362 days without a smoke ...

For the few of you who don't know, I'm closing in on my first full year without cigarettes.

I was a two-pack a day (and often more) smoker for the better part of 20 years. Yep, from age 15 to 35, I was a heavy smoker. But last year, I got tired of running out of breath from walking up the flight and a half of stairs to my apartment. If I had a couple bags of groceries or laundry, it was murder. I couldn't even play a full round of golf, not even using a cart; I would be nearly wiped out after 14 or 15 holes.

So I decided to quit. And I decided to quit very publicly — I announced it in the newspaper in a column written just for my personal project, called "Quest to Quit." I wrote about my plan to quit, about quitting, and issues I had in trying to quit and stay quit.

I was pleasantly stunned that so many people here followed my progress. Total strangers would come up to me to say "good job" or to ask if I was still not smoking, and offer me encouragement.

To make a long story short, on Monday it will be one full year without any kind of smoke — no cigarettes, no cigars. Heck, not even any dip or snuff or chewin' tabacky! So to mark the occasion, I wrote a column about the first year, which publishes tomorrow (Saturday here in Guam). Here is the cake we used as a prop for the photo to accompany the article. You can read the article and see a really cheesy pic of me with the cake at guampdn.com. It won't be up until around ... hmm ... 1 p.m. EST, or 10 a.m. on the West Coast.

Random Guam Fact of the Day:
• On a per capita basis, no other place in the U.S. smokes as many cigarettes as does Guam. I think I've used this one before, but I'm too lazy to go digging for another factoid.