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That’s right, less than 46 hours to go before Britt and I and the rest of the Quitterati stop smoking. Am I freaking out about it? Hell no! I’m resolute - standing firm - excited as hell. OK, maybe that’s bullshit.

The truth is I enjoy smoking. Even though it doesn’t REALLY relieve stress, I FEEL like it does. And when Friday comes to town - and just to be clear, the quit time is midnight as Thursday rolls into Friday - I’ll likely be battening down the hatches and locking myself in the house for weeks days. I’ve quit smoking before and this works for me.

See, driving? That’s one of the big smoke triggers. So there won’t be any driving for at least 72 hours. And there are MANY triggers, believe me. Eating. There’s nothing like a smoke after a meal. Waking up. There’s nothing like a smoke first thing in the morning. Coffee. There’s nothing like a smoke with your morning coffee. Drinking. There’s nothing like a smoke while you’re drinking. Blinking. There’s nothing like a smoke when you’re blinking. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

This is going to be a bitch, I don’t deny it. But I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again I know this is the time. I need to do this for my health, before I have any of the inevitable ailments that come from smoking. I just hope I haven’t done irreparable damage to my body already.

In the meantime, I’m a chainsmoking fool. My mom will inherit whatever cigarettes I have left come Friday.

If you’re quitting with me, I hope you’ll leave a comment here to let me know. There are quite a few of you that said you’d quit with me. And it doesn’t matter where you live, whatever the time zone, your last puff comes at midnight August 15.

Tomorrow night, in fact, two hours before I quit, you can join me for SecondHand Radio. It’ll be my first night in the new timeslot, AND my first show on Talkshoe. If you haven’t already registered at Talkshoe do it now. Well, do it after you finish reading this. It’s fast and simple and will let you join in on the chatroom during the show Thursday night at 10pm Eastern time. You can also follow the show after you’ve registered, log it as a favorite so you can always be in tune with the next episodes. Oh, and follow Jester’s show, too, because he rocks. Oh, and Britt’s and Adam’s show.

My guest for the inaugural episode on Talkshoe is none other than my bestest buddy, Hilary! I can think of no other person I’d rather have on as my first guest. She has a big blogiversary coming up on Sunday, so we’ll be talking about that. And my blogiversary comes up on the 25th of this month, too. We’ll talk anything and everything and you’ll want to be there.

Thanks to Jester for his guest post yesterday. I owe him a guest post and will try to get that out in the next few days…once I finish putting out fires. I’m fixing (I hope) a friend’s computer and it’s a real pain in the ass. Don’t get me wrong, the PC is dead after this. I’m only praying I can salvage the data off the hard drive. But hey, five years for a computer is like 80 in dog years or something.

Tomorrow, it’ll be Monty from The Daily Bitch. Can’t wait. For those of you that are new around here, I do a little thing every year called the Summer of Love, which is full of guest bloggers. So you’ll see fresh faces here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays through the end of this month. Just in time to ramp up for my Birthday Spectacular, where I plan to bring back my Big Birthday Dares.

Now I thought I’d wrap up with a little list that seems apropos.

Top Ten Reasons Why It’s Good That I’m Quitting Smoking

1. I won’t stink. As much. My breath, my hair, my fingers…they’ll all smell much better.
2. My car won’t stink, either. As much. Course, there’s the small matter to deal with that is my rear passenger window. It doesn’t stay up all the way, so it sometimes rains into my car, creating a swamp like environment. I like to think of it as my own little biosphere. Frogs and crickets are welcome.
3. I’ll save lots of money! Who knows, maybe I can get my car windows fixed. Yeah, windows. My driver’s side window doesn’t roll down. Freaking power windows.
4. I won’t be telling friends and family, “Be back in a few. I’m gonna make out.”
5. Making out will once again mean REALLY making out. As in kissing. Not that I’ve had any opportunities for that of late. I’m pretty much a born-again virgin at this point. But still.
6. I suppose I should mention my health in here somewhere since that’s technically the reason I’m quitting. You know, before anything major happens with my body. I watched my stepfather die over four years ago from lung cancer. Wasn’t fun. I don’t want that to be me. I’d like to be around for my daughters’ graduations and weddings and - God help me - children. Not that that better happen any time soon.
7. More time for exercise! Or to start exercising. I’ll have to find SOME way to work through all of the stress from not smoking. And to work off the extra weight gain. And the weight I have BEFORE the weight gain.
8. More time for masturbating!
9. More time for catching up on my Tivo. Because, yeah, I really need to watch MORE TV.
10. More time for beating the fuck out of anyone that irritates me, which is bound to be everyone for a while. OK, maybe that’s not a good thing. But hey, more time for masturbating!

Filed under 2HT Radio, Blogging, Depression, Local Goings On, Weblogs | Comments (35)

Thanks again to John for guest blogging for me yesterday in the Summer of Love. We’re down to our final weeks and I still have plenty of great bloggers posting here at 2HT, so keep your eyes out for them. This week we have:

Tuesday: Jester of Jestertunes

Thursday: Monty of The Daily Bitch

Saturday: Poppy of Poppy Cedes

Next up, it’s time to formally announce the new timeslot for SecondHand Radio. Some of you may already have seen the new banner in my sidebar. I’m moving to Thursday nights at 10pm Eastern on Talkshoe. I’ve decided to move from Sundays for several reasons. First of all, 5pm on Sunday was simply not a great timeslot as far as reaching more listeners. Many people are busy on Sundays, doing family things and whatnot. It was also nearly impossible for my friends in Europe to listen, since that came out to around 1 or 2 in the morning over there.

I think 10pm will be much more doable. It’s still way early in Europe, but the comments I got from my American and Canadian friends said that a weeknight would be better, so I took all of that into consideration and decided on Thursdays at 10.

I’ll be running a test show in the next couple of days and will announce it on Twitter. Not a long show, just want to get a feel for the Talkshoe interface before I start the regular show on Thursday night. I’ve sent out an email to a group of potential guests and I hope to hear back from them in the next couple of days.

What you may want to do before Thursday is download the Talkshoe Pro client. It’s not required - you can listen through the web interface at Talkshoe, but the client allows for a much cooler chat experience. More about that in the coming days.

I’ve been hanging around Talkshoe for the last couple of months or so, ever since Jester switched from BTR to Talkshoe and it’s generally far less fraught with technical problems. True, they don’t currently allow for music or soundbytes to be played, but that’s not a huge issue for me. There’s much more control for recording the shows and I can have hundreds of people on the line at one time. Granted, that’s not likely to happen, but it’s far better than BTR’s limit of five people plus the host.

So a couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Angelo, who is some marketing guy from Schick. You know, the razor people. He offered me a free Schick Quattro Titanium Trimmer - which I found on the web for $14 - in exchange for me writing a review of it. I’m all about free stuff, so of course I said yes. And sure enough, it was waiting for me (along with gobs of other mail) when I got back from Karlifornia.

Here’s what Angelo told me about the Titanium Trimmer in his email:

As someone with complicated facial hair and a love of gadgetry - I find this thing incredibly cool and useful.  It has a four blade razor and an edging blade on one end, and a trimmer on the other.  It’s the Swiss Army knife of razors.

Now that’s a tall order. I’m here to tell you right now that the SQTT does NOT comes with a built-in compass or nail clippers or even a machete like Swiss Army knives do. But it is pretty cool.

As someone that usually uses an electric razor (Norelco, if you must know), I waited a few days between shaves to be sure to give the Quattro a workout. My stubble is pretty thick stuff…I come from Italian stock, after all. Granted, I didn’t get the olive skin complexion of native Italians, but hey, why bitch about that now? I do plenty of bitching when I get sunburned on my ghost-white alabaster skin.

What I *do* like about shaving with a blade - or in this case, four - is the baby-smooth skin I get afterward. And if I go for four or five days without a shave (not that uncommon an occurrence) using the electric razor almost kills me. It’s like a thousand tiny little Amazons pulling my facial hair out in tiny little increments. Owch!

I don’t know about you other dudes out there, but if I’m shaving with a razor cartridge (as opposed to the electric razor) I shower first to soften up my whiskers, and then I shave when I get out of the shower. I realize that some guys shave IN the shower, but I’ve never gotten into that habit. Besides, I’d need a fog-proof mirror for the shower and I’m too lazy to find one.

I got out of the habit of using razors (for the most part) because of the obscene amount of money it costs to buy cartridges. I’ve never counted, but I probably only get around four or five shaves out of a cartridge before having to throw it out and move on to the next one. And I hate paying $350,000 for four cartridges. It’s insane. Sure, I’m probably paying for it regardless by buying an electric razor (and you still have to replace the razor discy things once a year), but oh well.

Now get our NEWEST razor with our NEWEST cartridge that has EIGHT blades!

At some point, they’re going to hit the razor blade ceiling and top out somewhere, but it hasn’t happened yet. For me, 3 blades work fine. Four blades are good, too.

The Shick Quattro Titanium Trimmer uses the four-blade Quattro cartridges, which I found online. They run $7.99 for four cartridges. That’s about par for the course these days. The trimmer they sent me came with just the one cartridge, which serves fine for the purpose of this review. And the difference is that on the OTHER end, there’s a battery-operated trimmer (battery included…one AA).

So I thought I’d get a good shave and also trim up my sideburns, which are coming in pretty thick. I haven’t had a haircut since I shaved my head last month, but it’s about time to get one.

I looked at the Quattro and started with the proper shave. A little Barbasol shaving cream slathered over my face, and a short 30-second wait to let it soak in. Then I went to town.

You can see the Trimmer above. The second photo shows the Power button - it’s the silver oval down near the trimmer end.

I found the shave to be really, really good. Nice and close and the lubricated strip really helped the blades to glide across my face. I’m a fairly quick shaver and I didn’t have any problems. When I’m using a blade razor, I have been using the Gillette Mach 3 Turbo. Yeah, I totally bought into the “Turbo” thing, what can I say? Anyway, I will say that I found the Quattro to be a superior shave to the Mach 3.

Then it was time to try the trimmer function. Again, this is something I normally do with the trimmer attachment on my Norelco electric. I turned the power on and felt the familiar hum of, well, trimmers. Then I started with the left sideburn. Honestly? Meh. It works, but it doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to.

It did, in fact, trim my sideburns, but it’s not good at leaving a nice clean cut edge. For example, I wanted to shorten my sideburns and deliberately didn’t do that with the razor. The Trimmer doesn’t trim down to the skin - it does, indeed, shorten the sideburn hairs. But it won’t leave a clean line like a razor will or my electric razor trimmer.

EDIT: My goof. There is also a one-blade trimmer on the flip side of the four-blade cartridge. This blade is used for cutting sideburns. The trimmer is just for trimming the hair. That totally changes how I feel about the trimming aspects. It rocks.

So here you’ll see the finished effect:

See what I mean? I’m sure the razor will shorten them just the way I wanted, but the trimmer? Not so much. I’ll be sticking to my electric for my trimming needs. I use it also for trimming over my ears between haircuts.

And me after my complete shave?

Yeah, I cut myself a little on the chin, which typically happens. That’s because I’m a bad boy and don’t follow the Professional Shavers Advice. They recommend only shaving in a downward direction. I shave down, then UP for a really close shave. You’re really not supposed to shave against the grain of your whiskers.

Overall, I recommend the Schick Quattro razor. Great shave. I don’t think I’d spend the $14 on the Titanium Trimmer, though. Just didn’t do the job for me.

Thanks to Angelo for thinking of me. I’ll definitely be buying Quattro blades in the future for the rare occasions when I do the “real shave” thing.

But here’s the beautiful thing…you can get a Schick Quattro Titanium Trimmer to try it out for yourself - for FREE! All you have to do is go to Trim Flixx and create your own little film. It’s fun and you can sign up for a free sample. Here’s my video:

Filed under 2HT Mentions, 2HT Radio, Blogging, Local Goings On, Reviews | Comments (21)

Tomorrow the Summer of Love at 2HT continues with my secret fantasy girlfriend, Lisa from Clusterfook. I think it’s cute that she shaved her head to be in solidarity with me. Or something. Anyway, Lisa will be guest blogging here tomorrow while I’m flying off for SecondHand Snackiephan. Or Karlifornia 2008. Whatever you want to call it.

Anyone who knows me knows I am quite the king of procrastination. I put everything off until the last minute. Pretty much. And that includes packing for trips. Usually at this time I’d be doing laundry, when I have to hit the road around lunchtime for Avitable’s place, so he can drive me to the airport on Tuesday.

But no. Not this time. I actually did laundry on FRIDAY. Granted, I’m just now getting around to folding it, but still. I think that’s a marked improvement. No, I haven’t actually put the clothes in the suitcase yet, but I just finished ironing a bunch of shirts (thanks to me not folding them right away the other day) and I’m beat. I HATE ironing.

Well, I *kind* of hate it. Truth is, I used to LOVE it when I was in the Air Force. I was the only one to iron my uniforms because I liked a really tight crease (TWKS). You can kind of veg out while ironing, watch TV, talk on the phone, whatever, because ironing doesn’t really use any active braincells.

But I haven’t ironed in a long time. Instead - and here’s Karl’s Laundry Secret of the Day - here’s what I do. Wash the clothes as usual, then throw them in the dryer for FIVE MINUTES. Then take out all of the shirts and pants and hang them up damp. With polo-style shirts, you want to be sure to button up all the buttons to the collar while it’s on the hanger. And be sure the collars are folded down nice and neat so when it dries you won’t have any wonky collars.

That’s it. Voila. No ironing. Ever.

Course, if you leave the clothes in the dryer for a while (or overnight, in my case), you’re fucked. But using this method also saves a LOT of wear and tear on your clothing. Things last a lot longer. And that’s a good thing in my case, because I HATE clothes shopping.

Socks and undies? You can let those dry all the way through in the dryer. But all of my shirts and shorts and jeans and slacks get hung up damp.

You’re welcome.

Yesterday’s post caused quite a stir. Lots of support and I thank you. But it seems we might have sparked a Quitting Revolution, since a number of you have agreed to hop on board on August 15th and quit smoking with me. Very cool. The more the merrier, I say.

I want to thank my special guest from yesterday’s episode of SecondHand Radio. Carly was great. Listen to it here or download it. Or go to iTunes and get the podcast there (just search for “Secondhand Radio”).

There won’t be a show this next Sunday because I’ll be recuperating from BlogHer. And 5pm Eastern is 2pm Pacific, so I really don’t think I’ll be in any shape to do a show at that time. But the following week? We’re on, baby.

I haven’t scheduled any shows for August yet. On purpose. I need to work on procuring some guests, but odds are high that I’ll be moving from Blog Talk Radio to Talkshoe. Why? Because Blog Talk Radio of late has been fraught with technical problems. People have had trouble getting the audio to work during the show, or they have trouble getting into the chatroom, or both. They get booted out of chat, or the audio, or both. The switchboard freezes up and dies so you can’t see who is on the phone calling in. I could go on and on, but I’m tired of it.

True, it’s free, and I realize that. But I’m also not happy with the ad placements on their site. The ads are obtrusive, sometimes playing AUDIO. You know, while I’M BROADCASTING A SHOW? Then there’s the pop-over ads which show up when you go to someone’s show page to listen to a show. You have to sit through the freaking 15-30 second ads before it takes you to the show.

Enough.

Talkshoe operates much more smoothly. I can have up to 100 people on the line at once, not that I would, mind you. But it’s an option. I like the way the chat works with the Talkshoe Pro client. It makes sense, even though it’s a little unsettling at first.

Plus, there’s no worry about time slots. I can have a show any time I want without worrying about how many listeners I’m drawing in. Prime time schmime time. If I want to have a show every night, I can do it. Not that I would, mind you. That’s Jester’s bailiwick. But I *could*. And I can do an hour-long show, a two-hour show, a FIVE-hour show…makes no difference.

The one thing that’s kept me from jumping ship sooner is the fact that I don’t know how I’ll play soundbytes/music on Talkshoe. But I’m working on it. Regardless, it’s not a huge issue. I’m moving.

I just haven’t figured out what day I’m moving TO. I’ve had a number of people say that Sunday afternoons just aren’t convenient. So I’m leaning toward an evening during the week. I ran a poll not long ago but didn’t get many responses so I ask again…

What say you? What night works best for you? I’m thinking of either a 1- or 2-hour show. Wednesdays are out because that’s when Adam & Britt and Jester do their shows.

Think on it. I’ll decide in the next couple of weeks. You know, while I’m basking in the California sun instead of roasting in the Florida sun.

Which reminds me…anyone in California wanna get together? Let me know. We’ll see if we can work something out. I’ll be in Orange County most of the time, but also San Francisco and San Diego and probably Los Angeles. Otherwise, you can come to me. I’m totally worth it.

Filed under 2HT Radio, BlogHer, Blogging, Travel | Comments (26)