The early morning rain has finished now, and the day is actually cooling off a bit. Most of today will be almost warm. The BBC (Meteogroup) forecast is even more generous than the screenshot above. They reckon it could be 12° C for a few hours after midday. Unfortunately it looks like it will be a rather grey day, although the Met Office forecast now says there will just be light cloud between 1pm and 3pm. It is possible that between those hours the cloud could break up enough to let a few rays of sunshine through, but it could be equally possible it will rain then. The weather is very changeable recently. It seems it will definitely rain tonight, and that rain may continue, non stop through all of tomorrow, but at least at 10° C it would almost be warm rain (but in reality will probably feel icy cold).

   One of the things I forgot to mention yesterday was that it seems to be vegan week in Aldi. They seemed to have loads of vegetarian, and vegan food on the shelves. I did buy a couple of vegan items, but I regret doing it now. I am unsure why lentil stew should have such extreme amounts of sugar in it. I don't think lentils have much natural sugar in them, and in the past I have had slightly smaller pots of lentil "salad" with no adverse effects. In fact when I was working it became almost a staple food for my breakfast when I was losing weight.
  Many people would avoid these food because of their reputation of producing prodigious amounts of wind.  Sometimes that is a desired property. One "for instance" is when walking in the park, doing your best to keep your distance from disease ridden other people, and some bloody family is taken up the whole path, and walking terribly slow. A good smelly fart is one way of showing my displeasure, and hopefully they will get the hint that if they can smell it, they are too close !

  I did two other major things besides shopping yesterday. One was to hand wash two small towels, a t-short, some underwear and a face flannel. It seemed quite a lot to do in one go. The other things was a clean and tidy up in the kitchen. I cleared the backlog of washing up, and wiped down a couple of work surfaces, but I have to admit I wasn't in the right frame of mind to do a thorough job. That may have to wait until spring when the spring cleaning bug sinks it's fangs in.

  I did one hateful job yesterday - paying my credit card, and checking my finances. My credit card bill was in that strange reality of where it was bigger than hoped for, but less than feared. Anyway, upon checking my dwindling finances I found I was still doing OK, and better than my long predictions were when I quit work. I am still relying on getting my state pension through in June, and hoping it is not going to be too derisory. I seemed to have enough money to allow myself to make another Amazon order for some bottles of whiskey.

  I also did one scary job yesterday, although it was actually a complete anti-climax. I needed to re-boot my computer after some some software updates. The last time I did that I found it left my PC trying to boot off the wrong hard disk, and obviously failing. This time, just to make things more interesting, I opted to update Linux Mint to the latest version - a Long Term Support version that will be supported until 2025. After doing the update I rebooted.......and the PC just rebooted without a single glitch !

  I'm not sure I will ever conquer the habit of buying at least one thing I probably shouldn't eat, and then eating it soon after getting home from the shops. Yesterday it was two things. One was a pack of sort of mini vegan sausage rolls. They were stuffed with feta cheese and red peppers instead of sausage meat. They would probably have been nicer if I had heated them up. The other thing was a  bacon and cheese quiche. With hindsight it was less exciting in reality than I thought it would be.

   I should not have eaten either of those two things. I also should not have eaten the rest of the crusty loaf yesterday. There was quite a lot of it that I ate in several sittings. Maybe the big pile of fruit after my otherwise healthy dinner of roast chicken thighs with assorted green vegetables. The end result of all these excesses is that my blood glucose is very high this morning. It probably didn't help that I had the last of that loaf not long before going to bed.

  After my long sleep yesterday night, I didn't think I would be able to get to sleep early last night, but I think I was asleep by 10pm, and I seemed to feel OK about getting up at 6am this morning. I probably slept quite well last night. My only regret is that I can't seem to remember some vital details that would make the bits of a dream I had make sense.

  According to my dream the perfect amount is 1.2, but I have no idea what it was. What ever it was was brick shaped and sized, or was in a container the shape and size of a brick. There were three of them stacked up. The bottom was 1.1, and not enough. The top was 1.3, and this was too much, but in the middle was 1.2, and that was perfect. Not only do I not know what the substance was, but I have no idea if it was 1.2 pounds, grams, litres, pints, pounds per square inch, bars, or any other physical property than can be measured. It is mildly annoying not knowing.

 As I mentioned earlier, I felt OK getting up at 6am this morning. Maybe it was a subconscious idea that formed when I was considering that now, not only is the sun setting later, but the sun is now starting to rise earlier too.  It almost feel like spring may be coming - given enough patience. I did feel a bit stiff when I got up, and some of that stiffness was in my back. It wasn't exactly painful when I was leaning over the bath washing my hair, but I definitely felt it. On the other hand, all that hot water while following up my shampoo with a shower, probably loosened up a few creaking joints.

  So, I have clean hair, I am sparkling clean after and there is no real reason for it. I am going to try and work up the enthusiasm to go out for a walk today. As I mentioned in an email to my sister yesterday, I have got to the point where I feel so out of condition, and so creaky, because of not walking much that it is really difficult to overcome the inertia to get out and get fit again....well, sort of fit. I think today I really need to force myself to go. I need to keep reminding myself that after the first mile it should get easier.

  The idea that it could be 11 or 12° C early this afternoon, and that cloud cover should be fairly light, is as good a reason to go out today because tomorrow will probably be awful. It is a shame that there won't be any sunshine....or will there ? At the moment the sun is shining really brightly through a gap in rather dark grey clouds. It is so bright that I am having difficulty typing because of the floating purple blotches after looking straight into the sun for less than a second ! I can even see some thin streaks of blue elsewhere in the sky. The latest update to the forecast has got the grey cloud right, but omits that there are gaps in them. At 10am the forecast predicts that curious mix of sunshine and rain. What happens at midday is anyone's guess. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it might be almost nice.