Smoke it Over.....

First of all, I apologize for my absence last night. When we finally left the casino floor and went to our room, it was 11:58 Georgia time. It just wasn't worth trying to blog with my thumbs just to have a (probably) lame entry for yesterday. I suppose I could have backdated it, but again.... I just didn't have anything really noteworthy to say anyway.

Let me preface the rest of this blog (can you preface something if you've already started it?) by saying that I used to be a smoker.

I apologize to any smokers who might stumble upon this pitiful little blog. I've tried to run through the list of people I KNOW of who read it, and most of them are either non-smokers or have quit. Still, just on the off-chance some of you reading this still smoke, I apologize if I offend you.

Smokers make me sick.

Sort of literally.

I desperately wish they would have no-smoking poker tables.

If you've never sat at a poker table, it's a half-moon shaped table with 7 chairs around it. You're in pretty close quarters. And if there is a smoker sitting near you, you're a smoker too.

My eyes watered, I sneezed, I coughed.

I truly wish that when I was a smoker, someone had told me how badly I STUNK!!! And how horribly annoying it was for me to sit there with a cigarette dangling from my hand, smoke drifting into the breathing area of anyone sitting near me.

I tried to be courteous by moving away to smoke (or hiding in some cases, like on bicycle rides where I was ashamed), but I'm sure there were situations where I couldn't get my smoke away from non-smokers, and I'm just as certain that I continued to smoke anyway.

I never knew how rude and obnoxious I was being.

And if I didn't smoke around people, just the smell on my clothing and hair must have been horrendous, particularly when my hair was long and thick. The smell of smoke must have been a semi-permanent part of my being.

Some smokers just light a cigarette and put it in a nearby ashtray, leaving it to burn insidiously while they remain oblivious of it. Then there are the ones who finish a cigarette, and just as you thank goodness that it's over for a few minutes, they immediately light another one.

I saw one woman riding her little power scooter across the casino floor, puffing away on her cigarette. Insurance companies help pay for those little scooters. It may sound harsh, but I think anyone who smokes should be denied a scooter. Perhaps they should be denied ANY health coverage. My blog, my harshness.

I know it's a struggle to stop smoking, but if Nurse Jane, her husband, Katydid, our mother, and I can all do it, some other folks can too. They just don't want to.

I think I'll build my own casino, and it will be a completely non-smoking one. Anyone know of an active Indian Native American tribe around here I can be in?