Smoking Cessation, St. Louis, and the Uke

This makes 56 hours without smoking. This means a lot when you've been smoking for 15 years. I'm using nicotine gum of course, I don't think I could do it without some kind of nicotine delivery system, nor without the moral support from Lori. So you can imagine my being such a heavy smoker would result in relatively instant changes in how I feel as far as health and overall feeling goes. My sinuses have been purging slowly, and I can already smell and taste things better, along with breathing and the lovely no longer smelling like an ashtray. We've spent the last two days in St. Louis, driving and seeing the sights, so my habitual cravings appeared mostly when waking up, after eating, and while driving. Now that I'm home again, I can feel the mental cravings being triggered on some very trivial things, like looking at our fish tank, walking into the kitchen, getting the mail. This has to be the easiest way to quit, I can't even imagine how horrible my nicotine withdrawal symptoms would have been if I had gone cold turkey. Now we'll just have to see if i can control my mind in all of this.

Lori's Dad gave me a Lanikai Concert Ukulele for christmas:

above photo by Lori Brooks

We stumbled on this lovely video on Youtube as we were looking for good covers to do on the uke: