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I think there are between five and six thirty gallon trash bags sitting outside right now, that’s not counting the two boxes full of magazine bits; the garbage from my closet and office. I’ve thrown away approximately half of the closet contents at this point. The mess that was on the bed, well, it’s all taken care of. I’ve actually turned the bed onto its side, reducing the likelyhood of just tossing things onto it. All of those plastic boxes from the lounge closet have found a new home in the office closet, and get this… there is still room for about four more plastic storage boxes in there!

The best news is that I finally found the long-lost title to my very old Subaru. While a replacement could have been procured at almost reasonable expense, I never bothered with it. Thankfully, having found that damned piece of paper, I will now be able to actually get rid of that festering hunk of metal in the driveway.

All those back issues of Art News, Popular Photography, Outdoor Photography, and Studio Photography & Design are being turned into little excerpts instead of space-hogging full magazines. I apparently feel that of all those magazines, that took two bookcase shelves and a couple boxes, the only articles of lasting worth come up to being about an inch thick stack of excerpts. In theory I will eventually index and file those away, heh.

Oh, related to that, I finally purchased the file frames to turn my giant Hon four-drawer filing cabinet into something useful. I can’t stand the idea of just having folders in a drawer, even with the slide-up backer thing, it just seems ridiculous; I’m a hanging-file sort of boy. Amazing that it cost me a mere $12 to actually convert all four drawers to hanging-file glory… I should have done that a long time ago.

I haven’t actually filed anything yet, hah, but it is definitely on the agenda. I have a magazine file full of “to be filed” items. I figured it was best to gather up everything that needs to be filed, that way I can get the whole system started straight off. I actually don’t so much need to start the system, as I have my overflowing two-drawer already; unfortunately I’ve not really used it much because it was, well, overflowing. The spectacular increase in filing space should help considerably.

Someday I hope to actually get that old twin bed out of my office, it’s completely unnecessary at this point given we have a true guest room these days. Once the bed is gone I’ll hopefully be able to summon the finances to get a big ol’ desk to go along the wall, wrap around the corner, and then along the other wall. My plants take up almost all of the area on my blue table, my actual desk, the quasi-antique, is on the smallish side, just enough room for the keyboard, mouse, lcd, and a cup of coffee.

So yay, giving up smoking, prompting me to clean, prompting me to organize, being more of a neat-freak again, finding things inside that help clean up the outside.

This is day fourteen without a single puff on a cigarette. Matthew is going on nearly three weeks without a cigarette, my mother hit the one week mark, and my brother Matt is also several days smoke-free at this point. I’m so glad it has worked out that everyone agreed to quit around the same point in time, it’s like a little support group.

I’ve been diligently cleaning the office… and I mean, actually cleaning… yes, it’s that shocking.

Anyway, I’m trying to make some room in the closet by organizing it, or at least weeding out the crap that can be thrown away, and I find this rather thick stack of trading card plastic binder thingees. They contain Desert Storm trading cards?! That’s truly weird, and no… they weren’t mine, I must have inherited them in some fashion.

I still cannot manage to take the recommended minimum number of Commit lozenges, no matter how hard I try. Well, I’m sure I could do it, but I’d have one in my mouth to the point so consistently of not being able to eat or drink… at all. I’m somewhat struggling with even taking them two hours apart, I’d much rather wait longer. I don’t know if I’m on some sort of ‘I can quit faster, I have great willpower’ thing or what, but… I’m having very few cravings, I just don’t feel the need for a 4mg boost of nicotine.

I’m going to modify the plan, see if it’ll work better for me if I just sort of speed up the process; I simply cannot imagine taking these things for twelve weeks.

In related news, Friday the 20th is my mom’s quit date. She started on the lozenges as I did, I believe she’s also having the same sort of difficulty in taking them as often as is indicated; particularly because they seem to take an hour and a half to dissolve for her. Quite frankly, I think they’re so incredibly inconvenient… but, I don’t want to smoke either.

Example being, I could go for a hit of nicotine right now, but I really want to be in bed… should have been in bed quite a while ago. If I take a lozenge now I’ll be up for another hour, plus my blood pressure and heart rate will all be elevated by the slam of nicotine… not exactly “mood for sleepy” body activity.

Either way, today is my day six without a single puff on a cigarette.

I also finally learned how to make the purl stitch in knitting. It took me a very long time, four hours or so, to finally get the hang of it. I believe I was doing instead of a ’standard’ continental purl, a combined purl. I kept having all of my purl stitches twisted, but never fear it eventually came to me. Egh, the hand manuevers for purling… don’t much like it.

I bought some cheap ($1.47 for 100g) bulky weight yarn to learn/practice with, I’m not sure if my stitch weirdness is a result of the cheap yarn, or just sloppy tension when switching back and forth between knit and purl. I’m doing this k3 p3 ribbed pattern at the moment, and well, it just looks a little wonky in contrast to when I’m doing garter with just knit stitches.

The state of Maryland rubs salt in the wound of the speeding ticket… I haven’t been able to get a hold of a human being at the court office at all, and their ‘fancy’ IVR, VRU, or whatever you want to call their ‘takes the place of a human’ answering machine doesn’t seem to work for shit. It gives no real options, anytime I choose anything it sends me to an operator, but instead I get a message saying nobody is available and then it hangs up on me! To be able to pay that ticket there is going to need to be a miracle of some kind; short of a miracle I wouldn’t mind my clients actually paying me in a timely manner — if all those past due invoices would get paid this week, well… I’d have the money for the ticket.

It’s amazing, I’m incredibly stressed, and I’m still not smoking. I’m still very much in a ‘leave me alone’ mood when it comes to most everyone though, which has been the case for the majority of January. I realized that I’ve become too lax when it comes to making it clear what I will and will not tolerate, I need to clear that up.

Monday I started the process to quit smoking. I haven’t had a single puff since Sunday night before I went to bed, afterwhich I began using the Commit lozenge.

In a few minutes I’ll be 48 hours smoke-free. I’m having a difficult time taking/using the minimum of nine lozenges a day, the most I can manage is about six. They take an hour to dissolve, can’t eat or drink while that minty tingling is happening… and it is suggested that you take them between one and two hours apart. Now, is that an hour after you start one, or an hour after you finish one? …no clue. Either way, if it takes an hour to dissolve and I wait two hours between them, which is astonishingly easy, I’d need to be doing it for eighteen hours a day… uhm…

I sleep a lot more than the typical person; between ten and twelve hours, if I have the bed to myself (otherwise it’s more like between four and six, heh).

I smoked cloves, significantly lower in nicotine than a typical cigarette.

I can handle some withdrawl symptoms… I did quit cold a few years ago, of course that only lasted a week, heh.

Without just saying “pfft, I’m at step two already” …which isn’t supposed to be for six weeks, I’ll try to get into some sort of habit, hah, of taking these things every two hours, which is really three hours after I started ‘not sucking’ on one. If I don’t get up to nine a day, well… that’s because I was sleeping.

Overall it hasn’t been too bad. I do get fairly strong cravings after eating and drinking coffee. With after eating being when a nice clove would be oh so very perfect, and of course… anytime I sit down here at the computer I automatically reach over for the pack of cloves and lighter that aren’t even there.

I’ve been spending most of my awake time with knitting, it’s something that I associate with not smoking, it keeps my hands busy, and with a lozenge also my mouth busy putting a slow dose of not exactly calming nicotine into my body.

I did choose the 4mg version, versus the 2mg, because I would always smoke my first cigarette within thirty minutes of waking. Perhaps if I chose the 2mg version I’d be popping those suckers like there wasn’t a tomorrow? Oh well.

I don’t want to do this wrong and end up smoking again, but I just can’t imagine finding time to take nine of those things a day. I’m also not quite sure why this whole process is supposed to last twelve weeks. Either way, I’m doing my best to stick with the program. I’ve not had an overwhelming desire to kill anyone, outside of well… normal hostility of really hoping that the cop that jumped in front of me on I-270, having just clocked me with his laser gun going 76MPH, does that to the wrong person and becomes road kill.

Matthew is on day six of his cessation of smoking, he’s doing it cold, without NRT, but then he generally would smoke less than I would, and has been on a slow decline in numbers of cigarettes smoked anyway. I feel better about my decision to quit, knowing now that I won’t be negatively influencing him by my continued smoking.

My mom was supposed to quit with me on Monday, but she backed out, wanting to wait until a weekend so she could have a day or two under the belt before she had to go to work. I can’t force her to quit, but considering how her continuing to smoke in the house would negatively effect my process of quiting, well, that has now been forbidden. If she wants to continue to smoke, even if it is only for the rest of the week, she has to do it outside.

My cigarettes have been on a continual rise in cost, now being just shy of $5 a pack, I’m burning $150 worth a month… it had to stop. I can already breathe more easily and my nose isn’t nearly as stuffy as it typically would be. Actually, the lozenges do cost slightly less than the cigarettes, basically $4 per day versus $5 per day… the cost of quitting smoking is no longer substantially more, yay!

Not that it is really appropriate to comment about a speeding ticket under the moniker of a major life changing event, but I’m still thoroughly disgusted by receiving it. Anyone familiar with I-270 near the DC beltway would realize that 76 MPH is actually on the slow side. I was going that fast simply to avoid being run over by all of the cars going just as fast behind me. It just happens that I had crossed over into the 55MPH section… cop sitting along the left side of the road, hits me with laser, jumps out in front of the car and points straight at me. If it weren’t for the whole killing being bad thing, I’d have run him over for the shear stupidity of doing such a thing. Several cars behind me also pulled over, only to realize that this cop was playing the out of state game, apparently if you have a Maryland plate you’re allowed to go that fast — since I was simply keeping up with the traffic ahead and behind me (again, to keep from being run over).

There’s no debating it, I was speeding… it doesn’t matter why to the cop, he’s doing his job. My lump is the $145 ticket payable toward the end of the month, as if my financial situation wasn’t delicate enough. I was going down to Ikea with mom… my first instinct was to just turn around and go home, but… that would have made the trip totally worthless and hideously expensive at that. So, I went, bought what I planned to buy, those damned shelves ended up being seriously more expensive than planned.

There’s something about that paint colour that just sounds wrong, don’t you think?

So, instead of the fun of watching paint dry, I’m going to write about paint drying… fun for all!

Over the past few days the lounge has been transforming. With the addition of the new Poang chair on Saturday, a new curtain for the couch wall the other night, and now today I have finally painted the doors.

Matthew, David, and I agonized over the paint chips, trying to determine just which of the thirty shades of brown would look best. I kept wanting to match the brown to the leaves in the new curtain, but under the lighting conditions of the lounge it looked far too maroon. It finally came down to two, Cabin Plank and Soul Chocolate. Cabin plank being darker and muted, with Soul Chocolate being a bit more… chocolately, clearly.

The Soul Chocolate is very similar to the overall tones of the Eucalyptus veneer on my new bar cabinet, close enough to the leaves in the new curtain, etc… it seemed like a good choice, plus it was a bit more fun in the more esoteric sort of ways. Cabin plank coordinated with the blue-gray of the walls a bit better, but… ahhhhh… so much to be concerned about.

I took the paint chip from Lowe’s to Walmart so that I could get the lovely plastic Dutchboy pails… I’d happily buy the paint from Lowe’s, plus it would have been easier, but… I can’t stand metal paint cans. The guy at Walmart was slightly displeased that I didn’t just get the paint at Lowe’s, but then… for the primary reason as above, I wanted the Dutchboy. It also is more convenient because at 11pm I can still get paint at Walmart, while Lowe’s has been closed for hours.

The colour matching process itself was a bit unnerving. The original guy started the process and was getting ready to add the pigments when a guy from the neighboring sporting goods department came over to see what was going on. Apparently they just received this new colour matching machine and he wanted to play with it. He proceeded the re-calibrate the machine and match my paint chip, astoundingly it came up with a completely different formula. The two guys went about figuring just which changes should be made, as original paint mixing guy had already started adding pigment. I’m glad the second guy was curious, because clearly the original formula (pre-calibration) would have been quite wrong.

Ultimately they managed to get a fairly dead-on match, perhaps slightly different, but it’d be like splitting hairs to worry about it.

I just finished putting the second coat on the doors and I’m not all that sure I like the colour afterall. It did darken considerably between coats and I do suspect it will continue to darken, so I can’t quite judge it yet, but by this evening I’ll be able to know for sure. It is a nice colour, certainly, but perhaps not the right colour for the room.

I’m also thinking that I should have not bothered to buy the gallon of it, because I used practically nothing to paint the three doors. My justification was that the cost of a quart was such that I’d be better off just paying twice as much for four times as much paint. Since I was having this paint custom formulated, and knowing that weirdness like above is prone to happen, it is just a better idea to have way more than needed.

If I don’t like it, I’ll eat the mistake by going to Lowe’s this evening and buying a quart of the other brown… and it’ll be okay. ;)

I forgot to add the little description to the above image. As is decently obvious, the new paint is on the doors to the left in the image. It is also on the matching door on the other side, and the entry door (behind the vantage point of the camera). The new curtain is the light brown with darker brown leaves on it. My old curtains, the white panels, are still in place until I can find something else appropriate to break the monotany of the pattern. Lastnight I had a bit of inspiration and ran out (along with getting the paint) to get a ~$2 “picture frame hanging kit” that consisted of twelve feet of hanging wire, eyehooks, and hanging ‘things.’ It turns out there was nothing of any substance behind the wall to anchor the ‘hanging things’ into, so I re-appropriated some of the ‘J’ hooks from the paper lanterns and anchored those into the ceiling. I basically created a cheapie diy version of a much more expensive musuem style hanging system, yay for me!

Oh, and that new curtain, it’s actually the flat sheet from a set I found clearanced to $15. Thus far I’ve done nothing special with the exception of ironing it (and eep, ironing a full sized sheet is kind of a pain) and attaching it to the Ikea Deka wire system on that wall with the little clips. It is a bit too long for me to be able to turn the heater on, so I’ll need to make some adjustments, but for now it works.

I’m planning on either getting this fantastic sheer curtain that has subtle tree branch cutouts, but it’s rather pricey… or either bamboo shade panels or this rice paper bamboo panel. The funny thing is that there’s no window behind the curtain anyway; it’s just the breaker box for the house is there, which makes it impossible to hang something big and difficult to move, and well… the wall panelling is rather ugly, even after painting. Anyway, I plan on getting something to replace the white panels I’d sewn a couple of years ago.

Also in that photo you can see one of the new pillows I made on Tuesday from the ’silky brocade’ fabric. I put this cluster filling into them instead of using regular ol’ polyfill, and my goodness, what a difference that makes! Yay for synthetic down! ;)

I’ve been bemoaning my yarn miscalcuation for my current knitting project, but I kept saying that narrow would be better than too short. Unfortunately I have run into the problem of it being plenty long, but much too narrow. I ran out of yarn, less five or so yards to cast it off if necessary, with a final width of just three inches. This scarf looks more like a belt, heh.

It’s all bunched up around the circular needle, the oh too short circular needle that is. This shot will at least give you an idea of what I’ve been working on for the last few days.

My options are to get another ball of the yarn, which would certainly be a different dye-lot, which could result in it looking less than good, or I think I’d go with a complementary solid colour, in the same yarn brand/label. If I went with a solid, it would be like stripes within stripes, which could look quite interesting. I really do like how the variagated yarn creates staggered stripes when knitted lengthwise, versus the camo-effect of knitting the, more normal, short way.

I also came across some disturbing and saddening news when it comes to knitting needles this morning. I have a metal allergy, nickel pretty much acts as a chemical peel whenever it contacts my skin. A couple of years ago when I put up my office ceiling fan I had all of the skin on my hands and fingers painfully peel off, because the brushed nickel wasn’t lacquered over; just to illustrate the point. I had been thinking of just splurging and getting some Addi Turbo needles for my big Harry Potter scarf project, figuring that I might as well get ‘the best’ for it. I came to learn this morning that they are nickel-plated brass. My goodness, such a disaster that would be… since I would prefer to keep the skin on my fingers, I think I’ll have to pass on that particular brand forever.

I’m also a little concerned about the Susan Bate’s needles I’ve been using for my current project, because I have a bit of skin peeling off of my thumb… it could be just friction with the yarn, but it’s a bit difficult to say. I never thought about my metal allergy and problems with choosing metal knitting needles… I suppose because most are typically advertised as alluminium.