I may have accidentally quit smoking tonight. I wasn't even sure if I should mention it because I have absolutely no faith in myself to stick with it. I didn't even plan this. I was just sick of this cold and after a half hour cough-and-blow session this evening, I decided to try not to smoke for a while. That was about 14 hours ago. You might think that's nothing, but its definitely something. I cant even remember the last time I went anywhere near that long without smoking a cigarette.

This isn't some cold turkey kind of thing. I've got this electronic cigarette (actually I've got a better one now than the one in that link) that I've been puffing on. It's far from a perfect substitute, though, so every few minutes my brain keeps asking me to please light a cigarette and inhale some toxic smoke. You would totally feel soooooo much better if you had some awesome tobacco smoke in your lungs. My brain is so right. But so far I've been able to fend off those urges with the e-cig. It's kind of bothering my stomach, though.

So anyway, that's what I've been doing tonight... not smoking. I'll let you know when I fail ;)

My brother came home tonight, there was a little chit-chat and then he whips the this. For me. Completely out of the blue, he bought me a new iPod Nano! How awesome is that?

"Early birthday present," he said.

Very early. My birthday's not until December. Hee. I think he walked into the Apple store tonight and just couldn't resist buying one. And since he's got an iPhone, he has no need for an iPod. So I got a gift :)

My old iPod was a 30gb and this new Nano is 8gb. I guess the days of me cramming my entire music library onto my iPod are over. Considering I never seem to have more than 40 or 50 songs in heavy rotation at one time, I think I can manage. This sucker's way cool. And you can record video with it. Neato!

I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond the other day to buy some new sheets with a gift card I'd gotten for Christmas. Oddly, they have horrible prices on bedding, so I think I'll hit up Marshall's soon for that instead. I can usually find a nice, high thread count queen set there for like $40 (as opposed to the $100+ I would've paid at BB&B). But since I had a gift card to spend, I browsed. The man and I picked up a new set of kitchen knives, which we were in sore need of and then I saw this awesome step stool:



It's way cool — lightweight, super sturdy and it opens and collapses really easily. I love this thing. Now I can reach the top shelves of the kitchen cabinets without climbing on the counter. Yay!

How freaking cool is this? Electronic cigarettes with no smoke and no tobacco. That video shows an older model, but now they make ones that are smaller and actually look like cigarettes. They use a battery and an atomizer to heat up a nicotine cartridge and you inhale the vapor. Awesome. Well, you'd have to be a smoker to appreciate it, but I think it's way cool. I had no idea these things existed.

I think their claims of being able to use them anywhere are a tad unrealistic. I can only imagine what would happen if you puffed on this thing in a shopping mall or something. It doesn't matter that there's no tobacco and no smoke. There would be pitchforks and torches over the sight of the water vapor being exhaled. But what I'm *hoping* is it'll work as a true substitute for cigarettes. I'm not so worried about being addicted to nicotine. Actually, I'm not worried about that at all. It's the smoke that's bad, not the nicotine itself.

And since I am always impulsive with the credit card late at night, I went for it. I was going to get the white one because it looks more like a real cigarette, but then I thought puffing on something silver could be kind of cool. So here's what I ordered:



There are apparently several companies making them. NJOY wasn't the cheapest, but seemed to be the most well-established. And from what I read, this product skirts the edge of legality. So I figured when inhaling something that isn't FDA approved, reputable is better than saving a few bucks.

I should be getting it in sometime next week and I'm looking forward to trying it out. I'll keep you posted in case any other smokers out there want to give it a go.