For All My Game of Thrones Nerds

On Quitting Smoking

When all the stuff started going down with my marriage, I made a choice that I thought would help.  Amy had picked up cigarettes again, a habit that I had never shared.  But I thought that maybe, those little five-minute smoke breaks would be a way the two of us could share time, could reconnect.  Had I known at the time that she had already made her decision and was just stringing me along for whatever reason, I wouldn't have made that choice.  So I became a smoker.

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20.  I know now that nothing that I could have done at the time would have changed things, and all I did was saddle myself with a nasty and expensive habit.

So, I decided that last week I was going to quit smoking.  I had half-heartedly tried to quit before, but every time before I had put so much thought and energy into it.  It became a 'thing'.  It was too big.  This time, it came about Wednesday night.  I only had a few left in the pack that I had on hand.  I just decided I wasn't going to buy another pack.  If I could bum smokes from people for a little while, so be it, but I wasn't buying any more.

The last cigarette from that pack was smoked Thursday morning.  Early, around five a.m..  I did alright throughout the morning, and was feeling it finally in the afternoon.  I bummed one from a co-worker (thanks, Kim) around 3:15.

That was the last one.  I haven't had one since.

Friday was the hardest, easily.  I was VERY jittery, and short-tempered.  I came extremely close to caving in on it.  I tried to bum one from someone that evening, just so that I wouldn't buy a pack.  I even considered buying a cigar instead of cigarettes, as a kind of in-between step.

I couldn't bum one, and I didn't buy a cigar.  Friday night's sleep was tough, though.  Saturday morning was rough too, as I generally did most of my smoking in the early morning and late evenings.  But, with the graduation party to get together, I didn't really have a chance to think about it.  By Saturday evening, I was good.  All day yesterday I may have had one or two cravings, and they were easily dismissed.  I was still a little short-tempered, but not nearly as bad, and not jittery at all.

I will say, and I'm not trying to shortchange the experiences of other people, but I expected this to be harder.  Much harder.  A couple packs of gum, a good distraction (the party), and a little resolve was all I needed.  Ibuprofen helped, I had some headaches Friday and Saturday, but otherwise...this has been much easier than I expected.

Anyway, that's one thing down.  I did put on a few pounds this weekend, as I didn't really pay any attention to my diet while quitting smoking, but it's a trade-off I'm happy to make.

Farting on my Dog and other Fun Things

I really do enjoy farting on the dog.  The best is...HE NEVER SUSPECTS IT'S COMING.  I guess that should make it stop being fun eventually, but it always is.  He'll just be standing there, and I'll walk over and put my butt as close to his nose as I can.  He doesn't move.  And then, WHAMMO!!!  I blast one right in his face.  Man, that never gets old.  He starts doing that dog sneeze thing and rubs his paws on his nose, which just kills me.

That's really all I have to say about that.

Ok, time to talk about the elephant in the room.  It's been awhile.  I've been busy.  Really.  Big project at work, lots of stuff going on with the kids, some dating here and there, I've been busy.  That's all.  I also didn't really have a ton to write about.  Every time I'd try to start back into the Chalean Extreme program, I'd injure a knee in the sumo squats.  It didn't really leave me much.  I have been running consistently, so let's talk about that.

First thing I'd like to talk about is the upcoming schedule.  I have three races coming up that I am planning to do.  First is the September 1st Mason & Grant 5k right here in Auburn.  Basically runs around Emerson Park.  No biggie there.  Should be fun.  Second is The Finger Lakes Mud Run, which is a 5k with an obstacle course interspersed around the course.  I might be trying to get a team together, which would probably just do the shorter version, which I think is only 2 miles or so.  I'm not positive.  But I'm pretty excited for that one.  The last one is the Ithaca 5k, one that has a special meaning for me.  I don't really need to get into it, but let's just say that I should have seen the problems in my marriage with what went down the last time I tried to do this one.

On the running itself, I had been noticing some numbness in my left foot recently, usually starting around the 1.5 mile mark and getting worse.  As soon as I would be done with the run the numbness would go right away.  So I've done two things.  First, I switched to a parallel lacing method on my shoes, which allows more room in the toebox of the shoe.  'Toebox' is runner-speak for 'the front of the shoe', but it's WAY cooler to say 'Toebox'.  Try it.  'Toebox'.  It's like...if Robocop were a runner, he would have a big toebox.  Does that sound slightly sexual to anyone else?  All I have to say about that is, I need a BIG toebox.

What was I writing about?  Oh yeah.  Numbness while running.  This morning's run was one of the best ones I've had in quite some time.  I was really thinking about my form and my gait.  I noticed that I somehow tend to time my left foot hitting with the first beat of each measure of whatever song I'm listening to.  Must be a leftover from marching band in high school or something, but I tend to synchronize to it, so my left foot hits on beats one and three, in 4/4 time, which is probably 95% of the music I listen to while running.

Beats one and three are usually kick drum beats.  Which are harder, heavier sounding.  I paused the music, without changing my form.

Yup...I was almost STOMPING my left foot.  I never even noticed it with the music playing.  I was putting that foot down hard.  So I fired up the music again, but from now on truly thinking about my form and keeping my footfalls even.  Made all the difference in the world.  No numbness.

I'm going to end this here.  I've got more to write about, like the new weight program that I'm doing (which might even include a workout video with a fat guy and a bald guy...be on the lookout!), and the quest to quit smoking.  But just to bring things full circle...

Yup...Never gets old.

There's an update coming soon...

I promise.  Until then, just because it's fun...here's the space unicorn again.  Because hey, fucking unicorn, man!