12 December, 2006

smoke

of all the ways i ingest tobacco, i must confess that a well-packed pipe is my favorite. tastier and more relaxing. and though i work from home, and thus can puff away all day, it's still more soothing to light up once the work day is done.

as it is for today. debugging is done, for the time being, code is checked into source control and the batch jobs on the mainframe aren't going to be finished till late, and so can wait till the morrow to be checked and have the output processed.

the bowl is packed, the sparks have lit into flame, the smoke curls up from the briar and from the curl of my lip. now all that is left is to relax and wait for my lovely perse to get home. and perhaps think about what to make for dinner.

ah, who am i kidding? i'm going to play oblivion till she gets home. then i'll think about dinner.

6 comments:

topazz said...

Sigh.

Brings back memories of when I used to wait for the old man to come home. Fire lit, take-out simmering in the microwave, babies fed and safely tucked in for the night.

I'd wind the saran wrap around so perfectly, you couldn't tell where it began or ended. That always drove him crazy.

Artemesia said...

twiffer..

That tightly packed bowl..dinner for the senses. Who needs to cook after that? Nice description of a job well done and contentment to follow.
Question, is perse a name. I assumed perse was your one and only, but the small p threw me off..About memories, my father was a pipe man, an assortment, puffing away reading the Britannica. It was Grangers tobacco. Can still smell and enjoy it in my mind.
A

twiffer said...

i just don't capitalize properly. perse is Perse, and she is my lovely one and only.

i smoke a blend called brindley's blend. nice mixture: not too sweet, not too earthy; smells great.

Claude Scales said...

I started with a pipe. A corncob "Missouri Meerschaum". My dad spotted it in the driver's side door pocket that served as a glove compartment in my Austin-Healey Sprite, along with a packet of Cherry Blend. "OK, you want to get cancer?" he said. He'd quit a two pack a day unfiltered Chesterfield habit cold turkey, in 1957, when the first data on smoking and lung cancer came out.

In college, I graduated to a briar from Tampa's sole upscale tobacconist. I smoked a blend from Douwe Egbert's, of Utrecht, Holland, that I bought at the campus store. My roommate, reading the label on the pouch, said, "I knew there had to be a retch in there, somewhere."

When I got to Cambridge for law school, I found a pipe shop near Harvard Square where the proprietor let me sample from the many blends he stocked before choosing. I found one with, to me, an especially captivating smoky-salty flavor that reminded me of finnan haddie. When I found out it was from Rhodesia (as it was still known, and under a repressive white-dominated government), I had a brief crisis of conscience. I'm sorry to say I let taste trump political rectitude.

After law school, I moved to New York and roomed with a classmate who smoked Dorals (remember them?). One evening we were playing bridge with two women who lived next door, who both smoked cigarettes. I started rubbing my eyes, and my roomie offerd me a doral, which I took. (By then, I'd given up my pipe.) My eye irritation went away, and I had another. A few days later, I bought a pack of Camel filters, and thereby began a habit that lasted thirty three years, until an exchange on the Fray with Ender (appropriately) led to my going cold turkey four years ago.

If anything could tempt me now, it would be a pipe. Especially if they still grow that tobacco in Zimbabwe. Of course, I'd still hav e political problems with the source.

twiffer said...

if it makes you feel better claude, i always let taste trump political rectitude.

Anonymous said...

If you call 200 lbs. of pockmarked, fried chicken trailer trash bottle blonde thinning hair interwoven with smelly koochie and cigarettes lovely, then so be it. [grin] [it's true and you know it]