I continued to feel rough yesterday, and a long walk did not appeal to me. I did end up going out, but only to Tesco. I ended up buying some healthy stuff, but gave into my desires for something nice and/or different. Mostly that ended up as some reduced price sandwiches. I have a theory that there is a different manager there on a Sunday, and he (or she) gave a far bigger reduction to the price of those old sandwiches. I could have bought more than I did, but the three packs I bought were quite sufficient to ruin my diet.

  Almost all my reasons for feeling rough were above my waistline, and mostly around the top of my sternum. That was the main source of pain, and that pain made every other little ache and stiffness feel much worse. On the other hand, it seemed like my legs were ready to take off at 100 mph as I walked to and from Tesco. I think that if it was warm and sunny - warmer enough for just a t-shirt with no coat, I could probably have enjoyed a longer walk, but the cold was making my chest pains worse.

  It was good to get into the warm again, and once I had put my shopping away I tucked into the sandwiches - and they were very nice even if they sent my blood glucose level soaring - I didn't dare check, and so I will never know, although I later feel that they may not have sent the blood glucose level as high as I feared. After eating I lay on my bed reading, and then dozing. With the sun coming through the window it made my bedroom feel very warm (when combined with the heater on low). It felt almost like summer, and snoozing came easy, but not for long.

  I am unsure how long I lay on my bed, but it probably wasn't that long before I woke up feeling like I ought to do something constructive. The first thing I did was to hand wash a couple of t-shirts, some underwear, and a hand towel. There were times during that process when I could feel crunching, clicking, and popping from around my sternum. If I didn't believe my doctor who said it was impossible, I would have thought that my sternum was split, and the two halves were rubbing against each other. Fortunately it didn't seem to make the discomfort any worse, but neither did it improve it, which is what I was hoping for. Sometimes it works.

  With the laundry done I took a 5 minute rest, and then decided to do more stuff. I ended up in the back room, the room that was once, and one day may be again, my dining room. I had no clear vision of what I attempted to achieve yesterday, but I ended up making a significant improvement. Some of was buy getting stuff that was thinly spread across one corner of the room, and piling it up high, and some of it was moving stuff around. I did end up throwing some stuff out, and I've made it easier to sort through some stuff to select more stuff to throw away.

 Most important of all is that I have cleared the area in front of the left of the chimney breast book shelves. They are in a big mess at the moment, but now I can get to them I can tidy them up, and put some stuff that was laying on the floor back on the shelves where it belongs. It is sort of like one of those puzzles where you have to move the blocks around to get them into some sort of order. Once everything is in it's right place it will take up less space.

  Part of that tidying up involved reaching under my old desk to pick up stuff that had fallen under it. Bending over, while reaching out to grab stuff really did stir my sternum up, and I finished my work in a lot of discomfort. I think it was soon after that I took a couple of Ibuprofen tablets. It seemed amazing how fast they acted to damp down the inflammation. They were not a complete cure, but I felt much more comfortable afterwards.

  After a very slow start it seemed my day had become quite productive, and although it wasn't any physical work, I carried on being constructive - although with no actually needed reason. It annoyed me that I couldn't do something I didn't really want to do anyway. That was to stream music from my laptop to my Bluetooth speakers (or headphones). There was a period of time when Linux Mint had a weakness when it came to Bluetooth, and the version of Linux Mint I had on that laptop, possibly version 16, or maybe older, just didn't do it well. To be fair I couldn't do it when booted into Windows XP.

  One of the great things about Linux is that you can run it from a live CD/DVD to test it before installing it. I didn't hold out much hope that the latest version of Linux Mint would run on that old laptop, but it did ! I installed it over the top of the existing installation, preserving my home directory, and also the installation of Windows XP that I can choose from the boot menu.

  Installation took maybe 20 minutes, but because I had downloaded, and burnt the installation DVD some months ago, there were quite a few updates to be made. Once those had been done I found it felt like the machine was actually a bit faster, and best of all, Bluetooth audio streaming now worked !! Everything was looking good until I unplugged the wired network connection, and tried to use the inbuilt WiFi. It didn't work. Apparently the handling of some Broadcom Wifi cards is known to be an issue. I spent hours, or it seemed like hours, trying various things to get that bugger to work, but nothing would coax it into life. The odd thing is that the operating system could see the WiFi adapter, and knew exactly what it was, but for unknown reasons it could not turn it on.

  Maybe some day I will get it working, but for now there is a simple workaround if I need to connect by WiFi. I have two USB WiFi adapters, and they both work fine on it. It seemed to be getting quite late when I gave up. It was past 9pm, and while that may not be considered as very late, it still seemed like it was late enough. I ended up watching TV until midnight, and that did seem very late. I think that I was probably reluctant to go to bed because I knew that laying on my side, the only way I seem to be able to sleep, could, and would crunch my sternum. I actually took a couple more Ibuprofen before getting into bed to possibly cushion the discomfort. I think it worked.

  This morning my sternum seems a bit tender, but so far it has given no pain unless provoked. My blood glucose level is still under 8, and well under the "danger level" of 10. That is the reason I think I might have coped with those sandwiches better than I expected, but I can only allow stuff like that very, very occasionally if I want to continue to keep things under control. It's possibly back to salads today. Salads would also be (hopefully) good for my weight too. It is now at the upper end of the same units digit, and I was hoping that if things continued as they were a fortnight ago I would have dropped another units digit by now (whole kilograms).

  Despite the need, I would feel reluctant to go for even a medium length walk for my health today, but fortunately today there is the extra lure of the possibility of meeting Angela at lunchtime. Nothing has been arranged beyond a "probable" mentioned last Wednesday, but I shall go to the pub anyway, let Angela know I am heading there, and hope for the best.