Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Heavyarms55 Perdomo? Macanudo?

On Sunday, I’m going to stop smoking. Again. I have 600 mint toothpicks, and a variety box of of Orbit gum. I love tobacco. Love it. Goodbye again old friend, this time I’m serious.

@NintendoByNature - They pulled it out! Thursday night games are always weird.

@bimmy-lee Best of luck, dood. I too enjoy my tobacco. Ya know what I find is useful during stints? Baby carrots. They keep the mouth busy, and are good finger placement while I’m outside.

@bimmy-lee thankfully.....they were looking rough. Glad they got it. Good to know your quitting. Oddly enough, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. At a young age, 9 or 10, my uncle passed away from lung cancer attributed to smoking so i never picked one up. I've had cigars and what not, but it's usually special occasions. Make sure to stay off the stuff this time.

@HobbitGamer - Thanks pal. That’s a great idea. Baby carrots satisfy both fixations, hands and mouth. I don’t have that hard of a time with it initially, I usually struggle a couple weeks to a month in when my brain starts telling me I’m so far in the clear, I could probably have just one, enjoy it, and be done. Silly brain. My kids have never actually seen me smoke, but it’s getting too hard and stupid to keep up the facade. It feels like a good friend just died every time though, doesn’t it? A friend who wants to kill you.

@NintendoByNature - I try not to read too much into TNF games because, since the start, they’ve been incredibly weird. It’s just a disruption of the usual schedule and game prep, and good teams usually play bad, while bad teams usually play decent. Thanks, I’m sure your uncle did have a lasting effect on you. Glad you never got sucked in then. I have a family event tomorrow, and that’s been great motivation in the past. I have an aunt who needs steroids and an oxygen mask to breathe.

@HobbitGamer And just like that, carrots have replaced pineapple.

@bimmy-lee I’ve also struggled quitting for a long time. When I got to college everyone in the film department smoked and same at the coffee shop where I worked part-time. I never really thought much about it at 25, but at 32 I also think it is time for me. The impact of the habit starts rearing it’s ugly head as you get older.

When I visit home the gum helps and yeah baby carrots are a good oral fixation and the all that Vitamin A is good for smokers. One thing that also sorta helps is just pretending like you’ve never done it. You have to move your thoughts away from cigarettes, otherwise you’ll just be fantasizing about having one all day.

Best of luck to you.

@NotTelevision - Thank you. Film school, coffee shop... you were destined to pick up the habit, or have the existing habit enabled. It’s always been amazing to me how strong the brain tries to pull me back in, and how easy it is to trick it out of that cycle. Last time, I used water. Every time I had an urge, I’d chug a glass of water. By the time I was done, the urge was over. My brain was like, “Oh good, water, we need that. What were we talking about again, I can’t remember? Oh well, it’ll come back to us in 10 minutes.” I struggle less with nicotine addiction, and more with the general lifestyle changes that come with quitting. Not having a lighter in my pocket feels like I’ve left home without my wallet or phone. Ah well, gotta do it. I’m getting too dang old, and as much as I love tobacco; I want to quit now more than I ever have. That’s half the battle.

I've never smoked anything in my life. Neither of my parents smoked, and I can't really stand the smell to boot (I hate strong smells in general, barring food). I don't like any form of smoke in general, though I can tolerate wood smoke in limited amounts. One of the negatives of this time of year is when people think it's a good idea to burn leaves. :nauseated_face:

@Heavyarms55 Exactly! I either need to do less stuff, try to streamline my time even more than I already do, or else create a work-happy clone of myself. XD Or stop adding so much to my backlog AND booklog....

Have fun with Trapinch Community Day, I had a blast with ours! And have fun with your weekend to boot! I almost live for them sometimes.

@bimmy-lee Good luck! I've heard that's not easy but is totally worth it.

@Tyranexx - Thanks! I guess we’ve found the difference in our olfactory sensitivity. I think cigs smell gross after I’ve quit, but I like the smell of cigars, pipes, wood smoke, and burning leaves. Hope you enjoy your trip next week and get at least a little time for yourself.

@HobbitGamer No clue. Some kind of Cubans I think. My friend picked them. The bar sells a bunch, but they also don't mind you bringing your own.

@Tyranexx I think I will, thanks! (Living for weekends is a bad habit I know all too well.)

@NEStalgia "wow, it really WAS the Dutch the effed up NY centuries ago!"

No, not really. It was just me explaining the ways of a big city, which nowadays almost all seem to be filled with mostly self-absorbed and solitary beings, whereas in our grandparents' days, people would all still greet each other on the street, and even when I was still young, we had a good relationship with our neighbors, with them sometimes even babysitting me and my sister, and later on bringing us to swimming classes. But nowadays, that kind of behavior has all but disappeared from big cities, and has moved to the country side.

My father lives in a small village, and over there, it's still like in the old days. You wave hello to people walking past your window, you great each other when you pass each other in your car, and you chat when you're standing on the street. In the apartment I live in, it's the bare minimum, so only chats when absolutely necessary, and other than that, it's just the aforementioned polite greetings when coming or going.

As for America: if it weren't for the Dutch, you never even would have had, and/or regained, New York and Brooklyn, so you should be thanking them instead of making fun of them.

@Heavyarms55 I think I forgot a smiley when mentioning the size of your apartment, but even so, I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find an apartment of the size that I'm living in on your end of the globe, and in the bigger cities. Let alone for an affordable rent.

@HobbitGamer I'll keep it in mind, and whenever I'm in the mood and have the opportunity, I might just try a bit of carrot cake, to see what all the fuss is about. Chances are, it's made differently over here, though. Or probably in every shop and/or home, so ultimately, I may never experienced the kind of carrot cake that you all have in mind.

All I could think of when I saw two X's with a lot of space in between them, is Xenoblade Chronicles X, but that's probably not it...

@bimmy-lee Good luck quitting smoking. I know it's hard, because I've had to do it myself once. Never went back, though, so luckily, I managed to get rid of that foul habit once and for all.

@ThanosReXXX Well I don't know how big your place is, so I can't say, but take what you read online with a grain of salt. The super tiny apartments you can see online do exist, but they are the bottom end of things. And Japan is much more than big city. It still has a lot of countryside and plenty of small towns. And I actually live in the second smallest town in one of the most rural prefectures of Japan.

@Tyranexx @Heavyarms55 I thought everyone lived for the weekends. Who lives for the misery of the weekday? Monday through Friday afternoon exist just to get to Friday evening.

@ThanosReXXX Please, please, please take back NY and every last POS in it or recently spawned from it. PLEASE!! Saves me a lot of nukes to buy..... I may have to declare war on the Dutch simply for enabling NY to exist.

@bimmy-lee Thanks! I should get a little time to myself - at least for a couple of evenings - and hope to devote myself to some unwind time. I'll be taking my work laptop though, so it's very possible that I'll end up working on an emergency. I seriously hope not lol.

But yeah, I don't do most powerful smells. Perfumes, colognes, some livestock smells (hogs, ugh), and some of our haunted house's own smells bother me. I don't get sick, it's more like taking a proverbial fist to the nose. Thankfully i can "shut off" my nose to an extent without pinching it.

@Heavyarms55 It's not as bad as it used to be for the most part, but my schedule lately has made weekends an absolute must. Things should slow down a little in November, then the holidays will hit. XD

@ThanosReXXX It's a mixed reference to a Treehouse of Horror Episode from The Simpsons that's a parody of The Shining (called The Shinning). The original phrase used is "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", and the episode uses "No TV and no beer makes Homer go crazy".

Unless you DID understand the reference and my reading comprehension/context meter is way off at the end of a bonkers week....

@NEStalgia It depends on the week for me lol. Before I changed jobs, I almost literally did live for the weekends. Some weeknights aren't bad these days though. October is normally one of my busiest months, along with July, March, and December.

@Heavyarms55 Well, besides the obvious sources, I also did some assuming, based on you telling about your room, also in the Ring Fit Adventure comments section, so either you have a smaller living room than mine, or you've got a LOT of stuff in there, making moving around with a fitness device nigh on impossible.

Either way, the total square surface of my apartment is 68m², so that's roughly 223,1ft², which is well above average for an apartment in any city worldwide.

For clarity's sake: I didn't mean to imply that I believe that ALL of Japan is living in box-apartments, I may not be all that well-versed in the ways of Japanese living, but at the same time, I'm not that oblivious...

I actually did want to add that you'd probably have an easier time finding affordable and spacious living room in the outskirts and upstate parts of cities in my previous comment, but I kinda figured that was stating the obvious, so I left it out.

@NEStalgia I think you're forgetting all about our resident New Yorker rjejr. He may be living upstate NY, but he'd probably still not appreciate people bashing the general area regardless...

@Tyranexx Ah, yes, of course. How the heck could I have forgotten about that one? Pfff... I'm getting too old for these kinds of things...

#TGIF

@ThanosReXXX I don't think he's upstate, I think he's nearish the radioactive glowing crater to be city. Still, I don't think he'd disagree much. He wouldn't be much of a New Yorker if he didn't hate everyone else around him....

If he's really upstate though he'll definitely agree. The rest of NY hates NYC, it's really a Jersey city the state have to pay for, and has nothing otherwise in common with NY state culture.

@NEStalgia Well, I do remember him mentioning it a couple of times. He definitely doesn't live in the city, that's for sure. And he has a house with a garden and a swimming pool, so there's got to be plenty of space where he lives.

Late replies will be my legacy over here. Token random babble, I decided to clear my Poké backlog before Swish comes out but then saw a few DS games I was still missing when I was out shopping. Promptly increased my Poké backlog by three titles and am now busy playing Pearl. Whoops.

@bimmy-lee "Just want you to know I wasn’t ignoring you, and I appreciate the discussion." - Well, I can pretty much return this considering how belated my reply is. Thank you very much for the nice chat and likewise! Also, wishing you best of success with quitting. You can do it!

@Tyranexx I shall join that club, both the non-smoking as well as having a sensitive nose. I'm suffering from sensory overload mainly affecting my sense of smell, hearing, and temperature (heat) which does not make life particularly pleasant considering how many people are either loud and/or assault their surroundings with strong smells (perfume, smoke, after-shave, sunscreen, spray deodorant...). It just makes my everything burn all the way down to my lungs, instantly, and it sticks for a long time (or in the case of hearing makes me feel like someone's punching or stabbing my brain with every "bad" sound and, again, sticks around). Burning wood is another thing which I cannot quite handle which is a bad combination during holiday season as my parents have a woodburner and mother's prone to freezing. Though it's not nearly as bad as cosmetics and smoke.

On that note, nice to hear I'm not alone.