October 19th 2006. A historic day… President Bush welcomed President-Elect Felipe Calderon of Mexico to the White House, JCC marketing were honored at regional conference, and Schrödinger application scientist Shashi Rao discussed features and capabilities of Phase 2.0, as well as underlying scientific methodologies.
Yes, as you can see, Google is utterly shit at finding interesting events that happened on a certain day.
Another thing it missed was my last ciggy. It’s been 8 months since I gave up and my life is an empty shell without them. Well, not quite but I do miss the little buggers – especially when I go out to pick something up from the shops and I find myself thinking “excellent, just the right time for a little rollie… ah nuts”. Still, I must be healthier than I was. With a good tailwind I can now hurtle along on my deathtrap of a bicycle at truly terrifying velocities (I’ve fixed one of the brakes now, so it’s slightly less suicidal) and I can make it to the top of the stairs without collapsing into a puddle of twitching phlegm at the top. So good news really. But I do miss them.
The strange thing is that I don’t think I could start smoking again, even if I wanted to. I’ve got a little confession to make. It’s normally considered somewhat reckless to put confessions on web pages that are not only accessible to billions of people worldwide, but will be archived by Google and The Internet Archive, thus making them available to billions of people worldwide for the rest of time, but I’m that sort of person – i.e., stupid.
It was a few weekends back and Jen had left me in charge of wallpapering the tallest bit of the hallway. It was a 15 foot vertical drop where the stairs start and downstairs ceiling stopped, giving way to the full height of the house. Jen had papered up to this point and I had to hang the next roll along, teetering from a ladder propped over the upstairs banisters in a truly shit-crimping way. Jen and Wibs had popped out to go down the park and I was left at home, sweatily labouring under the misapprehension that I could achieve more by trying to wallpaper the hall than by doing the washing up, picking hairs out of the plughole, or just putting my feet up and watching telly. In fact, it would have been better if I had simply burnt the roll of paper – I wouldn’t have wasted the wallpaper paste and the house would have been slightly warmer. But hindsight is something you only get after you discover that a) you’ve cut the paper too short, b) you forgot to fill in the holes in the wall, and c) the bit of paper you are lining up against is on the tilt, meaning you are going to end up with a 3 inch gap at the top. I ripped the soggy paper off and threw the brush down the stairs.
Bollocks
Bollocks
Bollocks
Bollocks
A while ago, while tidying up, I found Jen’s secret emergency stash of 5 squished Malboro lights. I was shocked and chided her for her weakness, giving her a short lecture about willpower (noting how I didn’t need a crutch), and threw them in the bin. Then, when she wasn’t looking, I picked them out again and hid them in my underwear drawer. Yeah, like YOU’VE never done anything that made you feel like a weasel of a hypocrite of a weasel. And it’s a good job I did. I decided that pathetically standing in the middle of a pile of gluey wallpaper counted as an emergency, so it was time to have a smoke. Upstairs. Drawer. Rummage. Pants. Socks. Aha. Outside. Light. Suck. Ahhhh… Agggggghhhh… Blough. Chwoaar. Hwuuurck. Whaaark. Gasp. Holy shit. What the? Again. Suuck. Ahhhhhh? No! Chhwoooagh. Chuurf. Wheeze. Clouarch. Pant. Retch.
What has happened to me? In my time I’ve smoked joss sticks, hay, fireworks, match heads, banana skins (no, they don’t), wood, hemp seeds picked out of bird food (they make little explosions that blast red hot grains into your eyes), and none of those made me cough, gag and retch like this cigarette did. Well, I suppose to be fair, it didn’t make me think I was dying like the time I tried the firework smoke, but it was quite shocking, nonetheless. In the olden days I could out-smoke a petrochemical plant fire but now I can’t even handle a single drag on a low tar stick. I had to put it out after 3 puffs because I felt so sick. I suppose that’s good really.
Right. That’s the entry done. I’ve just got time to nip outside for a quick… oh figs.