Not enough sex...

So ya, I have been trying to watch Torchwood but I think if it does not pick up soon I am going to step out. It is at best a mediocre show with badly developed characters, poor story lines and unclear direction. And even the common sex scenes are off set by all the boys kissing each other.

She kills him... 

My wife was out late at a concert last night and I had a hard time getting to sleep in bed all alone... so not many dreams to report on today… but lets keep our fingers crossed for more good ones  ;)

Girls and games = WIN

We are going out to dinner tonight with some friends, but other then that I have no plans for the weekend so I will probably end up cleaning the house…

Please tell me some of you have better things going on so that I can live vicariously though you!?

Chantix

So the medicine I have been taking to help me quit is called CHANTIX (Varenicline). CHANTIX is a non-nicotine pill. It targets nicotine receptors in the brain, attaches to them, and blocks nicotine from reaching them. The best part about it for ME was that as I was on it for 3 weeks before I quit smoking (and started this blog!) so during that time it because easer and easier to not smoke, it let me break my habits slowly and over time.  I firmly believe that this is the reason I am achieving the success in not smoking that I am enjoying right now. That and the support group I built from ya’ll  ;)

It really works. 

Now, there is a side effect to this medicine… The dreams.

Almost everyone on the medicine has reported very vivid dreams. And many people are reporting disturbing, violent and down right scary dreams. Even I find my self bolting up wide awake from dreams more on this medicine then I ever have before. And the dreams are so clear, they don’t fade away like most dreams do, these stay with you like they were ‘more real’.  Lucky for me I haven’t had any scary dreams, mine lean more towards the “adult themed” dreams of my youth.

Kind of like this.... 

Sometimes like this... 

A lot of this... 

I think you get the point ;)

And that leads me to my question... What do YOU dream about?

The best laid plans...

So i followed through on my plan to drink my self "Too drunk to drive" on Friday... and it worked like a charm until my neighbor came over to hang out and had some smokes on him. At that point my will power was just about zero so i had 3 smokes with him while we played corn hole into the night.

Throw a bag full of corn at a board with a hole in it...  You sick puppies

Hey, your all back!

So ya, that kinda sucked.  I missed some of you! And I lost 2 realy good posts  ;(*

A big 'ole Blogger fail.

Soooo i think i am suffering some minor withdrawl symptoms ...

• Feelings of being an infant: temper tantrums, intense needs, feelings of dependency, a state of near paralysis.
• Insomnia
• Mental confusion
• Vagueness
• Irritability
• Anxiety
• Depression is common in the short and long term.

Not all of them i guess, and i would chalk the bottom 3 up to the first one! I dont think i slept a solid 2 hours last night. I just couldent stop waking up.

Day 21 and a half

Well, the dreaded after lunch and 2:30 cravings came and went...
Not that bad actually...
I have to coach my kids t-ball practice after work today so that will get me until 7, and we eat right when we get home so that’s almost 8pm tonight before I get the after meal craving again…
I am going to try and do something different tonight then I usually do in the evenings... 
I don’t know what yet…

Day 15

Ok, the medicine and my plan are working, I think going smoke free at work during the day is going to be OK... but the evenings are getting harder to draw down on...  besides my random 2 drags yesterday after lunch I also smoked 5 in the evening while sitting in the garage watching TV... while that is less then it used to be it is more then I thought I would be to by now... oh-well I still got a week before I am supposed to be quit... 


Speaking of my medicine doing its part... I am starting to have trouble sleeping at night with these dreams waking me up. I am confident that the Chantix pills are the reason I have been able to cut so much of my smoking out, Down from about a pack and a half a day to half a pack a day in 2 weeks, is a big deal in and off its self. The dreams are still as vivid and for the most part still as adult oriented as they started out, but I have noticed more of them are pretty mundane dreams of random day to day stuff that just seamed so CLEAR.

Day 14.5

Seriously WTF... now i know why they call it a Habit...

So I had to run an errand on lunch, I go all morning with out a smoke. I run over to the car dealership to pick up a part. I meet a friend for lunch. I get back in my car to head back to work and half way down the road I realize I have lit a cigarette!
I was running a little late and was focused on what way I wanted to get back to the office to avoid any traffic slow downs and my mind just did what it has done for so many years and lit a smoke.. I was on my 2nd drag before I realized it and threw it out the window!!!

This is going to be a bigger pain then I thought….

Day 12

 Ok I spent almost all day Saturday at a bar, and came in 2^nd in a Cornhole tournament! We won our entire side of the bracket, then lost in the quarter finals, but we won out in the losers bracket so we got a chance to get the championship , but we lost in the finals to the same damn team… oh well there is always next year.

I did smoke a little more then I wanted to… But a lot less then I think I used to… total count 12 cigarettes in 1 Saturday with most of it spent at a bar!

Cornhole (bean bag toss, baggo or bags) is a lawn game in which players take turns throwing cornhole bags (cotton duck bags filled with feed corn) at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. These platforms are usually made with plywood or plastic and are often decorated. A corn bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. Play continues until a player reaches the score of 21.

Monday starts the day where I am not SUPPOSED to smoke....

Day 11

Ok, I spent the last few days trying to work out a different schedule. 


The smokers at 10:30 still walk past but I don't go out with them. I am going to bring food to the office and see if eating here will help for a while. Today I made it all the way until my after lunch craving with out a significant urge to smoke. I even skipped the 2:30 smoke, and I am working through the 4:30 urge while I type this  ;) 1 smoke during the work day will be a huge step forward... 


I have noticed that when I do smoke it isn’t as… “good”… the first drag is still awesome, but that might be because it is getting longer and longer between smokes, but the end of a smoke is easier to put down and not want another one right away… I even caught my self crushing out a smoke with several drags left on it… a big deal when you know your quitting and will have to go a while before you light another one.


I am going out to the Tilted Kilt tonight for a friends birthday… lets see how I do. 

Yes, it is as awesome as it looks... 

Day 8

The list:
Drinking
10:30 AM when some fellow smokers walk by my office to take a smoke break
Noon when I am driving to lunch
1pm when I am driving back from lunch
2:30 -- I don't knows I just had a huge craving yesterday, lets see if I get it again today
4:30 when my day is coming to an end and I am just killing time till the office closes.
5 pm when I am driving home
After dinner... and I mean all night after dinner
I knew I did most of my smoking between 5pm and bed time but I didn't think I smoked quite this much!?

I drive my kids to school everyday so I bet that’s why I don’t have a morning craving for a smoke, and we do not smoke in the house so that must be why my car is such a trigger....

Now lets see if there are any easy ones to drop from the list.

Day 7

Ok so I totally smoked a lot over this holiday weekend. But there was much alcohol to be consumed and my will power was quite low… good thing I was still in my first week of “Smoke normally”

Today I start keeping close track of each cigarette and trying to identify triggers that cause me to smoke. I will need to look back at these in the coming weeks and see if I can over come them or if I have to make changes to my daily routine that will help me  not have to face the challenge to begin with. I think it is safe to say that the following image was a significant trigger!

Why are smoking and drinking so intertwined in my head?

Day 4

I can tell the medicine is starting to kick in.

One of the major side effects are “Vivid dreams” Most people I talked to described very dark and disturbing things… for me it seams to be more along the XXX type of vivid ;)  I would go into more detail about it but they don’t allow that kind of content here on Blogger  ;)

Day 2

Today is the day where I am supposed to come up with all of the different reasons why I am quitting. First I would like to say that I hate that it is called quitting… maybe ill start calling it cessation like the commercials. Quitting just had such a negative connotation.

Let’s see, there are the health benefits… lower medical costs, increased immune system yadda yadda yadda… But that doesn't ring loud for me, I have been as healthy as an ox my entire life, and on my last physical a few months ago my Dr said the only thing off in my blood work was that my Vitamin D was low… And I looked into it, it is only low because the medical community recently raised what is considered “good” to a number that is above the levels 75% of the US population has! Bastards.

The truth is, at $5 a pack and breaking through the pack a day level (with some help from a mooch friend and a wife that only smokes my cigarettes) I have better things to do with 30 – 40 bucks a week… Especially with gas prices getting so high, so mostly I am about the money money money.

Ok, well not TODAY....

I am starting a new medicine called Chantix that is supposed to help me quit. Lets see how i do.

Is it odd that i am starting on a Monday?