Here we go

My quit date is tonight at midnight. Where did the time go? The date seems to have snuck up on me.

I bombed out on the Zyban. Couldn't stand how weird it made me feel and stopped taking it after a week. Now I'm down to the patch and group counseling.

I've been trying to get as many ducks in a row as I can. I signed up at quitnet, which is like a Grand Central Station for ex-smokers. They must have tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of members. Every time I've looked at the site, there have been more than 400 people signed on. An army of quitters! Bought a copy of a book of "meditations" that someone there recommended, Out of the Ashes, which I like very much and will probably carry around with me everywhere I go. Started rereading some of the material at cognitive quitting, an interesting site I first stumbled upon a year or two ago. Ordered Alan Carr's first book (I already own the second book) at half.com. (Didn't realize, until I was in a bookstore later that day, that the book is now being published in the U.S. and I could have picked it up on the spot.) Also ordered a new relaxation/exercise video.

I have enjoyed gathering all these items -- must be the collector in me. Whether any of them will actually work -- whether any one item, or all of the items together, will be a magic talisman that wards off temptation and gets me through this relatively painlessly, without too much fear and loathing -- remains to be seen.

I'm feeling cautiously optimistic, with the emphasis on cautiously.