In which it’s ALL good news, people. It’s like Xmas in August, I swear.

Today is Day 5 of my smoke-free life.
I quit smoking on the 15th. I’m using 2mg lozenges for NRT and I’m “workin’ my quit” (that’s lingo from becomeanex.org) and I’m doing really well. I wasn’t even a little bit miserable on the patio at the Peony with the smokers last night, and I didn’t care when my brother smoked in the truck.

It’s easy because I had to quit. Permanent lung damage ain’t cool for anyone, but particularly not someone who loves to sing. I was noticing issues with breathing in general, I was having a hard time getting enough breath when singing, and my heart rate was permanently elevated (it had dropped the last time I quit, so I know it was the smoking). It had begun to hurt to smoke. Smoking kept me from wanting to exercise. Smoking had begun to try to kill me in earnest.

I understand, now, why people usually have to quit a few times before it sticks: you have to learn how to do it. You have to make your peace with really and truly wanting to quit. I think that for most people, it’s a complicated mental process involving amassing a host of reasons about Why Smoking Is So Bad That You’re Willing To Suffer Through Quitting, Even Though It Totally Sucks And You Will Probably Always Have Smoking Impulses Until You Die.

Working from home is freakin’ cool and I dig it.
The QA gig is great. I love it. I hope it lasts. I work with two guys in California; communication is done via email and IM and the occasional SMS. They send me projects, I log into the VPN and do them. The projects involve logging into a piece of software and testing to make sure it actually does what the build description says it should.

My little netbook hasn’t melted down yet, thankfully, but my boss said he’d send me a laptop or something here pretty soon since so many tests require access to two machines.

I’ve been working in my room, but it’s too many hours to sit on the floor and my knees are killing me. I really need to find a desk (or a desk-like item) and an office chair so that I can set up a workspace in the basement. I need another monitor, keyboard, and mouse, too. I might even need to purchase a second computer of my own so that I can have one for my personal stuff and one for work.

I need to accomplish all this over the weekend, except I’ll be out of town.

Live Music Are Better.
This weekend, I’ll be joining Coyote Kings for a two-night run at a blues & comedy club in Spokane called Bluz at the Bend. Yay hotel living! (I get to crash with the rhythm section. I hope those bitches don’t snore.)

I might take my netbook along; if the motel has a connection I could work… of course, without a monitor it might be too crazy-making. Hmm. We’ll have to see.

The Awesomest Clothing Bomb Of All Time
On Wednesday, I got this in the mail – two boxes of clothes from Sussette. She sent me a silk tank-and-skirt set from India; a silk Chinese jacket and wide-legged pants; a wrap-around skirt made of sari material; two cotton gauze trapeze tops with pockets; a tie-dyed tank dress; Thai worker’s pants; a black tunic; a tube-top half dress; a floor-length sun dress; a pink sari skirt; a black and red top; a white embroidered tunic; a silk halter top dress; and a cap-sleeved batik dress with ties.

IT WAS SO FREAKING WONDERFUL. The items are all new or very lightly used, they all fit, they’re all items I will totally wear… altogether it’s got to be hundreds of dollars worth of clothes! And all because she needed to clean out her closets!

I’m the luckiest girl ever.

Sweating and moving around and stuff.
My drummer woke up the other morning with a wild hair about fitness. He’s been texting me every single day about going walking or jogging, so today I went for a walk with him. I was going to do the first installment of Couch-to-5k (brisk 5 minute warmup walk, then alternate 60 seconds jogging with 90 seconds walking for 20 minutes, 5 minutes cool down walk after) but we walked around the reservoir instead. Halfway around, my heart rate was really high – probably too high for any real cardio benefit – and my hands swelled up like sausages.

I think these symptoms were a result of the following facts: I have avoided exercise my entire life because I don’t like it; The Curseâ„¢ is due today and I’m bloated; I haven’t been drinking enough water in general; I smoked for 25 years; it was 94 degrees F in the shade; I am 41 years old.

The good news is that I no longer smoke, The Curseâ„¢ will pass, summer will end, and I now believe – from the 200 Situps, 200 Squats, and 100 Pushups programs – that I can build up to an hour’s worth of interval training.

I’ve given up on wanting the results of physical activity to be my looking trim and cute, however. Now I just don’t want my fucking heart to explode.

Update: In conclusion, you can always tell when I’m not reading much because my sentence structure gets weird.