Category Archives: health & happiness

easy riders

06 Monday Aug 2007

Posted by in health & happiness, home, sevilla

≈ 8 Comments

Sevici

Cool eh? New public rental bikes.

And quite reasonable. It costs 10€ for an annual membership card and when you pick up a bike the first half hour is free, the next hour is 50 cents and after that it’s 1€ per hour. Conceivably you could always ride for free as long as you kept swapping bikes every half hour, but that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.

I’ve got a very pretty mountain bike that’s been up in storage for ages because there’s really no place to keep it in this apartment (when I lived next door there was a nice roomy entrance that was perfect). Lately I’ve been thinking about getting it back in action because there are all kinds of recently installed bike paths in Sevilla, but Nog also wants to go out cycling so the rental bikes are an excellent solution.

Sent in our applications today so we could be riding by the weekend. 🙂

summer holidays

01 Wednesday Aug 2007

Posted by in animals & pets, blogging, books & writing, computers, culture, films, food & drink, friends, fun stuff, health & happiness, holidays, home, humour, life stuff, love, miscellany, music, musings, philosophy, photos, sevilla, television

≈ 13 Comments

laptop-books.jpg

It’s August 1st and I am officially ‘on holiday’.

No classes until September. Yay! Well okay, no income either, but I’ve been looking forward to this stretch of time ahead of me not having to be anywhere or do anything unless I feel like it. It will especially be nice not to be woken up by alarm clocks (well, other than the pointy-eared variety).

When I asked earlier about what summer stuff everyone was planning to do I still hadn’t made any major plans, and then I realised that what I wanted most was a month totally without plans. So there. 🙂

Well, there are a few things I want to do like go to the gym in the mornings and do some stuff around the apartment. But mostly I reckon I’ll be reading and hanging out online (hence that particular thumbnail), taking evening walks with Nog, going out for our *emergency cold beer and air-conditioning sessions* and the occasional tapa, and also watching films and playing with floppy cats who – I am very happy to report – appear to be friends again. They’ve even started playing fighting again, with no pee in sight, which to me is even more of a sign of them being pals again than falling asleep together.

For awhile it looked like a recent bad back incident (comment 19) had put the kibosh on my gym idea, but after a couple days of anti-inflammatories, gentle stretching and lots of walking I think I’ll be able to start back mañana.

Meanwhile, Sevilla has pretty much turned into a ghost town already, which is always a pleasant change of pace.

So all in all, August should be a nice month for carping the diem.

How’s your summer been so far?

obesity is contagious?

26 Thursday Jul 2007

Posted by in health & happiness, life stuff

≈ 12 Comments

beryl-cook.jpg

Obesity ‘contagious’, experts say

Having a friend, sibling or spouse who is overweight raises a person’s risk of being obese too, US researchers say.

They said data on more than 12,000 people suggested the risk was increased by 57% if a friend was obese, by 40% if a sibling was and 37% if a spouse was.

What do you think? I reckon if this were the case then either Nog would be grossly overweight or I’d be real skinny. I also think that Harvard Medical School should find better ways of spending its research money.