Day 14 of 365: Cold Feel – For Real! – And Unexpected Consequences, cool little movie: Junk Head 1

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So, today, I had a setback – I smoked, quite intentionally. But, I didn’t expect what became of it.

Lemmie go back about half a day, to the night before. Actually, let me start by going back even further than that, probably about four or five years. I used to walk through the snow barefoot, and my feet didn’t really get cold. I had thick skin on my feet, and good circulation.

Unfortunately, about four or five years ago, slowly, my feet have become a little cold blooded. It’s really not a big thing. And, I’ve had multiple EKG’s because of the smoking study I went through, along with breathing and various other health checks, so it’s not a heart issue or anything horrible like that. And, well, I just chalked it up to the commutative effects that age have on the human body – I heard plenty of other people commenting about things like cold feet and hands as they get older.  I will say that I sort of grudgingly accepted it – I really don’t care for anything that makes it sound like I’m “getting old”, which I’m not.  Nope, not at all.

So, I quit smoking Saturday Night / Sunday morning.  Last night, after I got in bed, I had an interesting problem:  my feet were tingly and warm.  From what I’ve read, tingly isn’t uncommon – it happens about 2 days after you quit.  However, this is the first time I’ve actually encountered it.  But… it’s wasn’t just tingly.  My feet were genuinely warm.  And, I can tell you it’s most certainly a circulation issue – not only are my feet cold in the winter, I also have problems with them being exceedingly hot in the summer (really annoying to try and sleep at night when my feet overheat, or to wear shoes too long on a hot day out.)  But, the warm wasn’t the “overheating” style of warm either: my feet felt… right.

Not only that, when I got up in the morning, my feet were still right.  Heck, my feet were right all the way up until my “mistake” (I’ll get to that in a moment.)  I walked around the house without my new slippers that Kat bought me.  They were… well, right.

But, it’s easy to chalk that up to something besides smoking, really.  It could be anything, including just heightened awareness.  Except…

So, I’ve been having a really, really hard time concentrating.  That goes with the territory of quitting and having at least some ADHD.  Today, though, I had some hard decisions to make – the engine I’m using wasn’t taking Ouya support, no matter what I’ve tried over and over.  There’s been a lot of hacking going on to try and get it going, and nothing.  I began exploring the idea of using other engines, but honestly I think that could be a mistake.  So, I was stuck.  And I couldn’t get my brain to focus in on the problem.  Damnit.  I didn’t like the idea of what I wanted to do, but I was going to do it anyway:  I bought a pack of cigarettes.

Now, it’s probably not even the nicotine that really did it – it’s the addiction response to having one.  After two cigarettes, standing on the front porch, the idea occurred to me – I was pretty sure what I was going to have to do, and set a 48 hour deadline for getting the Ouya controller system working (added bonus:  releasing support for Ouya to anyone else who’s looking at using the same engine, and it being something “rolled in”, not a hacky add-on, which was my original plan.  BTW:  I’m not the only one who’s been trying to get it working and failing.)

I had already made a vow: while I might use this as a tool to get past today’s hump, at the end of the day the cigarettes go in the trash.  I was good with that particular piece of self-bargaining, though I also know it’s a slippery slope.  One I was willing to face to get over this hump.

After the third or fourth cigarette for the day, I noticed something:  my feet were cold.  Like, cold like that had been lately.  I continued on my day – with my slippers on – and made a note to check it out later.

As I started my quick investigation, I already knew something without having to look it up:  smoking constricts the blood vessels in the extremities.  I’ve never really much thought about it previously, though I’ve considered it when smoking in extremely cold temperatures (IE, laughing at myself while having a smoke while already freezing my butt off).  So, a little research later, I discovered something: there’s actually a number of conditions that cause it, including just being a smoker sometimes!  Sure, it could be PAD aggravated by smoking, or it could be a list of other ones.  However, nearly every one of them says the same thing: quit smoking.  Part of them add the note that “it will go away” and part of them are “and the symptoms will drastically diminish.”

Well, heck.  SO, kids, we learned an important lesson today.  Not only do I have some issues with trying to get my brain work, and that I’ll make bad choices from time to time, but that there really is an immediate health effect behind it.  ‘Cause right now, I’m sitting here with cold feed.  Really cold feet.  And I’m not liking it at all!

[/text_output][custom_headline type=”center” level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”true”]Cool Little Movie: Junk Head 1[/custom_headline][text_output]I ran across someone’s cool little movie, called Junk Head. Now, this takes the whole labor of love thing pretty far – it’s a 30 minute movie, done all as stop motion, that took him 4 years of off and on work to complete. It’s vaguely in the horror genre, but, not the way you might expect. But, even just the work on the backgrounds shows an amazing attention to detail. This is Junk Head 1 – I really hope he can do the sequel, I’d love to see more of the world he’s created!

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• Workouts: 0
• Cigarettes Smoked: 8
• Healthy Eating:  Good breakfast, bad lunch (burger), and tasty bad food for supper

Projects Worked on:

• Jumpman Forever Ouya integration work

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