Cigars, cigarettes, the Patch?

***LUCY GETS SERIOUS. SERIOUSLY.***

"Table for four please."

"Do you want SMOKING or NONSMOKING?"

The girls (smokers) and I (nonsmoker) look at each other dumbfounded and mouths open, all thinking the same thing: "You can smoke in here?" No one says anything, and instead we look at one another in bewilderment.

My friend steps up, "NONSMOKING?"

"How archaic," I thought when this happened last summer. I had no idea until that moment you could even smoke at restaurants anymore. Did they need special permits, did they need air filtration systems, and was it like this everywhere in Jersey?

I figured you could smoke at bars and concert venues; places where most of the money came from liquor sales.

I was wrong. You could smoke almost anywhere, or it seemed like it.

Austin, my hometown, has had a smoking ban for a while. While some of the larger bars and establishments fell under a grandfather clause, others need special air filtration systems to allow smoking in their facilities.

That was until last year, when Austin went smoke free. Now only a handful of places have special permits.

When I moved to the Garden State and was asked, "smoking or nonsmoking," it was more than a little shocking.

I wondered if there were dividing lines between the sections, like when you get mad at a sibling and lay a piece of masking tape on the floor. What was to stop the smoke coming into our area, what did the wait staff think of this, what did patrons think of this?

Now, I can tell some smokers are getting irate with me. But listen, 80 to 90 percent of my friends have smoked at one time or another. I've been in the "smoking sections" of bars, club, diners, bowling alleys and restaurants. I know it's your choice to smoke, and why should it be taken away?

But times, they are a-changing. With new information about smoking, its link to cancer and how harmful secondhand smoke is, is it any wonder the state of New Jersey enacted this smoking ban?

Gone are the days of Joe Camel, smoking on airplanes and cigarettes being recommended by doctors. Instead we have things like truth.com, surgeon general warnings and the Patch.

To all my smoking friends out there who haven't been told this enough this week: Thank you for not smoking.

***SERIOUS MOMENT OVER. SERIOUSLY.***

On the iPod: Queens of the Stone Age, "Songs for the deaf"