the corner office

I've published all my blog entries up to the beginning of September, and I've got a month to go. If anyone's been so kind as to subscribe to my RSS feeds, I'm sorry for overloading you!

Some of these posts are probably a lot more personal than most people have on their sites, but as I mentioned a few days ago, I feel it's important to include them. Going through them again wasn't exactly pleasant, but a month later, it's at least easier to re-read them. Life goes on...

My blog went live on the 3rd, which (I remembered later) was an unpleasant one-month anniversary, but my business partner's funeral also marks the last day I smoked. (Update: I mixed up my dates. Mo passed away 2003.09.02, not the 3rd). I'd given up 2 weeks prior, but the funeral days saw me break down. It's now 5 weeks exactly that I've not smoked. While I miss smoking in many ways, I do feel I've kicked the habit for good, and I don't regret it.

My original stop-smoking posts never mentioned what finally gave me the nudge to stop smoking. One of my neighbours, whom I'd never really spoken to, was working on our electric gate one day as I was leaving for work. As we spoke, I realised why it was he'd never said anything to me the once or twice I'd actually seen him around - half of his neck was horribly scarred and he spoke with a horrendous croak that made him almost impossible to understand. I had no idea why his neck was scarred, but my immediate reaction was 'throat cancer'. I drove through the gates, stopped at the pharmacy around the corner and bought nicotine-replacement sprays.

The man's name was Ashley, and he passed away last week. I found out this weekend that he had throat cancer and emphysema. So yeah. It's 35 days and counting...