16 days smoke-free. All I can say is... "this is completely different". I realized today that, no matter how long my past attempts at quitting had lasted, I never actually gave up nicotene, and all those attempts were therefore false. I had kept the N monster alive with gum, patches - even chewing tobacco during an unfortunate couple of months back in '02. Now he, the monster, is dying. And nothing prepared me for this. My body kept me on my toes for the first week and a half or so what with the no-sleeping, indigestion, etc. Now I'm settling into the big, macro changes... I'm losing my mind a little bit.
Hey it's all gonna work out. Here's sports.
I went to the doctor last week, also for the first time in years, and got my first colonoscopy ever. I had no idea they just gave those things out of the blue like that - I thought there'd be some forewarning, or foreplay at the very least, but all I got was: "Now's the part where you drop your shorts, bend over and put your elbows on the table". I was just expecting the lubed finger, the same lubed finger I'd gotten on pretty much all my previous doctor's visits. So when I heard him opening a box behind me as I bent over the table, I turned around and sure enough he was preparing a... thing. It was long and white and tubular and looked like pretty much nothing I'd had up my ass so far. The doctor came up behind me and said (no kidding) "Welcome to being 40!" as he plunged the tube all the way up me with a force that was just this side of appropriate and just that of being a little bit hot. Kidding. Not hot. It fucking hurt like a mofo and I resisted as much as I could and retreated forward until i was on my tiptoes over the exam table. He started shouting: "just relax! lean back on it like you're having a bowel movement!" He was literally almost shouting at this point and I was writhing like a stuck pig. Ha. Well, I was just bein' a pussy.. I mean I mean... aaagggh. Afterwards, he told me "that was about the most difficult rectal exam I've ever had to do". Somehow, I felt honored.
I never got to become a drummer. I would like to learn how to play the drums before I die.
I'm not bein' nothin' for Halloween this year. It just didn't end up being a priority for me this time around. I think, though, that I shall wear my seersucker suit. That's it... I'll be a seersucker.
schwoop. I have no idea what I'm talking about. out.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Monday, October 24, 2005
shady's back
hmm... ahem. check check. one two. this thing on? [loud microphone feedback]
ahh... hello. so here i am once again. I haven't been here for quite a while. I've been doing things and thinking things elsewhere. I wrote some things in my real notebook, and had some conversations with real people.
I've been teaching myself Final Cut Pro, and I grew a beard.
I quit smoking. Today is day 9. I have felt, by turns, homicidal, suicidal, broken and strong, but mostly like I did the best and most important thing that I've ever done for myself. I am very grateful to myself. I did slip up, though, and had one cigarette on Friday night, but I forgave myself and didn't beat myself up. I don't think I want to slip again, though.
They say that when you quit smoking, "you get your sense of smell back" and it's really true! I had been smoking so long (26 years) that I didn't even remember my sense of smell - but all last week, I started noticing a cornucopia of odor I never had before. Smell is a really handy sense to have when you're hungry and need to find a place to get a slice. I'm finding that i can sniff out a pizza joint from blocks away. However, it's not such a picnic when you're stuffed on the subway at the end of the day, or walking behind someone who smells like dog shit. I always picture the smells like those visible wafts of odor that are always coming off a pie or something in cartoons, and that would turn into a hand and tap you on the shoulder to try and tempt you. That happened to Fred Flintstone a lot. Anyway.
For the first few days of not smoking, I went a little crazy on the snacks and totally overdosed on wasabi peas and gummy clown fish at work because I couldn't go out for cigarette breaks. so then i had an upset stomach for almost a week. Oh, and I can't sleep for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time. Fucking annoying. A friend gave me some Melatonin the other night and that helped a bit, but makes you groggy for the whole day afterwards. I have a doctor's appt. weds, maybe I can get him to prescribe me sometlhing good. Thing is, I have like a shopping list of drugs that I want to request, so maybe I should prioritize my drug list. Or is ok to ask for lots of stuff? I haven't been to a doctor in almost 5 years. I don't know the rules.
hurricanes are all the rage this year.
Noel said this will be "the most productive month of my life". I hope he's right. Something good better come of not-smoking!
Margaret and I went to see Demetri Martin's one-man-show, These Are Jokes, in the village on Saturday night. As someone who's name I'd heard off-and-on through the years, and who seems to be starting to get a little famous now, I really wanted to see this show. Rev told me that the Trachtenberg's said he'd sold out every night of his shows in Edinburgh - and it looks as though he's continuing that streak stateside. The 300+ seat Village Theatre was sold to cap (despite a monsoon of biblical proportions) and I heard the show's been extended. I love it when artstars do well. And he deserves it - the show was beautfully written and performed. Martin's a standup - and what he did was almost entirely stand-up material, which he made uniquely theatrical by simply superimposing these ... jokes.... over a guitar and harmonica, over the sound of a glockenspeil, over some silly drawings on a "very large pad". But at the end of the day.... these are jokes -as he warns us in his title- and they're really fucking funny.
And I don't know if Martin gets this comparison often, but he reminded me a lot of the late Mitch Hedberg. Same 'likeable hippy dork' type of persona, and one-liners that would be a good match for Mitch's in a comedy knife-fight. But Hedberg never would've done a one-man show... he was happy just doing comedy.
As a comedian, they always want to you do other things besides comedy. "Oh, you're a comedian, can you write? Write us a script. Act! Act in this sitcom." They want me to do shit that's related to comedy, but it's not comedy, man. It's not fair. It's as though I was a cook, and worked my ass off to be a really good cook and they said "Alright, you're a cook. Can you farm?" (MH on Strategic Grill Locations)
ahh... hello. so here i am once again. I haven't been here for quite a while. I've been doing things and thinking things elsewhere. I wrote some things in my real notebook, and had some conversations with real people.
I've been teaching myself Final Cut Pro, and I grew a beard.
I quit smoking. Today is day 9. I have felt, by turns, homicidal, suicidal, broken and strong, but mostly like I did the best and most important thing that I've ever done for myself. I am very grateful to myself. I did slip up, though, and had one cigarette on Friday night, but I forgave myself and didn't beat myself up. I don't think I want to slip again, though.
They say that when you quit smoking, "you get your sense of smell back" and it's really true! I had been smoking so long (26 years) that I didn't even remember my sense of smell - but all last week, I started noticing a cornucopia of odor I never had before. Smell is a really handy sense to have when you're hungry and need to find a place to get a slice. I'm finding that i can sniff out a pizza joint from blocks away. However, it's not such a picnic when you're stuffed on the subway at the end of the day, or walking behind someone who smells like dog shit. I always picture the smells like those visible wafts of odor that are always coming off a pie or something in cartoons, and that would turn into a hand and tap you on the shoulder to try and tempt you. That happened to Fred Flintstone a lot. Anyway.
For the first few days of not smoking, I went a little crazy on the snacks and totally overdosed on wasabi peas and gummy clown fish at work because I couldn't go out for cigarette breaks. so then i had an upset stomach for almost a week. Oh, and I can't sleep for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time. Fucking annoying. A friend gave me some Melatonin the other night and that helped a bit, but makes you groggy for the whole day afterwards. I have a doctor's appt. weds, maybe I can get him to prescribe me sometlhing good. Thing is, I have like a shopping list of drugs that I want to request, so maybe I should prioritize my drug list. Or is ok to ask for lots of stuff? I haven't been to a doctor in almost 5 years. I don't know the rules.
hurricanes are all the rage this year.
Noel said this will be "the most productive month of my life". I hope he's right. Something good better come of not-smoking!
Margaret and I went to see Demetri Martin's one-man-show, These Are Jokes, in the village on Saturday night. As someone who's name I'd heard off-and-on through the years, and who seems to be starting to get a little famous now, I really wanted to see this show. Rev told me that the Trachtenberg's said he'd sold out every night of his shows in Edinburgh - and it looks as though he's continuing that streak stateside. The 300+ seat Village Theatre was sold to cap (despite a monsoon of biblical proportions) and I heard the show's been extended. I love it when artstars do well. And he deserves it - the show was beautfully written and performed. Martin's a standup - and what he did was almost entirely stand-up material, which he made uniquely theatrical by simply superimposing these ... jokes.... over a guitar and harmonica, over the sound of a glockenspeil, over some silly drawings on a "very large pad". But at the end of the day.... these are jokes -as he warns us in his title- and they're really fucking funny.
And I don't know if Martin gets this comparison often, but he reminded me a lot of the late Mitch Hedberg. Same 'likeable hippy dork' type of persona, and one-liners that would be a good match for Mitch's in a comedy knife-fight. But Hedberg never would've done a one-man show... he was happy just doing comedy.
As a comedian, they always want to you do other things besides comedy. "Oh, you're a comedian, can you write? Write us a script. Act! Act in this sitcom." They want me to do shit that's related to comedy, but it's not comedy, man. It's not fair. It's as though I was a cook, and worked my ass off to be a really good cook and they said "Alright, you're a cook. Can you farm?" (MH on Strategic Grill Locations)
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