Monday, January 15, 2007
Monday, January 01, 2007
Current iTunes Track - Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Happy New Year, all.
So, as of yesterday I have been smoke free for two full months. Yay!
I have also gained 20 pounds - boo! I was twenty pounds overweight to begin with, so I need to lose 40 pounds.
So starting to-morrow we have some new rules:
No more fucking soda, is the first rule. Regular, diet, doesn't matter. Water is the beverage for me. Maybe some herbal or green teas (though I am a bit concerned about the concentration of fluoride in teas.)
Does it come in a foil bag? Can't have it.
Everything that goes in my mouth gets written down. Everything (well, foodstuffs, that is.)
Whole foods. Whole foods. Whole foods.
I have been walking quite a bit lately, according to my Nike + iPod I walked 51.56 miles in December - primarily from walking to work every day. I want to increase that by at least 50% in January.
To that end I walked to Wild Oats today, I didn't need anything there, but I wanted to see how long it would take. It took me an hour round-trip. The trip was just over 4 miles. I realised when I got home that I needed Weleda Pink toothpaste and toothbrush heads. Oh well, I want to do the same experiment by walking to the new downtown Vitamin Cottage - it is about the same distance, but there are hills involved.
I want to pick up a pedometer in addition to the Nike+ iPod, I want to see how much I'm moving around when I'm not specifically tracking a walk.
Once the weather gets better (and the streets get more clear) my friend Vincent and I are going to start running.
Push-ups, crunches, lunges, etc...
This post is really disjointed, and I don't like it. I apologize. I'm going to end it now, but before I do I want to recommend to you some albums from 2006 that I think you should be sure to listen to:
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Lisa Gerrard - The Silver Tree
The Long Blondes - Someone to Drive You Home
Azam Ali - Elysium For The Brave
Devics - Push The Heart
Listen to them. Quickly
So, as of yesterday I have been smoke free for two full months. Yay!
I have also gained 20 pounds - boo! I was twenty pounds overweight to begin with, so I need to lose 40 pounds.
So starting to-morrow we have some new rules:
No more fucking soda, is the first rule. Regular, diet, doesn't matter. Water is the beverage for me. Maybe some herbal or green teas (though I am a bit concerned about the concentration of fluoride in teas.)
Does it come in a foil bag? Can't have it.
Everything that goes in my mouth gets written down. Everything (well, foodstuffs, that is.)
Whole foods. Whole foods. Whole foods.
I have been walking quite a bit lately, according to my Nike + iPod I walked 51.56 miles in December - primarily from walking to work every day. I want to increase that by at least 50% in January.
To that end I walked to Wild Oats today, I didn't need anything there, but I wanted to see how long it would take. It took me an hour round-trip. The trip was just over 4 miles. I realised when I got home that I needed Weleda Pink toothpaste and toothbrush heads. Oh well, I want to do the same experiment by walking to the new downtown Vitamin Cottage - it is about the same distance, but there are hills involved.
I want to pick up a pedometer in addition to the Nike+ iPod, I want to see how much I'm moving around when I'm not specifically tracking a walk.
Once the weather gets better (and the streets get more clear) my friend Vincent and I are going to start running.
Push-ups, crunches, lunges, etc...
This post is really disjointed, and I don't like it. I apologize. I'm going to end it now, but before I do I want to recommend to you some albums from 2006 that I think you should be sure to listen to:
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Lisa Gerrard - The Silver Tree
The Long Blondes - Someone to Drive You Home
Azam Ali - Elysium For The Brave
Devics - Push The Heart
Listen to them. Quickly
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Current iTunes Track - The Bravery - An Honest Mistake - The Bravery
So I jumped the gun a little bit and quit smoking on Halloween, three weeks ago today. The timing seemed right, and I decided to seize the moment rather than wait.
The detox was...interesting. Mild hallucinations, a sensation of bugs crawling on my skin, a cold, numb feeling in my throat and lungs (this is finally starting to go away) and a fair amount of bitchiness. It truly was not as bad as I expected though. I cannot believe that I have gone three whole weeks with no nicotine at all, I was king of the chain-smokers, so going cold-turkey was a very frightening prospect for me, but I seem to be doing well with it. I've been trying to stay busy and keep my hands occupied. Video games have helped, and I picked up knitting again. That has helped a lot.
Last week I actually went through a whole day without even thinking about smoking. That hasn't happened again, but it will.
According to my quit gadget at quitnet.com I have saved $100.80 and not smoked 635 cigarettes as of this moment.
Yikes!
Have a nice Thanksgiving.
The detox was...interesting. Mild hallucinations, a sensation of bugs crawling on my skin, a cold, numb feeling in my throat and lungs (this is finally starting to go away) and a fair amount of bitchiness. It truly was not as bad as I expected though. I cannot believe that I have gone three whole weeks with no nicotine at all, I was king of the chain-smokers, so going cold-turkey was a very frightening prospect for me, but I seem to be doing well with it. I've been trying to stay busy and keep my hands occupied. Video games have helped, and I picked up knitting again. That has helped a lot.
Last week I actually went through a whole day without even thinking about smoking. That hasn't happened again, but it will.
According to my quit gadget at quitnet.com I have saved $100.80 and not smoked 635 cigarettes as of this moment.
Yikes!
Have a nice Thanksgiving.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Current iTunes Track - Danielle Dax - Defiled - Comatose Non-Reaction: The Thwarted Pop Career of Danielle Dax
So here we go again:
I'd like to go back in time and kick my 20-year-old ass. I was 20 when I started smoking. Why did I do this? Because I was young and stupid. I knew that smoking was bad for you, but decided to go ahead and do it anyway. I guess I thought I could just quit if I felt like it. A week later I was up to a pack a day. 16 years later I smoke between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 packs a day. I've spent somewhere in the vicinity of $28,000 on cigarettes (not including cloves) over the past 16 years. I've tried the patch several times, I tried gum once, and tried cold turkey many, many years ago. Fucking obnoxious 20-year-old me.
But hindsight is 20/20, and time travel hasn't been perfected yet.
Over the last year I've been through a lot of changes. I developed a terrible sensitivity to all synthetic detergents. I started out having to eliminate sodium lauryl sulfate from my life, and wound up having to eliminate all detergents that would be applied to my skin. This was difficult. Shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, it all had to go. I used a "natural" SLS-free shampoo for a while. It used cocomidapropyl betaine as a detergent. Then I started developing red patches on my scalp. Now I use pine-tar soap instead of shampoo, and use a diluted vinegar rinse afterward. Every other day I give myself a scalp massage with olive oil. My hair actually feels great - thicker even. It was hard, and very depressing to have to kiss shampoo goodbye though.
Eliminating toxins from my body products led me to start eliminating them from my food as well. While I was starting to use olive oil to wash and moisturize my face, I started to think about the crap I was putting IN my body, in addition to what I was putting ON it. I decided to eliminate a lot of things, starting with anything hydrogenated. I also cut out the soda and switched to drinking water. I've lost 30 pounds.
So here I am, busily banishing toxins and man-made chemicals from my life, and smoking like a fiend. Can you say hypocrite? Okay, so maybe I should cut myself a little slack. When you have a monkey on your back you don't always think rationally.
So we are now moving on to the next step in the betterment of Brent. I have set a date to quit smoking. Saturday, November 18th, 2006. I am starting on St John's Wort now to let it build up in my system, and the day before I will begin using a combination of herb including: lobelia, passion flower, wild oat, valerian root, skullcap, and kava kava. I will drink cranberry and orange juices until I am pissing pure fructose to head off the blood-sugar problems that happen during withdrawal. I am also painting the bathroom that day, so that should distract me a bit.
As a last resort I bought some herbal cigarettes that don't contain nicotine or tobacco - in case I just HAVE to smoke something. They taste, uhm, weird, and sort of burn my throat, but they will do while I am detoxing.
I am scared to do this, but I am also hopeful. I understand a lot more about what happens when you quit smoking than I did last time I tried to quit. I just need to keep in mind that the majority of the withdrawal symptoms are psychological, not physical. My brain will try to fuck me over, and trip me up.
To my brain I say: FUCK YOU! I'm doing this, and you can't stop me.
I'd like to go back in time and kick my 20-year-old ass. I was 20 when I started smoking. Why did I do this? Because I was young and stupid. I knew that smoking was bad for you, but decided to go ahead and do it anyway. I guess I thought I could just quit if I felt like it. A week later I was up to a pack a day. 16 years later I smoke between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 packs a day. I've spent somewhere in the vicinity of $28,000 on cigarettes (not including cloves) over the past 16 years. I've tried the patch several times, I tried gum once, and tried cold turkey many, many years ago. Fucking obnoxious 20-year-old me.
But hindsight is 20/20, and time travel hasn't been perfected yet.
Over the last year I've been through a lot of changes. I developed a terrible sensitivity to all synthetic detergents. I started out having to eliminate sodium lauryl sulfate from my life, and wound up having to eliminate all detergents that would be applied to my skin. This was difficult. Shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, it all had to go. I used a "natural" SLS-free shampoo for a while. It used cocomidapropyl betaine as a detergent. Then I started developing red patches on my scalp. Now I use pine-tar soap instead of shampoo, and use a diluted vinegar rinse afterward. Every other day I give myself a scalp massage with olive oil. My hair actually feels great - thicker even. It was hard, and very depressing to have to kiss shampoo goodbye though.
Eliminating toxins from my body products led me to start eliminating them from my food as well. While I was starting to use olive oil to wash and moisturize my face, I started to think about the crap I was putting IN my body, in addition to what I was putting ON it. I decided to eliminate a lot of things, starting with anything hydrogenated. I also cut out the soda and switched to drinking water. I've lost 30 pounds.
So here I am, busily banishing toxins and man-made chemicals from my life, and smoking like a fiend. Can you say hypocrite? Okay, so maybe I should cut myself a little slack. When you have a monkey on your back you don't always think rationally.
So we are now moving on to the next step in the betterment of Brent. I have set a date to quit smoking. Saturday, November 18th, 2006. I am starting on St John's Wort now to let it build up in my system, and the day before I will begin using a combination of herb including: lobelia, passion flower, wild oat, valerian root, skullcap, and kava kava. I will drink cranberry and orange juices until I am pissing pure fructose to head off the blood-sugar problems that happen during withdrawal. I am also painting the bathroom that day, so that should distract me a bit.
As a last resort I bought some herbal cigarettes that don't contain nicotine or tobacco - in case I just HAVE to smoke something. They taste, uhm, weird, and sort of burn my throat, but they will do while I am detoxing.
I am scared to do this, but I am also hopeful. I understand a lot more about what happens when you quit smoking than I did last time I tried to quit. I just need to keep in mind that the majority of the withdrawal symptoms are psychological, not physical. My brain will try to fuck me over, and trip me up.
To my brain I say: FUCK YOU! I'm doing this, and you can't stop me.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Current iTunes Track - Kate Bush - King of the Mountain
It's been a very exciting week. One week ago today BBC Radio 2 premiered Kate Bush's new single. Leading up to the premiere I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas. After having Christmas not happen for 12 years. After obsessively playing the the song over and over for a week it became available as a download from iTunes. Aah, to hear it in a quality format was wonderful.
I love the song, it is really wonderful, and just keeps growing on me. Now, the long wait until the release of her new album Aerial on the 8th of November begins.
I love the song, it is really wonderful, and just keeps growing on me. Now, the long wait until the release of her new album Aerial on the 8th of November begins.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Current iTunes Track - Oh Well - Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
I'm just testing a Dashboard Widget called Dash Blog that supposedly serves as a quick interface for posting.
Does it work?
Let's find out
Does it work?
Let's find out
Friday, December 10, 2004
Current iTunes Track - Smack Jack - Nina Hagen - Nunsexmonkrock
Do you ever want to smack your friends?
I mean, you like them, you care about them, you want them to stay your friends, but every once in a while you just want to smack the shit out of them.
I'm in the process of quitting smoking. I am doing it very slowly, I'm down to 8 cigarettes a day after 3 weeks (I used to smoke 1 to 1 1/2 packs a day.) I have a schedule all planned out that takes me through late March when I will quit for good after having smoked only one cigarette a day for two weeks.
It's going pretty well, though occasionally I want to scream, run mad in the streets, and smoke until my lungs explode. I kind of feel that way right now.
It'll pass. I'm actually due for a smoke in 40 minutes.
Sigh.
On an unrelated note, what the Hell is Hugh Hefner doing in the Target Christmas commercials?
Seems pretty random to me.
I mean, you like them, you care about them, you want them to stay your friends, but every once in a while you just want to smack the shit out of them.
I'm in the process of quitting smoking. I am doing it very slowly, I'm down to 8 cigarettes a day after 3 weeks (I used to smoke 1 to 1 1/2 packs a day.) I have a schedule all planned out that takes me through late March when I will quit for good after having smoked only one cigarette a day for two weeks.
It's going pretty well, though occasionally I want to scream, run mad in the streets, and smoke until my lungs explode. I kind of feel that way right now.
It'll pass. I'm actually due for a smoke in 40 minutes.
Sigh.
On an unrelated note, what the Hell is Hugh Hefner doing in the Target Christmas commercials?
Seems pretty random to me.
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