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Posts created by orinoco

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Scruffy's on board

Hi All,

Glad you´re having a good day Scruffy, great news about the au pair as well. Must be a weight off your mind. We´re all suffering from awful head colds at the moment. It´s not quite flu but enough to knock the stuffing out of you for a day or two. Of course we can blow our noses, take some pretty strong medicaction and complain alot. Baby Jamie doesn´t have that luxury, so we were up all night with him, coughing and spluttering, poor little sausage.

Anyway, we´ve all spent the day on the sofa with our duvets, the blinds closed, and a series of classic family films - Star Wars (Original 1977 cut), Shrek and The Jungle Book. After this post there will be a short intermission for cups of tea, toast and marmalade and then the evening´s entertainment will continue with "Kung Fu Panda".

It´s kept my mind off the evil tobacco all day, and if I´m honest, I´ve quite enjoyed myself.

Hope to write more later,

All the best

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 29
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,015
Amount Saved: �152.25
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 4 Mins: 41 Seconds: 0

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Scruffy's on board

It certainly beat working. I´m not a huge advocate of gratuitous sick days (this was my first in over 2 years), however, I was genuinely a bit under the weather, and I´ve calculated that since I´ve quit smoking my boss has gained an extra 40 minutes quality productivity out of me on a daily basis.

21 Business Days since my quit date, multiplied by 40 minutes gives us 840 minutes, or 14 hours, or as I like to look at it, 2 days holiday. :)

You´re quite right about the big 1 month smoke free coming up. It´s been a week of milestones actually: 4 weeks smoke free, 1000 cigarettes not smoked, 150� saved and now a calender month smoke free. My wife gave up at the same time and a man couldn´t wish for a more gorgeous, sympathetic and understanding "Quit Buddy". I could never have made it this far without her support. I´m famous in this house for my childish tantrums, yet somehow she humoured me through them without patronising me. Its a remarkable quality of hers.

After several mechanical disasters with our car of late, we´re not exactly "liquid" right now (plus the new school year has just started - new bags, books, pens to buy) so what we did was open a savings account especially for giving up smoking, and we transferred half the money we saved this month to that. Its not terribly exciting I know, but practical. It would be crazy to get into debt just to reward ourselves lol. Can you imagine? Having to join another site for people addicted to credit cards :) What do other people do for rewards by the way? Anyone done anything out of the ordinary or perhaps realised a dream?

Regards,

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 29
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,015
Amount Saved: �152.25
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 4 Mins: 47 Seconds: 15

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Starting Over

You know in the climax of Apollo XIII, we´re all waiting to see if the capsule has survived re-entry and the NASA technicians are staring nervously at their monitors? Gene Kranz (ably portrayed by the magnificent Ed Harris) is pacing up and down and it seems like hours since we last heard from Jim Lovell?

I feel like one of those NASA techies now, waiting for RSW to come back on the radar. Except rather than studying a lot of complicated telemetary, I´m simply clicking the "refresh" button every few minutes.

I can´t believe that all these years I´ve been oblivious to the parallels between quitting smoking and space travel.

"Com Check, Com Check - RSW this is Houston"

Regards

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 29
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,015
Amount Saved: �152.25
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 5 Mins: 1 Seconds: 39

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Which Cigarette?

If I tell you´ve I´ve remained celibate for the last 30 days in order to avoid a trigger, have I made it sufficiently clear which cigarette I enjoyed the most? lol.

I´m addressing my trigger situations one by one. I´ve stayed out of the pub for the last month which is quite a sacrifice for me. I love watching live sporting events in my local but I´m just not ready to have smoke blown in my face yet. I enjoy a cold beer too much to consider an alcohol free future, plus I love the social aspect of the pub so its something I´m going to have to come to terms with sooner or later. Last weekend I bought myself a six pack from the supermarket and enjoyed a few cold cans on Saturday evening. I munched on peanuts and sunflower seeds to keep my fingers occupied and I passed this basic test with flying colours. I´ll do that for a few more weekends in an effort to weaken the bond between smoking and drinking. With any luck I´ll trick my brain into accepting that cold beer does not equal chain-smoking.

My after lunch cigarette with a coffee was about the only other cigarette I enjoyed on a regular basis. A large reason for giving up was that I simply wasn´t enjoying smoking anymore. My wife and I actually had our quit date set for August 31st, but we were so fed up with smoking we brought it forward a week. I can say with a certain amount of conviction that I´m not missing the rest at all. I used to chain smoke on the drive to work and I really thought doing that "smokeless" was going to be tough. But I told myself that I can´t smoke on a plane, on a bus or in a taxi, so let´s imagine all forms of transport are now smoke free, and it wasn´t as tough as I thought.

Good thread. I think at times I try to block out that I ever smoked, which somehow seems wrong. This is quite good therapy, I did smoke, I did enjoy it once, now I´ve grown up a bit.

Have a great day everyone!

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 30
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,050
Amount Saved: �157.50
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 7 Mins: 16 Seconds: 27

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Scruffy's on board

Hello there Jim!

Thanks very much for the welcome, no need to apologise though. Thinking about it, I never properly introduced myself to the forum in the first place (I was a bit moody the first few days) so if I had of been feeling unwelcomed, (which I wasn´t), it would have been entirely my own fault :)

Those are some pretty impressive stats you´ve accumulated Jim. 100 "free" days of life you´ll have soon, that´s just awesome. I´ve been on a roll this week with little benchmarks: 4 weeks clean, 1 month clean etc but my biggest worry is about losing the momentum. Do you know what I mean? It seems to me the first month or so is packed full of little motivating stats. First day smoke free, Nicotine out of your system after 3 days, Hell week done, Heck week in the bag- I´m worried that I´m going to get complacent between 1 month smoke free and 1 year smoke free. That´s 11 months without any significant achievement lol.

I know I´m by no means out of the woods yet, I´m sort of just cruising on auto-pilot these days, avoiding triggers, not thinking too much about smoking. On the occasions when I do find myself thinking about cigarettes, I fill my lungs with air, I look at the cash I´ve already saved, and I know I´ve made a great decision. As someone well over the 1 year mark, how do you find it for example, heading into a smokey bar now? Are you still tempted, or do you find yourself just pitying the smokers? Are there any situations you still avoid, or are you supremely confident that the battle´s won?

Regards

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 30
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,050
Amount Saved: �157.50
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 7 Mins: 46 Seconds: 49

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

GET ON THE TRAIN NOW FOR , ALL ABOARD..........!

That really does sound good and it would be a wonderful way for Mrs Orinoco and I to celebrate our first month smoke free.

Count me in.

Thanks!

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 30
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,050
Amount Saved: �157.50
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 8 Mins: 27 Seconds: 56

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Where do YOU live?

That would be in or around Chingford wouldn´t it Mister Ed? I´m a Londoner myself, SW19, Wimbledon but moved to Madrid almost 10 years ago. I´m living about 50km out of central Madrid now in Guadalajara but still have to drive into the centre every day for work.

Have a great weekend all!

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 33
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,155
Amount Saved: �173.25
Life Gained:
Days: 4 Hrs: 18 Mins: 46 Seconds: 51

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Can?t believe I?m here...

I really thought I had this licked.

But seriously, so happy with myself, to the extent I didn´t even need this site. And here I am wavering after almost 50 days.

Oh god would I love a smoke, right now, if I just had one try, who will care?

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 48
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,680
Amount Saved: �252.00
Life Gained:
Days: 6 Hrs: 22 Mins: 6 Seconds: 44

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 19

Can?t believe I?m here...

Sorry guys,

I fired one up and I have to admit it, I enjoyed it. You don´t need me here, I suppose I´m just not ready to call it a day yet.

Steve

My Milage:

My Quit Date: 8/24/2009
Smoke-Free Days: 48
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 1,680
Amount Saved: �252.00
Life Gained:
Days: 6 Hrs: 22 Mins: 13 Seconds: 43

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