Go figure...

Thought I should post to let readers know what's up with HR. I was pretty damn sick and still have a cold or whatever it is. But one good thing has happened - actually two.

I've stopped smoking and with that have cut down how much coffee I drink. Go figure...

In any case this is good news. I've been reading the blogs of journalists who have decided to web log how they are handling quitting. Some sound like they are suffering quite a bit and I do have to say, that there has been no suffering from lack of nictotine on this girl's part.

Yes, I'm having some not-so-serious cravings but I still have a sufficient amount of phlegm in my lungs that I'm really not interested in taking in anything that only a few weeks ago burned my lungs with such intensitiy that I was sure I seared a hole through the bottom of my wind bags.

I did have one or two ciggies but they tasted like I scraped the tar off of a well travelled highway and stuck it in a tube of bleached paper. So after a few days of not smoking, the coffee tasted like crap too, well not exactly, but it certainly wasn't worth drinking let alone enjoying so this means I'm down to one professional coffee a day.

Speaking of cigarettes...

I wanted to write about Constable John Atkinson the Windsor police officer that was shot and killed last week but I didn't know what to say. I used to get my cigarettes from the Mac's where he was killed as I lived up the road from that intersection. Here's a link to a really beautiful use of html. It's a guest book to sign condolences offered by the Windsor Star.

Instead, I cried off and on throughout the weekend because I knew him, if only briefly. I still have his card he gave to me after we met. I can still hear his voice and the words he said when we first spoke.

Death is surreal. One day the life of a person is exuded by the voice we hear and presence we feel but in a matter of seconds it vanishes like the sun burning off a fog. It fades into the air, never to have presence again. It's hard to wrap the mind around this vanishing.

So for a little while, with all this seriousness in mind, I will stop posting to concentrate on a few non-serious things - like some sculpture - so I can express myself a little more creatively, with satisfaction and hopefully, with some impact.

yours,
HR