Damn damn damn damn damn

Woke up this morning with my throat red raw coughing and hacking away, nose running and constant sniffing. A couple of hours later and I feel even worse. Attacked by a bloody head cold. I decided to not go to Tignes for a variety of reasons, uppermost was that I don't want to get any worse. So here's the steps taken to cure the cold:

1) Put on thermal underwear, 2 t-shirts, hoodie, winter jacket, hat, gloves, scarf after warming on heater before venturing outside to obtain €50 from the bank

2) Wander down to supermarket and find fresh orange juice

3) Purchase low-preparation healthy foods from supermarket (dried apricots, sultanas, couscous, humous, bread, cucumber)

4) Co-ordinate trip to supermarket with trip to pharmacy to get vitamin C and zinc tablets as well as any other interesting-looking things to kill cold

5) Create comfy video watching environment with excessive duvets and pillows

6) Download Point Break and sit back and watch the cheese

I'll let you know how the treament goes.

Feel like shit

Got a hangover. Feel like shit. Ugh.

Think I might give up drinking for a month again.

Knocking it on the head

The other day Crampons, Chris, Fred and myself all agreed that this morning - Tuesday - we were to all give up smoking together. €25 each went into the pot - the one with the most staying power gets €100. I've got to say it's a cool communal decision that was made - we all want to quit for different reasons and each one of us has somewhat differing tactics to achieve the goal.

The rules for giving up extend to no cigarettes, roll-ups, cigars, joints with tobacco (for those who indulge in that sort of thing), herbal cigarettes (like the clove cigarettes), no pipes. Basically no smoking at all at all.

The various strategies employed for quitting:
Crampons - Patches, gum, anything that looks like it'll give a nicotine hit without actually smoking.
Chris - An array of "quit smoking" books, cd's and hypnotherapy paraphenalia.
Fred - Laughing in the face of temptation, being as he runs a smoking restaurant.
Martin - Cold turkey (possibly assisted by normal chewing gum - not that nicarette shit, it tastes awful).

I gave up for about a year and a half a while ago and didn't find it too bad before slipping back into smoking the odd cigar, then many cigars then finally back onto cigarettes. It's only been a paltry few hours since I got up and I'm already feeling edgy and cackling away at obscure stuff and being generally mental.

Weight loss

Just saw meself in the mirror.

Have always been able to lose weight quickly but am pretty surprised by how much your body changes after a month of hard exercise in the form of swimming, surfing and hiking around. The six pack is starting to make a serious effort to show itself and am starting to streamline out. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that I'm going to be more physically big than at any other time in The Life of Narg.

I always used to be very fit until I badly broke my ankle some years ago and have always wanted to be able to get back to having that body. Unfortunately it looks like someone has stolen that body permanently and replaced it with this rather abused one. It's going to be fun seeing what is left after this snow season with good diet and lots of exercise though. Either that route to get fit or it's going to be a trip to Thailand to one of those really sketchy liposuction clinics you always hear about - you know the really unhygenic ones where people get really screwed up with disease and pestilence for that true weight loss experience baby. Surgery + dysentry + flesh-eating virus = sexy time.