The forecast has been revised since I took the screenshot above. The main difference at the moment is the two periods of sunny spells at 9 and 10am are now shown as full sunshine. At the moment this matches reality, although I think the sunshine started with some sunny spells at least 30 minutes earlier. I expect later revisions may change the forecast for the better too - maybe some sunny spells beyond 10am ? As it stands at the moment, light cloud is shown from 11am to 3pm, and then the cloud changes to medium grey until 8pm when rain is shown as falling. It is still going to be a cold day. This morning the temperature may rise to 4° C, but it may be just 3° C this afternoon. Tomorrow is shown as 24 hours of dark grey clouds, but no rain is expected, and it could be one or two degrees warmer than today.

  I found myself feeling quite good, and that is good as in something approaching happy. That was unusual on a very cold, dull, and wet day. It was the sort feeling you might get after realising you had got over a disease, except in this case I wasn't really sure I had had a disease if you discount my costochondritis. I regard that as more like a mechanical failure than a disease. However it is a fact that it did seem to have cleared up...until semi late in the evening when I did get a strange twinge.

  Yesterday was a day when I seemed to be too busy to do almost anything that I had thought I might do. The silly thing is that I have no idea why I was so busy doing nothing. Of course "nothing" does include doing some very basic research about Aquavit, the nordic booze, and then going on to order some so I can try it for the first time. It could be likened to caraway seed flavour vodka, and so has the potential to be delicious. For reasons that are not obvious, but very handy, my order made yesterday is going to be delivered today ! (And yes, I made sure I didn't accidently sign up to Amazon Prime).

  I guess that was not "doing nothing" after all, and maybe composing emails, and sending greeting and new via Whatsapp  was not doing nothing, but I still wonder if it counts when there is no end product like, for instance, freshly laundered t-shirts and underwear. Doing a bit of laundry was perhaps one thing I did that was definitely not "nothing".

  Another, and very much intangible nothing was not eating that much. My morning blood glucose reading was not good, but neither was it bad, and so that gave me little impetus to curb my eating. I hadn't lost my appetite either. I am not sure why I seemed to eat less than usual - or usual for a cold and wet winter day. It was more comparable to what I might eat on a hot summers day - except that much of what I ate yesterday was hot.

  I can't remember all I ate yesterday. I know I had a sort of snack like breakfast, but I can't really remember what it was, or how much of it there was. Possibly not that much because it was essentially just nibbles - I think. Lunch is easier to describe, and part 1 of it was a very light home made soup, although not soup in the traditional sense. It was bean sprouts and some tender shoot broccoli cooked in a very spiced up chicken stock. It's main purpose was to quickly use up the bean sprouts because they were starting to deteriorate.

  That "soup" was very nice, and was the sort of thing I might have if I was back to seriously trying to lose weight/drop my blood glucose. What I followed it with was something a bit more substantial because I didn't feel in the right mood to do any serious dieting or stuff. It was cheese and "baked, not fried" Ritz crackers with herbs and stuff. I am surprised they kept the name "Ritz" on the packet because they were completely unlike normal Ritz crackers.

  My dinner was a lot smaller than I probably intended. The trouble was that before I could decide what it would be I was disturbed by another long and rambling phone call from my friend Lee. He is always mentioning all the people he calls friends, but it is obvious they are just people he knows, and they aren't what I would call friends. So he calls me to unload his wandering mind on me. He may have been on the phone for nearly 90 minutes at a time when I would be cooking and eating my dinner.

  It seemed he talked right through my hunger phase, and I didn't feel so hungry after he finally hung up. My dinner eventually consisted of no more than 4 grilled Polish style sausages. They were actually precooked, and so didn't need to spend long under the grill to heat them through, and deepen the colour of their skin a bit. I said "no more than", but I did have some mustard and tomato sauce on them. They were very nice, but would have been nicer if there had been something else on the plate to break up the constant shovelling in of just sausage.

  It was after eating that dinner, and watching some TV that my chest problem returned, but it was a bit different. It was just a very small area of pain right over my sternum. It might have just been heartburn, and I did take an antacid in case it was that, but I don't think it was. The stand out thing was that it felt like there was a soft spot in the middle of my sternum. That would actually be consistent with an old theory of mine.

  It was only about a week after coming out of hospital back in September 2013, after my heart bypass operation, when I did something that, with hindsight, was a bit stupid. Against doctors orders I bought too much shopping on my first visit to Aldi. I was feeling fine, and without giving it a thought, I did a fairly normal shop. On the way home I felt something go "twang" in my chest. At that time I still had staples in my chest to hold the skin together after the operation. I knew that there was also something internal to hold it all together, and in particular to hold both sides of my sternum together after it had been cut down the middle to allow access to my heart.

  It was my belief that carrying what was probably somewhere around 10kg, or 10 times heavier than the surgeons strict orders, caused one of the internal staples (I think they are actually loops of titanium wire) to pop open. My GP said that would be impossible, and dismissed any worry about it. It was not long after that when I began to get the first of these flare ups from my chest. I still think that my sternum not being completely knitted together is the core reason for my costochondritus. Feeling a soft area when I ran my finger down my sternum suggests that it is not the shape it should be. I am sort of surprised that no doctor, including those in the hospital, have never offered to have an x-ray to see if there is any damage to my sternum. All they worry about is anything that might cause a heart attack. Other pains are not their problem.

  The medium sharp, very localised pain from the middle of my sternum faded quite quickly, but as is often the case it left a sort of tender legacy. It didn't feel like it was hurting, but it did feel like it could be very easily provoked into hurting. I guess I am looking for a word that doesn't mean pain, but is it's calling card or something. I was very much aware of it when I went to bed, and tried not to make any moves that might make it flare up. I was generally successful, but on a few occasions it was like being sent a message that said "do that again, or add a tiny bit of extra pressure, and it's going to hurt".

  For all that I had a fairly comfortable night. It was one of those nights when huge great periods of time passed by with no memory of it passing, but also long feeling, but obviously short periods of time being awake a few times in the night. I always think the best bit of sleep is the "5 minutes" you try for after waking up feeling it is a bit early, and that 5 minutes turns out to be more like 90 minutes. It was just after sunrise when I woke up after that extra long "five minutes extra", and I woke up feeling strangely good again. Apart from the now traditional pain in my right buttock after sitting at my computer for 2 hours or more now, I sort of feel fairly free of pain, and the earlier sunshine (which seems to be fading out now) added an extra bit of happiness.

  Today is the sort of day where I think I would convince myself to ignore any initial discomfort, and go for at least a 3 mile walk. Three miles is probably all I can manage while I am so out of practice. Unfortunately I won't be going for a walk today. Waiting in for my booze delivery is one good reason not to leave the house, and another is that as well as Thursday afternoons, it seems Sunday afternoon has now become a regular boozing session - which is good because Sunday as always been the most miserable day of the week since as far back as I can remember (which is probably last Tuesday !).

  One thing I have to do today before I clear the dining room for boozing, is something I should have done yesterday - transferring the last part of the "Horizon - Red Sky In Orbit" documentary from VHS to digital file.  I'll probably start that as soon as I have had a shower. Other than that, and the actual tidying up of the dining room, I can sit back and relax until later this afternoon. With luck the Aquavit will arrive before the end of the boozing session.

  Did I mention that my blood glucose was down to a very good 7.2mmol/ this morning. That is very good, although if it could be like that most days I would be trying to keep it down to something like 6.8mmol/l. Nevertheless, 7.2mmol/l is very, very good compared to most days this month.