www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClYEW2pIUfA

                          

Just a quick congrats post going out to the ‘Bella’ for getting her artwork placed on the City Hall wall… Very cool (so proud…)…

                          

So after years of knowing it needs to be done, and a million excuses, for the first time in my life I actually wanted to quit smoking. I’ve been avoiding posting much about it, as I didn’t really know how the first few days would go. I do have to say there were a few tough moments but in reality so far it’s been 1000X easier than ever before…

So I’m wondering a bit, why has it been easier? Hands down, wanting to quit is probably the number one reason… Nobody smokes anymore, and all the sneaking outside was getting a little old. Being constantly worried about “stinking of smoke” wasn’t too fun either. Constantly looking for excuses to get outside or have to ‘drive’ somewhere alone… exhausting.

Money plays a big role as well. The screenshot above is from a little app called “sinceIQuit” that keeps me posted on how long its been. But an even nicer feature is seeing how much stupid money I was spending… I was going to throw my daily cigarette spending into a jar, but this is much easier…

Of course it goes without saying there’s a huge push to quit when your daughter is on your case about it. Hopefully I’m quitting soon enough that she won’t ever even think of starting. I never really smoked in front of her, but she eventually caught on to the “random trips to the garage”, and there’s only so many times you can try to explain an addiction to a child… (ie – they don’t get it…).

So for what it’s worth, we’ll see how this goes..I expect there will be tough times ahead (I mean I am quitting something I’ve done for almost 2/3rds of my life…). I imagine outside of a nice milestone there won’t be much more from me on the subject. One of my biggest pet peeves was always people who quit and make it some sort of mission to bug and harass smokers… That’s not my thing….

                          

[See post to watch Flash video]

Dug up a short silent flick from the early 1900′s. It’s the touching tale of a group of young kids in a house at Westbrook River. There’s dancing, fighting, action and adventure.

                          

Yup. One year ago today I started my job in Cleveland and the ball has been rolling ever since. Yea, I know there’s another famous thing about this day, but right now I’m just focused on the fact that a year has gone by quicker than any year has gone by before. i hope that is not a pptern (though I suspect it is…)

Quick year synopsis (i.e.- in a nutshell…)

Awesome Vacation, New Temporary digs followed by new permanent digs, old & new friends, somebody jumped from 1st to 2nd grade, wife and life in good shape, Kewl job, much yardwork ahead, Browns questionable at best but Cavs & Indians were/are on a roll, the Sopranos ended, some friends I didn’t see enough (or at all…) and I got to shovel snow….

                          

Luckily, my daughter likes to use big words and seems to have turned out just fine (minus the trauma suffered from that damned ‘dragon puppet’ (see below), with it’s big mouth popping open out of nowhere causing her to shake and cry…)

It’s good to know that this sort of research (10 years too late) is out there. Those videos were really creepy. Sure, it’s nice to hear kids count to 10 in 24 different languages while a disembodied hand slides a toy fire truck across the screen, and one of those old toy robots from the 20′s waddles across the screen, but at the end of the day, we see how much good it did…

Blah!