In the beginning...

What an absolutely foolish idea.

I've agreed to quit smoking for a month, and, while suffering the inevitable physical and mental tortures that will accompany such a foolhardy act, keep a blog documenting my successes, failures, and the aforementioned tortures for the world to bear witness. I wonder if this is an altogether new idea, likely not I suppose, but since I've only attempted to quit once before, I can't say whether it is or it isn't with any degree of certainty.

For the record, the once before was a doomed-to-failure pact with my lovely wife Donna, who, like me, enjoys smoking so much it's practically religion in our household. You'll find no glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary figurines in our house, no soapstone totems or ceramic Buddhas serving as bookends or lining the tops of tables or other assorted pieces of hand-me-down furniture, but you will find at least one ashtray in every room. (Well, not the bathroom. Even we have our pride.)

So then. Agreed with whom you may be wondering. A fair question. For now, let's just say a friend. One who doesn't smoke but once did, although it was only many years after her tobacco divorce that I made her acquaintance. She is a colleague from work, and no, before your minds race too quickly to sullied thoughts of extramarital entanglement, there is nothing between us other than mutual like and a love of the written word, the latter being the reason I have agreed to this quitter's chronicle.

All that aside, I have no intention of quitting today. I'll leave that cold turkey stuff for someone made of sterner stuff. That way I can ease slowly, like a glazed honey doughnut into a steaming mug of Columbian blend, into the ugly, dishevelled, short-tempered mess I'm sure to become.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a smoke.