thought for the day
29 Thursday Nov 2007
Posted in humour, life stuff, nablopomo, philosophy, politics
Category Archives: life stuff
hate mondays?
26 Monday Nov 2007
Posted in food & drink, friends, health & happiness, home, life stuff, nablopomo, retail therapy, sevilla
Actually, I don’t hate Mondays at all. In fact, I have quite a nice Monday schedule these days, starting with an 8.30 yoga class, followed by a bit of food shopping and then home to do the marathon cooking thing for the week that I first talked about here (still doing it – it works great!). I don’t have any English classes on Monday morning, which makes it possible. Then after I’ve done cooking and Nog has finished his morning classes, we might go out for a pre-lunch beer or vino. After lunch Nog goes off to his afternoon classes and I have an hour or so to obsess on the internet take care of a few things before my first class of the afternoon. On Mondays I usually work from 4.45 – 9-15 pm.
Anyhow, today it turned out that two of my afternoon classes had to reschedule so I was free from 6pm, and so after obessing on the internet doing a few chores I sent a text message to Nog asking if he wanted to meet me at the half-way point between his classes and home, as I had a couple of things I felt a sudden need for (comfy slippers and a new sweater). So I hopped on a rental bike and was at the mid-way point shopping centre in about 15 minutes. Found both comfy slippers and a gorgeous Liz Claiborne 100% cotton sweater (that I couldn’t afford, but I also almost never find 100% cotton sweaters here so I decided – ah, fuck it), and then met up with Nog to do a little pre-Christmas digital camera reconnoitering.
The plan after we finished was that we’d take rental bikes back to Catalina for a glass of wine before going home for dinner, but for some reason Nog’s card wouldn’t work, so we decided to have a race (me on the bike, him taking the bus) to see who’d get there first. Nog was there about two minutes before me because a bus came straight away and I had to stop for a red light. I’m totally loving this rental bike thang, especially as the first half hour is free.
Anyhow, got back home and I went – eek! I haven’t posted anything today! And so, here I am. 🙂 Just heating up some stew I made this morning (which was inspired by this one we had at La Estrella the other day) and then we’ll curl up on the sofa with hot stew, fresh country bread and a couple of cats to watch an episode of The West Wing. Then it’ll be a nice hot shower before getting into fresh sun-dried sheets (Monday is also ‘clean sheets day’ at casa az) . . .
How was your Monday?
the cat’s in the bag
24 Saturday Nov 2007
Posted in animals & pets, health & happiness, home, life stuff, nablopomo
If only it were this easy . . .
Been trying to get Sunny to the vet’s for his annual check up and blood test, etc since about September. But with our new work schedules, my inability to lug around 7 kilos of lurve in a large plastic cage ( for fear of putting my back out) and the new pedestrian streets in the centre of Sevilla (making taxi access quite difficult) it’s been proving to be a bit of a challenge. Especially as Sunny’s blood test requires that he doesn’t eat from about 9pm until the test, which means getting to the vet’s first thing in the morning, which basically means this can only be done on a Saturday. Except Nog now has a new class on Saturday mornings and I seriously cannot carry the massive beast on my own, not even as far as the nearest taxi stand.
So we started looking at other options from the practical (buying a new ‘back friendly’ cat carrier) to the ridiculous (stuffing Sunny into our little old lady shopping trolley). No luck finding a cat carrier with shoulder straps that Sunny would fit into, and when I tried him out in the shopping trolley, wheeling him around the apartment, it turned out as expected – no way no day!
Then we got a message from Nog’s Saturday morning student saying there had been a sudden death in the family, so no class. And so, we’re off to the vet’s sometime just after 10 o’clock.
Going to bed without feeding the boys their evening meal hasn’t been too much of a problem so far, as we’ve been out for most of the evening. Now it’s just after midnight and Nog’s gone to bed leaving me with two very sad pointy-eared angels pathetically moaning here beside me as I type. And so I am also off to sleep … and really dreading the 7am wake-up call from los gatos. I think Nog & I are both going to have to feign sleep until at least 9.30 in order to keep our sanity – wish us luck!
the pilates instructor from hell
20 Tuesday Nov 2007
Posted in health & happiness, life stuff, nablopomo
It was definitely not your typical pilates class . . .
Back in June I revamped my nothing ventured blog because this time I was determined to start making those necessary life changes and feel back in control of my life. Luckily public humiliation is no stranger to me (loads of practice taking the BBC News Quiz at Archie’s every Friday) as not many of those well-intentioned intentions have become, shall we say, second nature here at casa az. Yet.
Well okay, I have continued going to yoga three times a week and (usually) go upstairs to ride the dreaded exercise bike for 10kms afterwards, but I hadn’t gone back to pilates classes as intended, mostly because when I tried it last year I just didn’t enjoy the way the class was taught. But then I found out that we have a new pilates instructor at the gym and today I decided to check her out . . .
spin
16 Friday Nov 2007
Posted in life stuff
Nog & I were talking about yesterday’s post and about how different our lives would be now if I had never bought The Salmon of Doubt that day, which began a discussion about how changing even one small event in the past could have massive and often unforeseen consequences. This led me to recall Stephen Fry’s excellent book Making History in which a man travels back in time and prevents Hitler’s birth only to discover that he had in fact made things worse.
And then I remembered this wonderful short film that I stumbledUpon awhile ago.
Winner of over 35 film festival awards
casa azahar 
