7 Reasons

Tag: Happy

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why It’s Good To Shop With Your Other Half!

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why It’s Good To Shop With Your Other Half!

    She sees it as the ultimate cardio work out. He sees it as the ultimate test of endurance. It could mean only one thing… couples shopping!

    Take a look around any town centre in the UK and you’ll see a familiar sight – women, the hunters of fabulous clothes; men, the carriers of bags and the heroes that help their ladies shoulder barge through the hoards of bargain hunters.

    But while women are the Queens of the high street, it’s men who reign supreme on the internet. In this Infographic ‘Men Vs Woman – Battle of Spending Habits’, from financial solutions company Baines & Ernst, men actually come out on top as the biggest spenders, with alcohol, vehicles and gambling appearing in their top 5 purchases.

    Men spend on average a total of £3,495 online every year and 15% more than women on their credit cards, making them the surprise cash flashers.

    Although guys prefer the comfort of shopping from their armchair, there are certain benefits to being a co-pilot on a shopping trip…

    Here are 7 reasons why it’s good to go shopping with your other half…

    1.  You earn excellent boyfriend brownie points! This is the only reason you really need to go shopping. Want a night out with your mates? Don’t want to be relegated to the other room to watch Match of the Day? Want an all night Xbox marathon with the boys? Well, you earned it buddy!

    2.  It’ll make your lady happy. A shopping wing-man is always good. And if you’re there to hang out with, tell her she looks good and treat her to lunch, your lady will be happy. And by doing all of this you’ll get… excellent boyfriend brownie points! *see point above for boyfriend rewards.

    3.  Pretty good way to while away the hours. If you’ve got nothing planned, then a trip to the shops can be a good excuse to check out the things you want to see and treat yourself to a few well deserved treats. Many big shopping centres also double up as entertainment complexes now, so if you get bored of wandering around the shops, you could go and have a really nice meal in one of the restaurants or catch a film.

    4.  Coming up to a special occasion? Use the time to plant seeds! Whether you’ve got an anniversary, birthday or Christmas coming up, you can use this time to look for what you want and plant some seeds. And it’ll give you the chance to check out what she’d like too.

    5.  You get regular sitting intervals. They’re in the changing room – you get to sit. Shops seem to have all designed dressing rooms with the gent in mind – creating little social areas for abandoned boyfriends so that you don’t get funny looks for loitering around outside changing rooms.

    6.  You get the gift of time. When you’ve been relegated to the boyfriend bench in the changing rooms, you can use this time to catch up on your phone admin. So you can message your mates, answer emails, check out Facebook, read the news and anything else you like without being asked “Who are you messaging?”

    7.  Its mutual ground. Okay, it might not be your most favourite activity, but it’s a good mutual ground for you to spend some time together and have a bit of fun. Grab a coffee, people watch and do some browsing. It could be worse!

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  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Need Cake In Your Life

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why You Need Cake In Your Life

    In a world where everyone is so image conscious, too many people keep going on about fruits, vegetables and balanced diets! How boring is that! There are so many reasons to relax every now and then and have the occasional piece of cake in your life. Here are just seven of them!

    7 Reasons Why You Need Cake In Your Life

    1.  Scholars say that learning about history is good for you. Apparently, it helps to provide a sense of identity and improves your judgement and decision making. Did you know that the word cake comes from the Viking word Kaka? This means that cake has a long history! History is good for you, therefore you need cake!

    2.  Endorphins are hormones released by your brain which cause you to have happy feelings. Feelings of pleasure. Endorphins are also natural pain relievers. It has been scientifically proven that desserts like cake cause your brain to release endorphins! Endorphins make you feel happy and ease pain, so this is a very good reason to have more cake in your life.

    3.  Eating cake makes people feel happy. Happy people smile a lot. Smiling is good for you. It has been scientifically proven that a smile can help lower your blood pressure, relieve stress, boost your immune system, make you look younger, make you more attractive and can change your mood by releasing those happy chemicals called endorphins, which make you even more happy! And another thing, smiling is contagious! By having cake in your life, you will not only be helping yourself to be more happy, you will also be passing on your happiness to other people, by causing them to smile back at you! What better reason is there to have more cake in your life than that?

    4.  Cake makes people feel special! Everyone likes to feel special. You can even get personalised cakes made for your friends and family. You can put little messages on cakes. You can get a mini cake or a big cake personalised and sent as a gift to someone special. What better reason can you have for needing cake than to make someone else feel special?

    5.  Did you know that there are 490 calories in a Big Mac and 180 calories in the same amount of cake? You see, cake is better for you than a Big Mac!

    6.  All of the best nutritionists say that it is important to have balance in the diet. They say you should eat five fruits and vegetables a day because they help to keep your weight stable, they are high in fibre and they provide lots of vitamins and minerals which are good for you. Having cake adds the balance! Having some carrot cake or upside down pineapple cake adds to your five a day!

    7.  We have to celebrate the special events in life to give it meaning and to add joy. Birthdays, weddings, christenings, Christmas, Halloween, a promotion, a new job, all of these events and many others require celebration. You can not have a celebration without cake because that would just be boring.

    So the moral to the story is that you need cake in your life!.

  • 7 Reasons To Have A Second Birthday.  Today!

    7 Reasons To Have A Second Birthday. Today!

    It turns out that today is the perfect day to have your second birthday.  Here are seven reasons that you should.

    1.  Because You Can.  You might not think you can have a second birthday on June 10th, but you can.  You probably think that only the Queen can have two birthdays, but you’re wrong.  The Queen doesn’t have two birthdays, she has three.  She has her birthday, her official birthday and today, in the Solomon Islands – but nowhere else – it’s the Queen’s official birthday there.  Is it really fair that the Queen should have three times as many birthdays as the rest of us?  Of course not.  No one would mind if you had a second birthday on June 10th, least of all the Queen who’d still be one better than the rest of us.

    2.  Because The Weather’s Right For It.  The date of June 10th falls during the month of June, you may not be surprised to learn.  This means that the weather is guaranteed.  Because on any birthday in June, it will rain.  This will make the weather on your actual birthday – unless that too, falls in June – seem positively glorious in comparison.

    3.  Because It Can Only Improve Your Day.  Today, I was woken at 5:30am by my wife announcing that our son had wet the bed.  “Never mind”, I said, “you can put him in our bed for a couple of hours”.  “I can’t”, she replied, “it’s our bed that he’s wet”.  You need a second birthday to get over that sort of news.  I’m sure that many of you have also woken up to similarly bad news or had unfortunate experiences today (possibly involving rain).  It’s not too late to have a second birthday.  Have it now, you deserve it.

    4.  Because Tomorrow Is World Gin Day.  Tomorrow, in its infinite wisdom, the world – or gin – has decided that it’s World Gin Day.  If you have your second birthday today and request gin, tonic, limes, Angostora bitters, ice and glasses (because receptacles are important), you’ll be perfectly equipped for tomorrow’s festivities.  And you’ll have got the cake-eating out of the way, because if there’s one thing that gin doesn’t go with it’s cake*.  Have your cake today.  And eat it.

    5.  Because Something Good Needs To Happen On June 10th.  Sometimes, when writing about a particular day we do actual research via the medium of Google.  Having researched June 10th, I can confirm that it’s one of the dullest days in history and can disclose that the two events with the most humour potential from this date are that the first public zoo was opened in France in 1794 and Elizabeth Hurley was born in 1965.  It’s not just that you need June 10th for your second birthday.  June 10th needs you.

    6.  Because It’s The Right Time Of Year.  If you have a birthday in February or November, you probably lose out presents-wise because of your special day’s proximity to Christmas.  That’s right, Jesus was born too and he’s far more important than you.  June 10th is almost in the middle of the year and is as far away from Christmas as you can hope to get**.  So, with your second birthday on June 10th, you’ll get better presents and you’ll foil Jesus.  It’s all win.

    7.  Because It’s Jon’s Birthday.  Today, June 10th, is my writing partner Jonathan Lee’s birthday.  If everyone else had a second birthday today then he would age at half the speed of the rest of us (though anyone that saw yesterday’s post might say he’s making rather a good fist of that already***).  We’d all become world-weary and cynical and while, in the Autumn of our lives, our minds had closed to fun, tomfoolery and japery, Jon would still be merrily frolicking away, committing acts of piracy in his garden.  The world’s a much better place for that. Happy birthday Jon.

     

    *If there are two things that gin doesn’t go with they’re cake and cycling.

    **Except for Mecca.

    ***He wrote, in his glass house.

     

     

  • 7 Reasons to Wear a CAT Cap When Borrowing a Flat Flap (For Fat Cats)

    7 Reasons to Wear a CAT Cap When Borrowing a Flat Flap (For Fat Cats)

    The CAT cap, that iconic piece of American headgear is, despite what you may have read yesterday, the ideal piece of millinery to wear when borrowing a large cat flap.  Here’s why.

    1.  You’re Lost.  On the way to see your flat flap (for fat cats) lender you get lost and you don’t have a map.  Normally, you couldn’t ask for directions at all but, with your CAT cap as a disguise, you can.  By pretending to be an American.  It’s a well known fact that 94% of lost American tourists that you encounter in the UK are actually fat, badly dressed British people putting on a funny accent.  You can be one too!

     

    2.  Whippets.  You might not own a fat cat at all, you might own a whippet; those mid-sized runts from greyhound litters.  But what if you want to borrow a cat flap for a whippet and don’t want it to be known that your greyhound is inadequate?  You can’t wear a flat cap, they’ll assume you’re a whippet owner.  You can, however, wear a CAT cap and pretend that you’re borrowing one for a cat.  And that your caps lock is stuck.

     

    3.  Escape.  You’re on the run.  They’re after you.  It’s your own fault really, you fell into bad company and were led astray.  When one of your friends suggested that you should brilliantine your hair and don clothes from the 1920s to go out for a night on the town, you acquiesce.  Unfortunately, your gang’s – having consumed several too many Tom Collins and Manhattans – behaviour has become indecorous and has descended into committing acts of japery and tomfoolery.  Soon, you and your friends are filming each other with your portable telephones as you grab total strangers on the night bus and forcibly dance the Charleston with them.  After one happy flapping incident too many, you find you have become separated from your chums and are being chased by an angry, powerful looking man called Matt whose only desire for the evening was to enjoy a quiet meal out with friends, and transport his large cat flap (for his fat cat, Pat) home.  And boy is he fast.  As you tear round the corner of Crash Street you find that he is tiring though, and you begin to pull away from him until, eventually, he is out of sight altogether.  Then, with creeping horror, you realise that something is blocking your path.  That’s right, it’s the Crash Street wall: You’ve run into a dead end.  Desperately scanning the surrounding area for some means of escape, you spot a yellow CAT cap protruding from a bin bag.  You dust it off and put it on just as Matt bounds into view.  “He went in there” you shout while pointing at a padlocked door to your right, “here let me hold that for you”.  He hands you the large cat flap and furiously heads toward the door.  While his back is turned, you rapidly attach the cat flap to the wall and make your escape through it.  If it weren’t for the CAT cap, this might not have ended so well.

     

    4.  Baldness.  Have you ever lent a cat flap to a bald person?  No.  No one ever does.  They need to cover their heads to get cat flaps.  A CAT cap will achieve this.

     

    5.  Fame.  You’re Guy Ritchie.  You need to go out and borrow a prop.  It’s a flat cat flap for a fat cat (the film’s in plain old 2D, so you only need a flat one).  But you’re being papped, so you can’t wear a flat cap (as you’re a recognisable chap who they’ll try to snap) so you slap on a CAT cap to borrow your flat flap (for a fat cat), which you’re able to borrow without incident.

     

    6.  When Abroad.  You’re in America.  In the American mid-west, in movies from the eighties, where most people wear plaid shirts and mesh CAT caps.  And you’re on holiday.  Being the sort of person who likes to be prepared (and has a suitcase full of baked beans, ginger biscuits, tea and beige trousers), you have remembered to pack your fat cat and your door, but have unaccountably forgotten your cat flap.  Your cat won’t be able to get through the door so you’ll need to borrow one.  And how better to approach the locals and showing them you’re not a stranger than by donning a CAT cap, and driving over to their place in a pick-up truck.  With Michael J. Fox or Kevin Bacon in the passenger seat.  It’ll put them at their ease and they’ll be happy to let you take their cat flap.  And these broken wings.

     

    7.  Donning.  Perhaps you’re already the wearer of a CAT cap.  And already own a fat cat, for whom you have a cat flap.  But what if your fat cat has had some sort of cat flap mishap that caused it to snap (the cat flap, not the fat cat) while you were having a nap?  Well in that case, you’d need to don your CAT cap and pop out to borrow a flat fat cat cat flap to replace the one that snapped.  Self-evident, really.

     

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  • Russian Roulette Sunday. Press Play: Feel Happy

    Russian Roulette Sunday. Press Play: Feel Happy

    Hello!  It’s Sunday again, and the 7 Reasons team are away for the day.  Half of the team is busy poisoning his friends and family with cookery, and the other half has managed to pick 4.2 kilograms more blackberries than he required and is wondering what the hell to do with the rest.  If you have any ideas, please let us know.  We have already made two years worth of jam and four litres of blackberry vodka and have now run out of ideas.

    The 7 Reasons team have been busy updating the website recently and, as of yesterday, we are now able to host and play our own flv and swf files, which is something we’re very excited about.  We sense that not everyone will be as enthused about this development as we are, so we’ve provided you with something short that’s guaranteed to make you happy.  Just press play.  (It’s even better in full screen).  Play it as many times as you want, he won’t get tired.

    [flv:http://7reasons.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/psypenjump1.flv 550 380]