Since taking the screenshot above at about 7am there has been no revision to the forecast. It still says today will be heavily overcast all day except at 6pm when it will only be lightly overcast for an hour. With zero sunshine it will feel cold with the temperature only peaking to 12° C. The chance of rain is still shown as 10% all day long, and I would not be surprised if there were an occasional fall of drizzle. Tomorrow currently looks like it could be very slightly better than today for two reasons. There may be a few hours from mid afternoon when the sun may break through for a few minutes, and it might be a whole degree warmer at 13° C.
 
   There were times yesterday, generally early afternoon, when it looked like it would be OK to go for a walk, and then there were times when the sunshine that seemed attractive, was replaced by 10 minutes of light drizzle. What was worse was that my mid to late morning I had probably decided I wasn't going for a walk anyway. So I stayed in, and tried my best to be very lazy - and I failed at that too !

  I did two things of note yesterday. One was useful, and the other was important. The useful was no more than a bit of laundry. It included another bunch of socks that I was possibly going to throw away, but decided to clean up instead. I know, or I think I remember, that at least two pairs were not a comfortable choice, but mainly only when used with certain boots/shoes. I find it sort of strange that boots or shoes that are supposedly the same size can fit so differently. Some work best with thin socks, and some work better with thicker socks, although the latter can sometimes seem a bit tight in some places, but not in others. I wish I had pots of money, and could afford custom made shoes, but it's off the shelf for me.

  The important thing I did was actually a very quick job in terms of the final part of the job, but still consumed much time. The other day I turned my little 8 inch Aspire ONE netbook (mini laptop) on, and nothing happened. At the time I was in a rush, and used another ancient laptop to play some music in the dining room, and put aside the netbook for another time. It may have been 2 days later when I suddenly remembered what was probably wrong with the netbook. It hasn't happened for years, but that model was prone to the BIOS being corrupted.

  It happened many years ago, and I found that it was easy to repair it using a secret* key combination and a bootable USB stick with a special file on it. I still had the USB drive with the software on it, but I had to look up how to use it. I thought I had that saved on my PC, but after a long search it wasn't there. I then looked through a back up of my old work PC. The document was on there, and I very quickly restored my netbook back to life again.

* "secret" really means not in the customer documentation, but it was easy to find on many forums on the internet when these netbooks were the "new thing".

  Searching for the document that told me how to do it took a bit of time, but much time was wasted looking at all the stuff backed up off my old work computer. I guess there is possibly info on there I shouldn't have - circuit diagrams and such like - but also things like copies of my sick notes, leave requests, as well as company announcements. Had I spent even longer looking through that archive I might have found photos and stuff that really should be in my main photo archives. I probably should set aside some cold rainy (or snowy) day to go through that backup disk and see if there is stuff I should add to my picture and video archives.

  I must admit that I spent quite a lot of yesterday reading another book - any why not ? I was enjoying myself while my muscles were seizing up from lack of use. I have moved on from Robert Heinlein to Harry Harrison. The letter is noted for his SciFi comedy stories featuring The Stainless Steel Rat, as well as other strange and funny stories. At least one of which is a parody of itself - "Star Smashers Of The Galaxy Rangers" !  The book I recently started, and by the end of yesterday I was over half way through, is a more serious SciFi book.

  The underlying concept of the story has featured in at least two different Star Trek stories, and other Sci Fi books. It is set in a hollowed out asteroid that is travelling through space, and it's inhabitants, many generations later, do not realise it. The Harry Harrison take on this concept starts as if the story is set back in Aztec times, and features assorted blood thirsty Gods and priests. After about a third of the book our hero has made a discovery that changes everything. I won't say more because I wouldn't want to give the end away, but more importantly, I can't remember how it ends even though I probably read the book less than 20 years ago !

  As I sort of predicted, I managed to stretch out the big Indian takeaway I ordered on Monday to provide five dinners. Now admittedly I did have to open a can of Tesco Chicken Korma to pour onto the last bit of that takeaway, a naan bread, to make a meal, but getting 5 dinners for the cost of that takeaway was not bad value for money. The Tesco curry was a bit bland, but some hot pepper sauce soon livened it up !

  I spent a fair bit of the evening, even while watching Star Trek, and some of an episode of QI re-editing some old photos to make a sort of memories of 2016 photo album... well it would be an album if I extracted the re-edited photos from their old albums and put them in a new album. At the moment the new album is no more than some scribbled notes. If I keep those notes, which I probably won't, I could make some photo albums to show here at the end of the year. It is fairly certain that nothing new is going to happen at the end of the year. Xmas and New year, both celebrations I have rarely celebrated, but sometimes have thrown up some good gigs, will almost certainly be cancelled because of Covid-19.

  Last night my dreams were inspired by the book I was reading, although my dreams were set in the ways of the current world (no Aztecs ripping out beating hearts !). The silly thing is that I can remember hardly anything of those dreams, but the idea they involved hollowed out asteroids, or something similar is very strong. I seemed to sleep rather well last night. I only remember waking up a few times, and even when I woke up at around 6am it didn't seem to take long to fall asleep again until it was almost 8am. This morning was one of the latest times I have got up for what seems like ages (but probably isn't).

  I can definitely feel my muscles atrophying/seizing up from lack of use this morning, but other than that I seem to feel mostly OK. My measurable health indicators are looking quite good this morning. My blood pressure initially seemed quite high, but a deep breath, and some zen like relaxation (or something) soon had it down to very low. My blood glucose has fallen again after not eating anything too contentious yesterday. This morning it had dropped to 7.7mmol/l, and that is close to what should be my monthly average. Although I could really do with some much lower readings if I am to get my average at the end of this month to be satisfactory.

  Even my weight has gone down a useful amount. If I could do a 7 mile walk on a hot sweaty day I could probably get it back down to close to my weight a fortnight ago ! It is screamingly obvious that at the moment I just can't seem to raise the enthusiasm to go walking under these miserable grey skies. I really ought to try to eat more healthily, which basically means almost starve, during these times if I want to stop putting on weight. Ideally that would me more fresh vegetables and lean meat of fish. Sooner or later I will have to bite the bullet, and at least try on a face mask before resuming shopping again. It's only 85 days since I was last in a shop.

  I really don't know what I am going to do today. After I have had a shower I might try and force myself out the door, and go for a walk. What may be more useful is to do more tidying up and cleaning, but even that does not feel like fun when I have to have the lights on just to see where I am going. It really is very grey outside ! Of course I still have half a book to read, and several more shelves of books to read after after the current book. I am so happy that I hoard my books, and don't give them away to charity shops like many do after reading them just once.

  To finish off - some good news !  I had heard it, and maybe seen it before, but last night I just heard it, and realised there was a silver lining to this Covid cloud. It was an advert from Asda, and it basically said that because of Covid Halloween could still take place indoors using their special range of seasonal foods. I am sure they actually said that the very worst of Halloween, kids thinking they are American, and going around trick or treating, is banned this year because of Covid regulations. That suits me just fine. I always thought that trick or treat was a pretty shabby thing, and tenfold more when translated from America to inner city council estate thugs feral kids.