i've smoked a lot of cigarettes in my life. that's a fact.
it all started when a few times in my early teens, pat cody & i snuck mores from his mom & walked down the dirt bike trail near his house to smoke butts & play with wd-40 & a lighter. cigarettes never caught on for me a that point in my life though. i didn't know anyone old enough who would buy them for me anyhow.
...& then along came college, where there were people from outside nh, people who knew actual lesbians & had friends who had gone to rehab & so cigarettes were around more & i found myself smoking cigarettes a lot more regularly during that time, although the habit gained the most strength from the summers between college, when i was back in nh with all my high school friends sitting on porches running through packs of camel lights. i blame you, martin.
the simple scientific fact is that in 90% of situations you look much cooler with a cigarette. without fail, a cigarette enhances your presence (for better or worse). a cigarette can help you strike up a conversation with that girl who "only smokes when she drinks." when you're in a conversation & don't know what to say, you can take a long drag off your cigarette & stare up slightly up towards the heavens. people will think that you're really deep when you're actually quite clueless. when you're attempting to get information from a perp, if you're smoking a cigarette, he will be much more intimidated if you're smoking & if he isn't, you just put out your cigarette on his forehead to remind him who's in charge (unless you are on network television & aren't allowed to smoke on your show).
...so i smoked constantly & thirteen years later, i finally stopped smoking at least 15 cigarettes a day & blowing tons of money supporting the routine. my decision was partly for my health, partly for my finances & partly for the smell. i still like cigarettes though. they're sweet...& smoky...segue...just like...
#20 - ol' smoky.
snack: t.g.i.friday's sweet & smoky popcorn chicken
drink: schweppes dry grape ginger ale
this sunday, i was in the mood for some snackin' & went for the recently purchased box of t.g.i.friday's sweet & smoky popcorn chicken. normally, i wouldn't bother with such an item. i'm not really one of those "go to t.g.i.friday's" types & given the choice between the t.g.i.friday's in times square and the approximately 73,000 other restaurants in nyc, t.g.i.friday's probably falls in around 53,476th place in my choices to eat...but, if t.g.i.friday's boxes up their dishes, puts them in the freezer section of my local grocery store & slaps a sale tag in front of them, who am i to deny them?
...so i went with the sweet & smoky popcorn chicken & it's pretty dang good. at first, it's weird to be faced with a plateful of what look partly like mini falafel balls & partly like chunks of clif bar, but the chicken is solidly sweet & smoky and the right color. for me, it's always best when chicken is a nice, whitish color. it tells me that the meat isn't actually pigeon or from the ass of the chicken & most importantly, that the chicken didn't have scurvy or something. throughout the course of my sunday, i finished off the entire box. here's to fulfilling 92% of my rda for sodium.
i had a few glasses of schweppes dry grape ginger ale along with the chicken balls. i love this stuff. whenever i'm feeling guilty about the amount of caffeine i inhale on a daily basis, i switch over to a two-liter of the schweppes. any time i can lessen the impact of my caffeine intake, it's a victory in my book. without the guilt from smoking hanging over my head, i have to worry about something...why not caffeine?