29 months
2007-01-22, 4:15 p.m.

Day 883 29 Months Down

Today happens to be my 29 month anniversary of quitting smoking. Kinda cool. Don�t think about it much anymore. Just got an email reminder about it from Quitnet � a place I went to early on as a potential support site. Guess it helped. Here�s some data the site tracks:

Quitnet Data

Quit date: Aug. 22, 2004 at 7:00pm
Time smoke free: 882 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes, 23 seconds
Butts NOT smoked: 17649
Lifetime Saved: 4 months, 14 days, 19 hours
Money Saved: $3,602.64

They�re a little more delicate and call them cigarettes, not butts. The burn rate is based on a pack a day and $4.08 per pack. I know they�re more than that now, so the savings amount is likely a little higher. No matter. I probably spent the difference in gym clothes. Also nearly 29 months since I started this journal. My how things have changed.

Winter has finally returned to western New York. Haven�t been above freezing in a week or more it seems. Fish pond is hanging in there, I see the water falls are still running and there�s a nice blanket of snow sticking to the mesh leaf barrier. There is one area in the pond itself where I can see open water. That�s a reassuring sight. I got some pictures of it the other day � from near the same locations I got those other shots back in the spring. It�ll be a neat contrast when I get them posted finally. I�ll link you up to them when it happens.

Saturday went pretty typical. Got up and went to the gym. Went a little later though. Didn�t do aerobics, just did the spinning and Nautilus. Spinning was interesting. The class was �a hill� complete with sprint drills, up/downs, guys vs girls all the way up. Deal was that once you increased you resistance setting, there was no going back. Thing is, to do the sprints, you need SOMETHING to push against or you bounce all over. Ditto for the up/downs, only more so. So early on, you were forced to bump the resistance up in order to be able to do the speed work. In general, we were encouraged to increase the resistance about every 5 minutes

Towards the end, we were in the steeper part of the climb. The instructor (Julie) was kind of hoping we�d be up and out of our seats to push. But once we got up � no going back down. So some of us resisted. It�s a killer pushing with your legs like that, but standing on the pedals for a long time is tougher. After 5 minutes of grueling grinding, Julie gets off her bike and comes around to each of us. I could see her talking, but wasn�t sure what she was saying until she got to me. Then I wish she hadn�t. She gets her face close to mine, looks me right in the eye and asks �Is it hard? Huh? Is it hard?� Maybe I�m a dirty old man, but it was all I could do to stay on the bike. Of course, I told her, yes, it was hard. Then I turned up the resistance some more and hopped up out of the saddle as soon as she was past me. Funniest part was Julie didn�t seem to realize just what she was asking (especially of the guys) but even the gals in the class were getting a good giggle out of it. Maybe she was just really focused on the class.

After the mornings entertainment, got back home, did a few minor chores, then struck a deal with Cindy where I�d go do the grocery shopping and she�d, she�d, I don�t know � do something. Start getting ready to make this �Italian Gravy� we do in big batches. It�s like a marinara sauce, but has beef stock, red wine, and pork in it on top of all the other typical Italian stuff.

By now, I know what to expect. I do the shopping, then come home to someone who used the time to alter her reality. Now in her defense, she did have all the veggies chopped and had an excellent start on the gravy, but why she thinks hiding her drinking is doing any good I�ll never know. It can�t be that she thinks if I don�t see her drink she can�t really be drunk, is it? Cuz she has about a half dozen �tells� that I can use to assess her blood alcohol level and never get close enough to smell her breath, or hear her talk.

Yeah, so she made sauce. I was left to do Saturday�s dinner � Short Ribs with Tagliatelle another Italian dish, this one from Giada DeLaurentiis. Delish. Love how it turned out. While I was cooking, Cindy ran out of whiskey, so she had one of my Black Forest Beers. I hadn�t had one in about two weeks, she must have figured I forgot about them. She might be thinking that I�ll mistake it for a Dr. Pepper or a Coke (it�s THAT dark, yummm), but really now. I�m not getting stuck in that mode where I drink stuff just to keep her from having too much. Too many headache�s there. I just hope she re-stocks her whisley supply and leaves my beer alone. I�ll finish it sooner or later. Or send it down to Circe. She can share it with OKC and they�ll have a fine time. (Scroll back on Circe�s site a day or two. I�ve been turned into a laptop!!)

Sunday I used the sauce Cindy made and did up some chicken breast parmesan. Baked in the oven variety rather than pan fried. Found some red-wine pasta noodles at Aldi�s so we tried those too. Pretty good stuff.

Must have reached some equilibrium level with my body�s water level. I drank a lot this morning what with spinning & nautilus. Pushing 2 quarts maybe. Then of course the morning coffee kicked in. Felt like I spent the morning running back & forth to the bathroom. These people that really push the whole drink a lot of water thing? Not such a hot idea when the bathroom is 2 or 3 hundred feet away.

Back to the grind today. Actually have to work a full week this week. No kids to pick up at airports, no appointments for mom�s ankle (healing fine so far), no good excuses to skip a day. Might have to manufacture one. Now I�m stuck reading a 280 page spec on PCI Local Bus communications. Gah. I�ll probably be a better person engineer for it, but geeze, it�s a snoozer.

Minestrone soup for dinner tonight I think. Lots of chopping. Works out well though. Chop stuff, saut� it. Chop some more, throw it in with some stock. Re-season, chop more, throw it in. Layers the flavors nicely. Makes for a very fast 30 minutes, then you get to rest while it simmers for a bit. Very low calorie too. No meat in it, unless I miss and nick a finger. Haven�t yet, but ya never know.

Better go read, before thoughts of dinner force me to leave. Someone remind me to get gas on the way home too, hmmm? I�m getting close to the wrong side of the E mark. Snowing again too. Hate to have a nearly empty tank in the snow. You never know when you�ll be stuck idling somewhere while some poor soul gets his car pulled out of a ditch.

Later folks

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