The early forecast today (above) was similar to yesterday, but the latest revision has replaced the sunny spells with grey clouds. It seems like it is going to be a very cold, sunless day. The maximum temperature will be just 4° C today. There is a 10% chance of "precipitation" at almost any time today, and if any precipitation does fall it will probably be sleet, or maybe even snow, but we couldn't be that lucky. Both the BBC (Meteogroup) and Met Office have issued weather warnings for ice and snow tomorrow. The Met Office forecast doesn't show any snow, sleet, or rain for these parts tomorrow, byt the BBC predicts a fall of snow at 8pm tomorrow night. It will almost certainly be a very cloudy day, and it will be cold again. Of course, when tomorrow arrives the forecast could change out of any recognition of what is predicted today.
 
  I was feeling I should have been ready to go out for a walk in the possible sunshine/sunny spells yesterday, but something was holding me back. It may have been a subconscious thought that I was expecting a parcel delivery, and that thought finally surfaced just as I was finishing writing yesterday. The trouble with that theory is that I was not expecting the delivery until late, and possibly very late in the afternoon - so late the it would probably be mid evening - except that the parcels arrived late morning !
  My parcel contained a few interesting goodies. One thing was a tub of gel paint stripper that I intend to use to try and restore a couple of push plates (or whatever they are called) on the dining room doors. There were some spare button cells for things like electronic tea lights, etc. Then there were the two main things from the order - thermometers. One thermometer was a replacement for my now rather old Boots, electronic, clinical thermometer. The Boots thermometer, recognisable by the well worn blue splodge, that used to be their logo, in the picture above. It's replacement can be seen below it. It is almost identical, and I would go as far as to say that the electronics inside are absolutely identical. One very good thing is that both these thermometers agree with each out exactly !
  The other thermometer is of the non contact type that detects radiant heat. It gives the impression that it is faulty, but I don't think it is. When used for measuring body heat it just says "Lo" if the temperature is below a certain threshold. Both the old and new "under the tongue" (but other places are possible !) thermometer's confirm that my body temperature is always low, and it seems that it is usually under the threshold of this thermometer in body mode. It can be switched to "room" mode to measure the temperature of non body surfaces, and that seems to work OK. For instance the surface of my PC monitor feels like it is body temperature, and using the thermometer to check it shows it to be close to body temperature. The end cap pops off to leave a short blunt probe that can be used to measure inner ear temperature. It still shows my inner ear temperature to be "Lo".  One day I shall have to find others, hopefully with normal temperatures, to test this gadget on.

  As I said, the parcels (the order was split over two parcels) arrived late morning, and in theory I could have still gone for a walk, and caught some sunshine when doing so. The only problem was by then I had given up on the idea of going out, and basically just could not be bothered to do so. I have to admit that was a mistake because I felt very bored, and sort of restless. Quite how you can be restless, and feeling very lazy at the same time is a mystery to be solved another time. The worst thing about it is that I kept wanting to eat, and I did give in to it many times, but I did try to be a bit careful with what I ate.

  I spent a lot of time reading yesterday, but the book I was reading (I finished it last night) was a parody of a SciFi book that was very funny to start with, but just got ridiculous towards the end - a fact made worse by reading almost non stop. If I had, for instance, read one chapter per day it might have retained it's comedy effect, but with no breaks I just wanted to get to the end as fast as possible. It seems sad to describe it in that way, but it is the only way I can describe it.

  I finally spent a couple of hours playing with a very old Dell Inspiron laptop that I rescued from electronic scrap at work. It is just powerful enough to run, albeit slowly, a still supported Linux Mint distribution (although I think support ends in a month or two). I really should throw it out because the battery is long dead, the trackpad seems to have died, it has no inbuilt Ethernet connection, but it does have a WiFi module that I fitted years ago. Yesterday I replaced the Linux on it with Linux Mint 17.3, and it basically works, but I can't really imagine a use for it. It could make an emergency web server with it, but there is one other fault on it that is most annoying. The backup battery in it has failed, and if left unpowered for more than a few minutes it forgets all the BIOS settings (including the clock/calendar). The BIOS backup battery is deep inside the laptop, and non standard. I could take the thing apart to bodge a repair, but I just can't be bothered.

  I had bought two ready meals from Aldi that I had planned to have for dinner last night, but I decided I really ought to use up the second naan bread from my Xmas eve Indian takeaway. I covered most of it with chopped up chunks of the stuff I thought was a thick slice of liver sausage, but was actually more like spam that I had bought from the mini supermarket on Catford bridge. I then covered that with the last of some grated cheese I had, and added some sliced cheese wjere the grated cheese looked a bit thin. I can't say the result was delicious, but it was quite nice.

  I followed it up with some fruit for dessert. It should have been more than sufficient, but it was not long before I became bored, I blame it on the episodes of Star Trek I saw now being repeated too frequently - or so it seems. The Star Trek: The New Generation episode wasn't even a very good story as well as seeming only shown a few week (but maybe months) ago. I ended up opening my last packet of sugar free chocolate chip cookies. They are really only "no added sugar" because they still contain lots of carbohydrates, and they turn to sugar in the gut.

  Despite lots of resting during the day, which I think included several snoozes of unknown length, I still felt tired at about the normal time, and I was probably asleep around 10pm. I seemed to sleep fairly well, but there were a few times when my sleep was disturbed. I woke up around 2am and it seemed to take a fair time to get back to sleep. Maybe it was faster than it seemed to be though.

  At 4am I woke up feeling hot. I was fully covered by the duvet, but it was a cold night. My first thought upon waking up was "wouldn't it be handy if the pubs were open 24 hours a day". I confess that is not actually true. I did have that thought, but it was a contrived thought that I thought I might post elsewhere for comedic affect. I would have gone on to say that even if the pubs were open 24 hours a day, it was far to cold to wrap a dressing gown around my naked body, and walk bare foot to the pub.

  I was quite surprised to sleep comparatively late this morning. I almost got up at 6am, but thought I would close my eyes for a few more moments. It was 7.40am when they opened again. I had a sort of headachey thick feeling in my head, but otherwise I felt unusually good. Since then I have settled down to feeling fairly OK. The only negative thing, but it is no surprise, is my blood glucose level. It remains high at 8.7mmol/l.

  I really don't fancy going out under the current gloomy sky, and the most recent revision to the forecast says it is going to get no better, but I feel that today I have to try and force myself to go for a walk for an hour or two. The fact that I know that I will probably feel good to have done it, doesn't make it any easier. I will probably be surprised if I do go out, and yet I have nothing else to do, and so I may as well go - and other positive thoughts like that.........