I just came across this quote from Borges:
Publicamos nuestros libros para librarnos de ellos, para no pasar el resto de nuestras vidas corrigiendo borradores
That translates roughly into:
We publish our books so that we can rid ourselves of them, so that we won’t have to spend the rest of our lives polishing drafts.
Considering how much time I’ve spent going over the same book lately, I can’t help but to agree.
As I have mentioned a couple of times I love sleeping in a hammock, but I’m not crazy about how cold they can get. After a lot of experimenting, and borrowing the basic principle from a sort of poncho my mom used to have, I came up with the following solution:
Once you have made those cuts (and allowed the paint to dry) all you have to do is slip your arms through the two openings and allow the top to fall back over your shoulders. This blanket moves with you, it leaves your arms free if you want to hold a book or a cup of coffee, it offers a double layer of protection where you need it the most (on your back and chest), it doesn’t wrap around your neck no matter what you do, and you can pile two (or more) of them and then wear them as one if you have to… not to mention that it gives you the ability of taking your bed’s/hammock’s warmth with you when you get up. Oh, and if you want to use it just to veg out on the couch you can always wear it upside down, so that it is a little shorter and doesn’t drag on the floor when you get up.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my chest, back to our regular programming.
Update: In case anyone is interested I have posted another hammock-related how-to, this one featuring the instructions to create a hammock for your laptop so that you can work in comfort (or watch a movie) without having to resort to some sort of superhuman balancing act. You can find that one here.
For a quick access to my tips on how to make your hammock-life easier click here.
As I mentioned a while ago I’d take a hammock over a bed any day, though the cold weather can be a bit of an issue (that is being cold in a hammock means being a lot colder than you’d be in a bed as your back and sides act as incredibly effective heat sinks), but still as far as I am concerned the benefits far outweigh the problems… in fact I think I finally cracked the ideal bed clothes dilemma, but more on that in a couple of days (update: that information has now been posted, you can find it here).
What are those benefits? Well, for starters you will never hear anyone complain about having to make his/her hammock in the morning, I can tell you that. All you have to do is take it down if you want to. It also frees up a lot of room and it just looks cooler, not to mention that there are some studies that seem to suggest that it is also a whole lot healthier (of course, since no one is going to get rich by encouraging people to get rid of their expensive mattresses and to replace them with dirt cheap hammocks you are not likely to hear much about it).
Anyway, today I wanted to share a link to one of my favorite articles on the benefits of sleeping in a hammock. You can find it here: Seven Benefits of Sleeping in a Hammock. I hope you like it.