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Thursday 13th
February 2020
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09:00 GMT
Yesterday was another that was "not bad",
but also not that good. There was a nice sunny
morning, but before midday the sunshine gave way
to just sunny spells that got shorter and shorter,
but just about made it through to sunset. Indoors,
with sun coming through my windows, it felt warm
enough to open a window when the sun was at it's
brightest, but outdoors it took until 2pm to
briefly hit 9° C, but the temperature quickly fell
away again afterwards. Although it was originally
forecast to start raining after midnight, it was
actually raining much earlier - maybe as early as
9pm.
The forecast for today seems to have got it
wrong - even in the latest revision. There has
been some rain recently, but at the moment the sun
is shining (although getting dimmer as I write
these words), and the sky only seems to have very
thin looking clouds in it. Some areas look blue.
It makes me think that today the symbol used in
the forecasts that shows a combination of
sunshine, clouds and rain, may actually be right -
we are going to have all three until, maybe, 4pm,
and then it may stop raining, and just be overcast
for the rest of the day. Tomorrow may start with
some frost, but it should warm up to 12° C. There
might even be some sunny spells in the morning,
but after that it is predicted to be overcast.
Eventually it will start to rain. The current
prediction say that the rain will start at 8pm
I was quite disappointed to hear from
Angela that she wasn't able to meet me at
lunchtime, and it sort of threw my whole day into
disarray. There was still one constant, and that
was the parcel delivery I was expecting. I
had been sent a message to say the parcel would be
delivered between 10:51 and 11:51. It actually
arrived at 11:55. I guess that was within 10%
tolerance, and at least it would not have affected
me if I had been going out for a walk before
meeting Angela.
Instead of going for a long healthy walk I
went to Aldi. I hoped it would be more civilised
mid week compared to when I went that at about the
same time on a Saturday. It was, and wasn't. The
inside of the store was far less crowded, and just
a few mums pushing their two storey, double width
prams about. There were still some long queues at
the checkouts though. Fortunately another checkout
opened while I was in a good position to become
second in the queue. Unfortunately for what would
have been the fourth person in the queue, it
closed again because the conveyor belt was faulty,
but the girl manning it managed to get the first
three of us served.
I was quite careful about what I bought,
and I managed to avoid all temptation to buy stuff
that would interfere with my diet...or at least
not too much. I did buy one luxury - some biltong
and beef jerky. The bags are quite expensive, but
contain about 2 or 3 times the amount that I would
occasionally buy from elsewhere. There was a shop
near where I used to work that had a wide range of
air dried meats - including ostrich - and the
prices were similar to Aldi today, but those bags
sometimes seemed to have no more than a few crumbs
of meat in them.
When I got home from Aldi it was around
1pm, and I fancied some lunch. I had thought about
what I might have, if he urge came over me, while
in Aldi. For this I bought some salmon fillets and
baby spinach leaves. My lunch was grilled salmon
with raw spinach leaves. It did the trick, and I
don't think I ate anything else until dinner time
(or did I ?). I know that just before dinner time
I checked my blood glucose, and it was nice and
low, 5.8mmol/l. A few hours after dinner of
skinless chicken thighs and broccoli*, it was only
6.1mmol/l - still very good.
* Has anyone noticed that the spelling of Broccoli
changes on alternate days ? If I spell it with two
Cs my spell checker says it should be one C and
two Ls. If I spell it like that my spell checker
says it should be two Cs and one L. Of course it
is possible I am confused, and if I am, then what
about the spelling of mayonnaise ? That seems to
occasionally swap the amount of Ns and Ss !
I should have spent the afternoon doing
something useful, but I probably spent less than
20 minutes doing some cleaning/tidying of my back
room. All I did was to make a start going through
some of the stuff in the desk drawers. I think
I'll be moving that desk into my bedroom some day,
and the drawers have accumulated crap for
something like 20 years. I found a Valentine card
in one drawer that probably dates back to the mid
1990s ! One holdup in cleaning out those drawers
is that there is paperwork in them that could more
usefully be saved electronically, and that means
that some day I'll have to have a long marathon
document scanning session.
A lot of yesterday afternoon was spent
laying on my bed reading, or snoozing. I am not
sure how long I snoozed for, but it probably was
not all that long, and from time to time I did put
my book down to do some stuff on my PC. My PC
needs occasional housework just like my house -
except I do try to keep my hard drive a bit
cleaner ! The task I did on and off during the
afternoon, and also in the evening, was to move
any video from the picture archives to my video
archive disks (a master and backup external USB
drives). This is in preparation to doing a full
backup of my picture archives - once again onto a
master and backup external disk drives.
One slightly unusual thing that happened
before I could relax in bed was the need to go to
the toilet for a poo. Afterwards I dared to weigh
myself. I was surprised at how low it was for the
time of day. That was good news, and I knew that
the amount of urine I would pass in the night
would reduce my weight even further. I was not
mistaken. I had a fairly good night, or at least I
think I did, but as usual my kidneys were just as
active as they always are since being on two of
the drugs I have to take. The extra weight loss by
morning suggested I had passed around a litre of
pee in the night.
This morning I seem to be within 600gm
(roughly a pound and a half) of my "official"
weight, as measured at the hospital in mid
January. By next Monday, if not sooner, I will
have shed the excess put on as a result of
illness, and terrible weather, and get back to try
and lose another 10kg (and a couple of inches
around my waist - hopefully. After that good news
it was a bit of a disappointment to see my blood
glucose level was still above 7 (actually
7.4mmol/l) this morning. I was hoping it might be
just under 7. I am desperately trying to think
what I might have eaten that would have pushed it
up in the night, and I can't really think of
anything.
There is only one definite thing on the
agenda for today, and that is to go out for my
regular Thursday afternoon drinking session. It
would be nice if the rain could finish by about
3.30pm today so I could walk to the station in the
dry. The sunshine I noted further up the page has
now vanished, and it is, or has been raining. This
is as forecast unfortunately. There is always a
silver lining to every cloud, or so they say,
today's silver lining is that the rain is a good
test for my repaired gutter. I haven't been
outside to check, but I believe it is holding out
OK for now. Saturday will be the real test when
torrential rain is forecast.
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