Well after 7 weeks and 2 days I’m still off the ciggies.  Thank you Champix.

Big warning though, Champix has some nasty side effects.  I started with only some of them and ended up with all of them.  They recommend you do 12 weeks on the tabs but I was only able to 4.

The Champix work.  Mind you, you do need a good support network around you because if you are in a social situation in the first week it is not easy, but it is not that  hard either.  I really didn’t have that must have desire for the cigs that I have had for the last 35 years!!!  But Champix do have their side affects and I had some.

The nausea was pretty easy, I knew it was the tabs doing it so it was mind over matter.  The downers were a bit harder.  The instructions say they can be depressing.  I think my friends were more right by saying to me you are just having a downer because of the meds and it’s ok.  I let myself wallow a couple of times, hey there is nothing wrong with a  good cry!  Afterwards I got going and got on with my day just fine.  It’s more just being aware of whats going on with you.

They worked for me.  It’s been two weeks now, I have just converted to weeks from days and it feels so good.   I have had a couple of cigs.  I was sick and they were the only thing I could keep down, it was more of a comfort thing than a need.  A friend gave me some advice in the first week.  She said just because you might have one ciggie you are not a smoker again, it doesn’t mean you have to keep smoking.  She was right, I have had a couple but they are not doing anything for me so there is no need for them.

I feel better already.  I have noticed the difference in my  skin already.  I have been told it may take up to 18 months before I notice some physical changes for the better, but hey it can only get better from here.

This has been such a long layover I have probably lost all of the all too few regular readers I had!

I’ve been lazy and as I couldn’t blog  from work I had to go to cafes, like anyone does that regularly unless they are in another country.  Soooo finally I got my shit together and now have the net on at home.

Soon I promise some writing as this is only an update.

I want the whip,

Want to feel the leather,

Don’t let it slip,

Let it get better.

Heal the wounds,

With the slices,

See the swoons,

Let the skin be dices.

Take me to the whip,

I want to feel the pain,

I want a different trip,

Not thinking of her again.

Take me to the whip,

Let me taste the pain,

I want to get a grip,

On a different train.

     So this week I thought I would have a quiet week chilling at home every night.  Well so it so didn’t turn out like that. 

     It didn’t start that well cos I was still very hung over Monday from a big night out on Saturday…yes it was that big!  It was Jager bombs big.  I get into work and as I’m not on the net at home at the moment, I’m still sorting through plans and options and wireless or cable, I’ve been doing a fair bit of surfing and blogging at work as I have full access.  My boss tells me that I have received a warning about my net usage….too much, way too much!!  They, the company that we are contracted to and who provide our computers and net access, have told him that my net usage must drop or they will inform our Head Office!  So now I’m having to go to net cafes cos I’ve too busy to work something out for home.  So I think that is a crappy start to the week. 

      Tuesday, early night in I think, just as I’m leaving work my ex calls to see if I want to catch up for one drink.  I figure one won’t hurt so go meet her at this nice venue that has couches and $3 wines for their 2 hour happy hour!  Then my housemate, who technically lives upstairs in his own flat, joins us.  It was 9 before we got home.

     Wednesday, early night in I think, but silly me drops into my local for one on the way home.  I also had ulterior motives there as I was trying to find out exactly what I had gotten up Saturday night after I had had pizza with my mates and been put into a cab to go home, I hadn’t gone home!  Just about to leave and a friend arrives who is pretty close to a mate who drinks there and he is dying of cancer, like he probably won’t make it through next week.  So she has never been through anything like this before and I stay around to let her pour out the crap she needs to and to reassure her that how she is feeling is perfectly normal.  You go crazy trying to watch someone die.

     Thursday, early night in I think.  I actually make it home and am cooking dinner when a friend calls to see if I will meet him down at the local for a couple.  Given I had gotten home early from work and had eaten I thought well I could have two hours on the couch or two hours of possibly stimulating conversation, the conversation proved more attractive.  My housemate also called in on his way home so it was ten before we got back home and as he stayed for another drink at my place, eleven before bed.

     Friday night I thought right, its Friday I’m going for a drink so I organise housemate to meet me at a bar in the city with a happy hour.  We stayed for two drinks and decided it just wasn’t happening for either of us so back to our local.  We ended up there only for a couple and we were actually home early sharing a joint.

     Never take relationship advice from a gay boy.  They can be, and almost always are right, but when they miss, they do it in such a spectacularly momentous way as to outweigh all previous good advice.

     A few months back I was seeing a girl for several weeks.  It was just a casual thing.  We were just seeing where things went if indeed they were going to go anywhere.  It was helped by the fact that she lived in a town 3 hours drive from where I live.  Work had been nice enough to send me off into the country for a project so I was spending 3 or 4 days a week working away. 

     I had met her a couple of weeks before the project ended.  So when that happened she started coming down to the city to see me.  Unfortunately I wasn’t as enamoured with her as she was obviously becoming with me.  Then she started talking about moving to Melbourne.  That wasn’t what I had in mind I can tell you!

     During this time my gay boy friend had the opportunity to meet her.  His opinion was that she seemed very nice and level headed.  Definitely girlfriend material.  He could not have been more wrong. 

    As the weeks wore on  I was increasingly thinking that I should  never have gone past the one night stand with this girl.  What was I thinking I thought to myself,  but then I thought about what my friend had said and thought maybe I just needed more time.  Second opinion I thought.  One of the things that was increasingly turning me off her was the fact that I kept saying I only wanted to be casual now and just take our time and see where things went and she kept agreeing to this but her body language was screaming marriage at me.   I still ended things with her but as she had moved to Melbourne by then she was ringing me a lot wanting to go out as in her words she didn’t know anyone here that she wanted to see.  Probably more like they didn’t want to see her.  She had lived down here in the not too distant past.  Anyway feeling a bit sorry for her because I had let things go on a bit long with her I told her we were off to a girl night at a local pub and that she was welcome to come along.

     Big mistake!  I went out with a couple I know and she met us there.  Luckily the pub had a number of rooms including beer garden/smoking area.  It was set up in such a way as you could walk around in a complete circle.  I had told my friends what to expect of her, that I thought she was a bit on the not so level side of life.  I spent most of the night avoiding her once she got there and my friends were very obliging about this.  On the way home my friends told me what she had said to them.  It went something like this:  Friend :- “so what are you looking for in a girl?”  Response:- ” Oh someone like “X” !”  Meaning me!  They had also  come to the same opinion of her as I had, that something wasn’t quite as it should be and she was definitely someone to be avoided.  So much for the advice from the gay boy.

    I  noticed you this morning on my tram.  I could feel eyes on me and looked up in time to catch you looking away,  I had noticed you as you got on.  Not the sort of girl that usually takes my eye with your long brown hair.   You were standing up reading a popular crime fiction.  Not an easy thing to do on a moving tram.  If I’m going to check you out I will certainly want to know what you are reading.  You kept moving along towards me as people got on and off.  I kept checking you out and nearly caught you several times.  There were two seats that came vacant near you yet you didn’t bother to take either.  Mmm I wondered if the seat became vacant beside me would you sit?  As if reading my mind the guy next to me gets off within a couple a of stops.  You sit immediately.  Well now how are we going to check each other out if we are sitting together?  It is so much easier to do so from a distance.

    Not sure what I want to say with this post.  I had a very social weekend.  In other words I went out too much!!  My friends who were OS in Sweden got back on Saturday so it was good to see them when they finally surfaced Sunday afternoon. 

      I went out for drinks after work Friday night that ended up being way too late as I had to go out with a friend that night to a big once a month girl night.  Still made it there but didn’t stay long.  Funny how when you’re drinking water things don’t seem half as much fun when everyone else is drinking beer.  I had a nice relaxing Saturday that ended with an extremely stimulating conversation with a screen writer over a couple of glasses of red.  Later that night due to other reasons I decided to go out and drink myself into oblivion.  Never works when you try to do it!!  I didn’t end up having much  to drink at all.  This had a lot to do with running into a mate who has just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given  only a matter of weeks to live.   I was a bit emo about things that had been said between myself and a girl I have recently met.  Seeing him and hearing how he is trying to deal with things made me realise I was just being a drama queen.  I had nothing to worry about when you look at his future or lack of it.

      Then I go to my local on Sunday night as a lesbian was playing there.  Its a mixed bar but I try to support the girls.  My friends were supposed to come but ended up piking due to “post holiday blues”.  My flatmate, a friend who lives in my block, was there and another friend of the pikers so we had fun.  The girl who was playing didn’t have her usual support with her, just a guy on bass.  After eyeballing each other for half the night we speak and realise we know each other from another bar I used to work at.  It would have to have been four years since I have seen him.  It seems at the moment that people are coming back into my life from my past faster than I can keep up.  I got a text this morning inviting me to a birthday dinner from a friend who I haven’t talked to in five years.  I had asked another mutual friend recently to give her my number.   Sometimes you wonder at the motivation of the universe. 

     So it seems as I was thinking about this post I have realised that I have been doing things that I haven’t done for years as well.  Like my Reiki.  Like playing music a lot more.  Like reading a lot more.  Writing a lot more.  I think just enjoying life a lot more.

     The morning after the night before.  I walk through the city on my way to work.  It was better when I did 0630 starts.  It was quieter and I could absorb more of the city as I went by.  At that hour it was only just awakening.  There were only a few early starters on their way to work and often people still on their way home from their night out.  Now I start at 9 it is far busier and filled with people of the day.  Rarely is it you see a clubber still out or just on their way home.

     It is interesting what you see left from the people who have been there overnight.  Usually just small things.   A glass in a doorway, from the nearby nightclub, how did security let that out!  Empty bottles, club fliers, empty baggies, small things dropped, an earring, empty smoke packs, empty water bottles in the phone box.   You can see that there was plenty of activity there overnight, very different to the suits and executives rushing past in the day. 

     It is the signs of the complexity of the city.  That it dances to different tunes at different times of the day.  I like that.