think?).

Shit- here a friend joked that it was really funny that you have to go to the Dr. for a checkup before getting Chantix....make sure you are healthy enough to quit smoking.  But now, down that road of bloodwork (and guess-work) I go.

I am a little freaked out.....if I ignored the symptoms they would go away, right?!   Facing the days that come until the blood work is back.....will there be more?  Will there be an answer?  I kinda' hope I have Addison's Disease.  So I take pills and have to wear a medical bracelet the rest of my life.?.....at least the mystery (and my ignoring it due to shitty Dr.'s) will be over.

Damn it.  I just wanted to quit smoking. 

 And as all the stuff says - set a target quit date.  The whole reason for updating (but then I went into a rant) was to put my target date out there.  I can't lie or change it or ignore it if I put it out there.....so my date will be June 7th. 

I checked the calendar and counted days...only to remember that this will mark the day, 10 years ago, that my mother passed away due a long line of addictions. 

What a great marking to shed my addiction. 

I deactivated my blog because, well I had nothing really to say and what I had said seemed like stuff that (if I weren't to return to blogging) was a sad excuse for material to leave as my "legacy", as it were.

But I have my soapbox recently and had to get it out.....all this green shit people are talking about.

Anyone remember when recycling paid you? You took in the newspapers, glass and aluminum to the grocery store and got a price per pound.

Now they have us separating this stuff from our trash, so they don't have to and we don't get a dime back from it. Says to me, someone is making money off this gig and we are left feeling guilty if we don't do their dirty work.

People talk about being green - they promote it as an extension of their existence (and expect everyone else to follow suit), but they run the water when they brush their teeth, don't recycle, drive gas guzzlers and by all means, don't use cloth grocery bags, but instead accept the sparsely filled plastic ones.

Let's talk about the countless products - the 2008 hybrid of the year, for example, the Chevy Tahoe at a whopping 20mpg. "Simple Green" cleaner that has toxic chemicals listed right on the ingredients list.

Wait, I got it. Let's use corn for gas. Take away the food ingredient that feeds countless of people (cheaply, I might add) and pay the farmers to quit growing food....grow gas. Give me a break!

Oh and the "Lights out America" where everyone was asked to turn out all lights for 1 hour in a (marketable) statement to say we are "green". Go buy a fucking clothes line and use that instead of your dryer. Turn off your porch light and every light in (empty rooms) every room, every day.

To say "I am green" is the new chic, "I am part of the popular club" bullshit that is just as tiring as celebrity news.

Companies are throwing it around and people are gobbling it up and regurgitating it back out.

It's not that I think conservation isn't a good thing - I have a long ass list of stuff I do (including rain barrels I installed 3 years ago. Georgians laughed at me then. But had I known this green shit was going to be so popular, I would have abandoned my current business to go into the rain barrel business. Last year, the cost was 3x what I paid and none available in the Atlanta area).

But I don't walk around talking about green this, green that. While in my house, I will ask that you follow some simple rules of conservation. When I am at your house, I will not tell you what you should do to be green. I

have no children to leave a "messy" earth too....What I do, I do because it makes me feel good now.

If you throw away cans, waste electricity and water - fine by me. Just quit pretending you are green because you want to be part of the new elite club....and by all means shut up with the green shit.

I have never really bought into the whole global warming thing destroying the plant. We will certainly destroy ourselves before the planet starts to ask us to save her. Hell, just look at Chernobyl! Plants and animals have bound back from nuclear fallout.

Article from The Investor's Business Daily (thanx Marc!).

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.
In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.

I almost forget this little screen with emoti-dudes and the "advanced" link within my white page even existed. It has been a while. Qstream is keeping me entertained for the internet crap. Life keeps moving, working hard as usual, and the backyard is soooooo close. Screen on the green in the hood - soon it shall be.

Now here I is.

Cut all my hair off again. It could be compared to sex. I just belong with short hair and shedding that mop felt soooooo great.

It took some serious convincing to get her to cut it off. I got the usual, "we'll take a little off then you can come back if you want it as short as you say you want it".......

Whaaaaa? I have heard that too many times. Cut the shit off or I am out of here!

When it came off I sighed and said, "summer is almost here so this is perfect timing". She looked at me like I had 3 heads..."it's January!!!!!", she replied.

Yeah, it's all about your perspective

So Happy almost summer in January to ya'll!!!!!!!

I have been listening to them since I was 3 years old and sang "Aqualung" around the campfire when I was 5 (a little disturbing to my parents considering the lyrics - but hey, I liked the tune)

I bought my mother a ticket to the show at Red Rocks 15 or so years ago - but gave up my seat for one of her boyfriends.

Last night I finally got to live my glory at the Tabernacle (hands down the coolest and funkiest venue in Atlanta).

Most of the people Rob works with asked "who the hell is that?" So it was no surprise that, other than the kids in tow, I was probably the youngest person at the show.

The woman next to me asked, "why are the people being so loud?!" And her husband wanting to open a barred window because he claimed "the air circulation was not very efficient". I guess they both forgot what it was like to go to a live show. Dang, just a month ago I was in a mosh pit at the same venue...go figure.

But then there were some old farts (and I really love me some cool old farts!) in the front row that were pretty impressively "gettin' down"

Damn was it a good show!



Here is a video of my favorite song.