Budget cuts have forced the local school system to have most, if not all, teachers taking on some additional responsibilities. As a result, a friend of my wife's and mine who teaches seventh grade social studies will also be teaching fourth grade phys. ed. next year. part of her PE responsibilities will be teaching a series of anti smoking classes ( Read more... )

Long time no post. It's the resident machiavellian power grabbing author back at ya' after an extended absence from the keyboard. I've got this crazy notion that we smokers should kind of band together in a mutual self-defense circle by voting for candidates who go easy on us with the taxes and restrictions. We should be courteous and watch the ( Read more... )

I seem to be the only person in these parts these days; but since I have some time to kill and in case anyone is still out there, I thought I'd relate a recent experience some might find interesting ( Read more... )

Around this time every year I have to interview summer internship applicants for my entire office. For being willing to do this task, I am allowed to have my pick of two from the five or six that will be hired, so I’m happy to do it. Several years ago, I decided to conduct the interviews at a table on the outside patio of a local coffee shop. We ( Read more... )

I don’t know when the university where I work passed its indoor smoking ban. It was already in place when I moved here more than ten years ago. While the indoor part was heeded (Except in some of the MFA studios where smoking continues to this day albeit to a much lesser degree); but the prohibition of smoking within 25 feet of any building ( Read more... )

A discussion on another board I visit prompted a couple of memories I thought some in this community might enjoy ( Read more... )

I found this community after searching the web for pro-smoking groups. I actually signed up for LiveJournal just to join this group because I feel the need to have some people to relate to and talk to about smoking. I feel really alienated now by how the world around me feels about smoking ( Read more... )

Yesterday afternoon I had a large sheath of stuff to read and edit, so I headed to my favorite coffee shop with a shaded outdoor smoking area. After I had been there a few minutes, a young woman I've seen there before working at the counter approached me and asked if she could purchase a couple of my cigarettes. I gave her a couple, waved her money ( Read more... )

I think it has been well over a year since I posted anything. I didn't have much to say, the community seemed to have died away, and lots of stuff in my life got in the way of everything ( Read more... )

For a fleeting moment in the run-up to the Iowa state primary I felt a twinge of excitement over the future of our country. I was watching one of those political roundtables which, despite women constituting a slight plurality of the population, always seem to feature three dudes and one dudette. One of the dudes with pundit hair, pundit face, ( Read more... )