Rob Joseph

I smoked my last cigarette on December 11th, 2008. I am not getting any help with Chantix, or the patch, or gum, or anything. I just quit cold turkey. It has been days since I have had a smoke. The first couple of weeks were pretty rough. It seemed like it would be pretty easy to kill somebody - but luckily that urge faded. I still have moments when I really want a smoke... It such a rediculously crazy thing to do. I got absolutely nothing from smoking... except maybe weezy sex. Maybe if it got me high or did anything at all for me - I would continue to smoke - since its so hard to quit. But it really doesn't do shit for me.

I came up with some pretty alarming information about my life with smokes... I started smoking in 1980. When I started, cigarettes were about $0.85. I smoked 3-4 cigarettes a day at that time... just to be cool for my sister and her friends. By 1982, I was smoking about a pack a day and smokes cost $1 a pack. I came up with some calculations and found that I smoked about 183,000 cigarettes since I started. I spent somewhere around $31,250 on cigarettes. If each cigarette took 6 minutes then I spent an astonishing 1,098,420 minutes with a cigarette in hand!!! That is a full 2 years of my life with a cigarette in hand/mouth. That freaks my shit out.

Ok... enough with looking at the past. What's important is what I am accomplishing by quitting. Since I quit, I have saved . Since 12/12/2008, I would have smoked or packs. If you are interested you can check back here to see how I have progressed. These numbers are all calculated.. So they will update automatically each day. The link to the spreadsheet is more accurate cause it is up to the minute rather than up to the day.

Robbie is home from Iraq!! He has been back since late October. We are ecstatic that he was able to find time to visit us in Portland. He arived on New Years Day. He'll go back on Wednesday January 7th. He is doing well... Same old Robbie... gotta keep him entertained all day... or he'll go find his own fun!!! He is a good kid and we can't wait for him to get out of the army and on with his life. He is trying to figure out which college he wants to go to... It probably boils down to which city he can have the most fun in. PSU is on the list... We hope he lands on it!!

My beautiful sweet Willow Dove officially became a MILF on December 11th. Thank you to everybody that showed up to her surprise birthday party to celebrate her wonderful life. We had a great party at Mt Tabor Theater. We were lucky enough to have Trashcan Joe and Solovox play throughout the night. Thank you Captain James from TCJ and Carl of Solovox!!! Willow had a great time!! Thank you everybody!!

Use this link provided by NBA.com to vote Brandon Roy into the all-star game. Roy has been re-freakin-donculous this year. Last year he was voted into the all-star game by NBA coaches. Here is how it works.. the fans vote for the starters and then the coaches vote the bench in. If he were in a bigger market - there is no question that this guy would be voted an all-star by the fans. This guy is plain good. You can vote over and over again... so vote away and help send Portland's All-Star to the big game. Lamarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden are also on the ballot. But really - these guys aren't all-stars yet. I love Lamarcus' game. Did you see him against Detroit? Fuck - he can be good! The guy is seriously good... but he's not consistent enough to be all-star good. Oden... well I love Oden's game. This guy is going to be a fuckin monster in a year or so.. but no way - not even close to all-star caliber yet. 3 years and this kid will see all-star games years after year.

I love my Nikon D60 - but ever since my baby went for an unplanned swim in a cold (and slippery) Siouxon Creek in Washington She just has been acting the same. The expensive lens has spots on the inside.. and does weird things with light. I guess the trade value certainly is going to be lowered by this... but I should get something for it.. The D90 is freakin sweet.. the same processor as the D300.