I want to say a big thank-you to the NC General Assembly for passing legislation banning smoking in almost all restaurants and bars starting in less than two hours. I'm not sure if it was original or not, but a friend of mine posted to Facebook just yesterday with something I'm going to repeat here. "A smoking section of a restaurant is like a peeing section in a swimming pool."

I agree completely. Many restaurants had done a great job of having air filtration systems to help mitigate the problem, but I find that I had pretty much quit eating at "sports-bar" type places like Buffalo Wild Wings and Bailey's. And it was because of the smoke. I like bar food, and I like the fact that bars are the kind of place where you can often get fairly high quality food but get it faster than many fancier restaurants (nice for those times when you don't have time for Outback but want something better than fast-food).

As a life-long resident of North Carolina, a state whose economy was long dominated by tobacco, I honestly never thought I'd see a change like this in my lifetime. Thanks, legislators!