Only time I really really truly hated and despised and got a rotten headache from being around a smoker was one who also smelled pungently of stale instant coffee, stale sweat, old-person breath mint (there is really no other description) AND cigar smoke. I think it was less the smoke than the combination. It was a professor, and I used to always try to sit by an open window. Even in February.

I don't like smoking anywhere not well ventilated. The minute I can smell it on me, it's time to shower or do laundry or something.

You know ita, when you went out for your first job interview here, I felt so awful all day, that your clothes probably reeked of smoke and how irritating that must be for a non-smoker. Seriously, I thought about how it was affecting you, a lot, and yet still, couldn't make myself stop.

Molly Ivins gives me many reasons to like her.

Something that I don't think can be stated often enough: torture rarely works. In fact, intelligence obtained by torture is mostly wrong, it's far too easy for the torturer to get the torturee to tell them definitively what they want to hear. Bad intelligence is worse than no intelligence, which is how you end up digging up holes all over Iraq certain you're going to find WMDs.

So not only is the CIA torturing people, torturing innocent people, torturing and violating the Geneva Conventions which keep our own people safer during wartime, they're getting bad intelligence to boot. This makes sense in what topsy turvy world that Cheney lives in?

Still, a co-worker is calling me Omarosa, and I mightn't watch reality TV, but I know that's not good.

I don't know this co-worker of yours, but you'd be justified in kicking her in the head.

Allyson, I didn't notice the smoke (when you weren't smoking) until after I moved out. And when you were smoking ... well, you were just smoking. You weren't actually grinding ash out in my lungs or anything.

My mother smoked pretty heavily until I was a teenager -- constant cigarette smoke becomes invisible to me pretty quickly.

you'd be justified in kicking her in the head

Did Omarosa have a concussion or anything? I'm hoping that was the segue.

Heh, now these are cozies indeed:

[link]

Now I feel like ass. Is it really that bad? Like when I'm just sitting next to someone? Should I carry barf bags?

Allyson, I usually only notice smoke smell in a bar (not that often anymore) and at my sister's house--where there are like six smokers living there. But when my Dad sits next to me (he's a moderate smoker), I hardly notice at all. I think my mom Fabreezes his coats and stuff and he tends to smoke outside a lot.

If I'm in a place where smokers dwell, I don't notice the smell on me, my clothes or hair until I've left the general vicinity.

I like the smell of smoking (unless I sit with a couple of heavy smokers for, say, four hours). But what I really really hate is riding in a car in the winter with someone who's smoking and has a window cracked open. For some reason, the combination of smoke, ice-cold air and moving car just makes me feel ill.

I am one with febreeze, candles, and incense. Also, since I live in a single, I find that regularly cleaning the rug and washing my bedding is helpful to keeping the place from becoming a total ashtray. But I don't notice it much myself, because, you know, smoker.