Today has certainly started off as the forecast predicted. It is very dull and grey, and at just 8° C it is far from walk, or even mild. There is a small but persistent threat of rain today. It's only a 10% chance and so can probably be ignored. The cloud may thin a little for a while at 1pm, but any glimpse of the sun seems unlikely at any time today....however, that's what they said about yesterday ! At least today will be a little less cold with the temperature expected to peak at 10° C. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be just like today, but one degree cooler.

 
   Yesterday was yet another day of almost, but not completely, rest and relaxation. I did do a few useful things, but much of the day seemed wasted, and yet I didn't seem to feel bored. I guess I must have been doing something. That something was reading. I caught up on some of the technology news, some "funny" websites (funny once you ignore all the dull padding), and reading, or perhaps I should say re-reading another paperback.

  I did do some real physical work - laundry. I hand washed, as I have to do since my washing machine blew up 15 years ago, and it's free replacement from a friend never worked at all. Of course by the time the free (second hand) washing machine became available I had been hand washing for 8 or more years, and so when my mates mum died, and I became the new owner of her old washing machine, I couldn't be bothered to waste time trying to find why it failed 10 minutes into the first time I tried to use it. I just when back to the art of hand washing that I had perfected in the preceding years. I am not sure I can say I enjoy doing laundry by hand, but I do recognise it uses some muscles that I would rarely use otherwise, and that is probably good for me.

  The other "sort of" productive thing I did yesterday was to prepare for the month of December. It had nothing to do with anything that many people do in December, but I don't. Apart from being cold and miserable, it is like any other month for me. My preparations for December revolved around preparing a web page for December. It is obviously unused for now, and totally bland, but it is here if you are desperately curious. I also made up spreadsheets to record my temperature, blood pressure, blood glucose, and weight through the month (although the last spreadsheet may remain blank until I feel I have regained some sort of control over my weight).

  My final task for the day (if you discount opening some beer bottles) was to do some cooking. My dinner was made from discrete raw ingredients, and they had to be prepared, seasoned and cooked. I must admit it didn't take log, but it was much more work than eating a takeaway or heating a ready meal. I had to wash and cut up (where needed) some mushrooms before smothering them in (I have to admit) ready made garlic purée. Then there was washing, scrubbing, but not peeling, some carrots, and then cutting them into chips before anointing them olive oil before roasting them. Finally I quartered three tomatoes before cooking them under the grill with a steak.

  Written out like that makes it sounds like I did some real work. Of course the worst part of it was working in the kitchen. There is no heat on in there apart from when I am cooking anything. It may not have been hard physical work, but even light work in the cold can cause me a few aches and pains these days. For all that I would like to say that my dinner was delicious, but I sadly spoiled it by over-doing the garlic on the mushrooms. They would have been far better with some cloves of real garlic instead of garlic purée.

  I washed dinner down with a couple of bottles of beer. Two were dark, and semi-strong abbey beers. They went well with the small bar of dark (and bitter) chocolate I had as a dessert. Last night, still being a weekday night, I was able to watch a couple of episodes of Star Trek while, and then after eating. I also had the semi-pleasure of watching a documentary about the making of Phil Collins first solo album - "Face Value". There were a couple of good songs on the album, but I didn't really care for most of it. However it was interesting to see how it was written and recorded.

  Even when music documentaries are about albums I don't much care for I can still find them interesting from a technical standpoint. Some of the equipment used in a recording studio fascinates me. This is partly because much of it is like a gigantically scaled up version of stuff I sometime hand built for radio station work. The central item of a recording studio is the mixer console. High end professional mixers are now 48 channel (and possibly more). It is easy to look at it and just see hundreds upon hundreds of knobs and switches, and wonder how anyone can actually operate it.

  I will admit that I would be hopelessly lost if sat behind a big mixer, but I am reminded of two things that give me a more realistic view of these things. The first was a conducted tour, by a neighbour who worked there, of part of the old BBC Television centre. What astonished me was seeing fat bundles of cables laced together on cable bearers at ceiling level going from equipment to equipment. It seemed mind boggling. A few years later and I was an apprentice working for the newly minted Post Office Telecommunications - formerly the GPO !

  On my first visit to a real live telephone exchange there were even more thick bundles of cables connecting different racks of equipment together, but by that time I had ad some training on what was on those racks, and the cables became less important, and 1000 identical pieces of equipment was just one piece of equipment many times over. The whole experience shrunk to individual pieces of equipment whose purpose was known and understood. The cables were static connections, and could be usually ignored. The nearest real world analogy I can think of is that once you have seen something like St Pauls Cathedral the tarmac on the roads leading there is irrelevant (unless it has deep potholes !).

  I could have chosen to stay up even later to see another documentary featuring the making of Pink Floyds "Wish You were Here" album. It could well have been very enjoyable, but I am sure it will be repeated. I felt like going to bed at about my usual, or average time, of 9pm. It seemed to take a while to get to sleep, but eventually I seemed to be sleeping well. It did seem that I was waking up a lot during the night, but I am not so sure that I did. I have reasons to think I might have dreamed getting up for a wee once, and maybe twice.

  One clue was the need for a wee, and the size of it when I woke up just after 7am. The other clue was that I got up at 2am think I needed I poo. It turned out to be almost all wind. After I finished I flushed the toilet, and washed my hands. It was after that when I think I dreamed going to the toilet at least once, as well as really going once. When I got up I had what I thought was a memory of getting up for a wee at least three times. Yet when I went to the toilet, after getting up, there was just one piece of toilet paper floating in the bowl On each visit I would have used a sheet to dry any drips before going back to bed. One sheet obviously means I only went once, and I must have dreamed the other visit(s).

  This morning it does feel like I was thrashing around a lot in bed. 20 years ago, to wake up stiff would have a completely different explanation to what it has now, and now "and creaky" is typically added to the description. Earlier on I did contemplate taking some Paracetamol, or perhaps Ibuprofen to calm down a few aches, but maybe I don't need them now I have been up for a few hours, and moved around a bit.

  It is possible I will feel worse tomorrow morning because I can foresee another fairly inactive day coming up. The grey sky outside saps any enthusiasm I might have for doing something. Maybe today will be a boring day, or maybe I'll find things to do. At some point I need to repair one of the dining room chairs. One day I need to do some gardening. I can't imagine doing either today. The only positive thing about this morning is that my health measurements are good to medium. My temperature is very normal for me. My blood pressure could be very good. I only checked it once, and the first reading, with the systolic pressure down to 109mmhg was so good that I didn't bother to try and relax a bit more for a lower reading. Even my blood glucose was an acceptable 8.0mmol/l. Only just acceptable, but better than I hoped after what I ate and drank last night. It is obvious that I am still insulin resistant - that being the cause of my type II diabetes, but I get the impression that it is less so than it once was....or maybe I am being more careful than I used to be a few years ago, and that despite occasional excursions to less careful eating.