Nic-arrest

There's one sorted. I managed to quit smoking in the middle of a horrendously intense work week.
Wanna hear about it? Oh hell; stay a while! Lessee, now where were we?
Ah yes: last week, about this time, I was on day two of the big move. The Oregon Ballet Theater decided to move their warehouse to my neighborhood-about five minutes from my apartment, actually-and I was immediately thrown into the intense frustration of the career warehouseman. We gotta get this stuff off the truck. But there's nowhere to put it. Build some shelves. There's nowhere to build the shelves because there's all this stuff off the trucks all over the place. Fine. Why didn't someone realize that maybe building some shelves first, before all the stuff arrived, might have been the better plan? And why are we all getting paid so little?

Whatever day that was, the Tenth rolled around, and I decided that I'd been serious in choosing that date at random to stop consuming my beloved Nat Sherman Havana Ovals. I mean it, too. I loved them.
Not just mere addiction, folks-though it was certainly that as well-I genuinely loved smoking. But I was sick of the whole feeling like death thing, and besides, I kinda promised some people. I've always said that was the worst way of going about enforcement, but in this case it worked.
The vitamin supplements I was taking worked well, though they made me piss like a Slovenian show pony...Bright green, too. Like Mountain Dew, it was. But I broke nothing, did not go insane, and to this day, do not jones for the damn things. I can even sit there with other people at a bar who are smoking, and not feel like a damn fool for not joining in.
Because well, that would sort of be counter-intuitive, wouldn't it? I mean, the only friends I can think of right off hand who haven't stopped smoking of late are the Tulsa Kid and the Only Ms. S. They both have Morning Hack so damn bad, I can only assume it's ocurred to them.

Even more strangely, MacBeth herself added the counter-intuitive punch: she wasn't one of those who only smoked while drinking...She needed a beer to go with that smoke. She's started a new job, and basically so have I, and we both quit smoking that shit in the last week. An award of some sort is called for here.
I like all my co-workers. They are all sorts, as is the nature of the game. Only myself and two others were available for the entire seven-day run, and I myself took a day off at day six. It would seem that I am no longer in my mid-twenties, or something, and can 't just push my body without end. I have also taken the liberty of requesting the Reverend Doctor (Mahatma) Martin Luther King (Junior)'s birthday off, which caused the rest of the crew to ask for it off. That wasn't my fault. If they wanted dedicated staff, they'd bring us on full time, and pay a decent wage. As it happens, we are what they can afford, and for our part, we recognize our profound bargaining power.
More actual stuff coming up. The internet sitch in my bldg. continues to be stupid, but I'm tryin', friends, and gawd knows there's things happening that need comment.
Sit tight. I'm fittin' ta' ride.