Okay, I am definitely quitting cigarettes. Er. Again. The elevators were out of action tonight, and I had to use the stairs to go to the twelfth floor. By eight, I was seeing spots from oxygen deprivation. I didn't think a human could make noises like that. Smoking is biting hard enough into my cash as it is. It's not quitting that is all that hard. It's the staying quit when I get stressed.

I've really begin to dig writing in my blog. It's typical Alan thinking. "Oh god, who blogs? What a stupid trendy way to sell out your privacy." Then I open Kosher Pork. "What an amazing experiment in public displays of free writing!" Least I haven't lost my skills lost when minoring in pretension as a professional college student. It's interesting to try my hand again at non-fiction. When I first started getting the literary itch, I wanted to be paid to write weird interpretations of real life, ala Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. I was reflecting on this earlier, and I realized that I felt this desire, and started calling myself a humorist after reading Mark Twain's Life on The Mississippi. You know, I've never read any of the classic novels he's better known for, but I've devoured most of his collected travel logs and a few of his gathered essays. I like to think of Mark Twain wandering San Francisco like I do, just watching people and learning from them.
It's all a hopeful sign. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to end up one of those San Francisco armchair intellectuals who just claim they would make great writers, but never actually write. Kind of a scary fate, actually. But its coming back. Hopefully, I'll ride it... and I'll see myself in print. well print that someone paid me for.