OK, I'm in the high school, and I have about half an hour before I split to head down to yet another stupid little job as a temp. It really makes no sense whatsoever. I told the temp agency I'd do their little one day gig, and they told me that there would be a two hour training session I would attend today.

So, basically, for this eight hour job that I'm working on Monday, they are training me today for two hours. In other words, I'm being trained for a quarter of the total time I'll be doing actual work.

Beh. Not that interesting. But silly.

So, like I said earlier, Nick and I and our moms went to see the Cleopatra exhibit at the field museum. Afterwards, we hit Chinatown for some delectables. At the table, the topic somehow turned to science. Specifically, the concept of being cyrogenically frozen came up (you know, where they freeze you and wake you up hundreds of years later when they can cure whatever disease killed you).

NICK'S MOM: I don't want to be frozen.

BILL'S MOM: Oh, no. I don't want to be frozen either. That isn't very good.

BILL: What are you going to do about it? You'll be dead, anyway.

NICK: Yeah, we'll freeze you if we want.

So, for the rest of the dinner, whenever either of our moms acted up in a way we didn't appreciate, Nick and I threatened them with freezing.

BILL: You wanna be frozen? Say that again, mom.

And so on.

After that, we went to a Chinese bakery. These are odd places, because right next to a row of nice sugar cookies, they will place a pastry filled with pork curry or some other such non-traditional desert offering. For only a buck fifty, I bought two butter cookies, both of which sucked, a donut which was OK, and a thing that looked like a gigantic square of a Rice Krispie treat. Later, I noticed that it had a black thing in the middle of it, and Nick had to reassure me that he noticed such things inside the other items, so we could be relatively sure it was placed there intentionally and was not some kind of unfortunate, errant bug.

I ate about one sixth of the thing before forming unpleasant opinions of the Chinese culture. It was in some plastic wrap, so I mushed up the dessert cube into a shapeless blob and launched it from across the room into my garbage can, which was far more satisfying than eating it.

And that's the end of that chapter.

Now, as promised...

I quit smoking.

Yeah, one week ago today, I had my last smoke. I am rock 'n' roll.

The first three days are hell, while the nicotine is still in your system. I don't know if there's anything like that, the cravings, the compulsions. I'm sure that kicking harder drugs is a lot worse, but this is as tough as it's been for me, yet.

I swear, the first two days or so, this was what my brain was doing, despite itself:

1: Hmm, I want something.

2: Oh, I'll have a cigarette.

3: No, I can't have that.

4: Drat.

Then, repeat that every 45 seconds or so. Yeah, it was pretty hellish. I have been chewing on drinking straws as a way of helping me through this. I find that straws from Popeye's chicken are the most preferable.

I'm still impressed that I haven't had a smoke for a week. Yeah, I'm a hot bitch.

OK. Well, I have to finish this work week by taking the El downtown so I can sit in front of a different computer for a few hours.

I have also gone all week without making any jokes about high school girls, the resisting of which is infinitely easier than smoking, for perhaps obvious reasons. Give me some credit. By the way, what is 'Pleasure Dialer 1.0 exe' and why does this high school guidance counseler have it on her computer?