The forecast says 4° C, but all my thermometers agree it was 2.5° C, and we only missed a frost by the skin of our teeth this morning. The clear sky today should bring lots of sunshine, and that should help raise the temperature to 10° C. Some cloud may appear from time to time, and change the sunshine to just sunny spells, but I suspect it will be very random, and the forecasters will never put a definite time on it. Tomorrow and to some extent the day after will follow the same pattern as today. It may not be until next Monday before we see the temperature get higher than 10° C, and it will come at the expense of more cloud, and maybe more rain too.
  I think it fair to say that yesterday was a bit of a disaster by some criteria. The day started off OK, albeit in a quiet way. I did very little apart from even more CD ripping. I think I have now caught up with where I left off the last time I did some intensive ripping. I will now have to be careful not to duplicate my efforts, but I think there are still a few CDs that I have never ripped before.

   It has been a useful exercise because I have been playing some CDs, via their mp3 rips, that I had forgotten I owned. Many are not that wonderful, and that is why they have been forgotten under piles of dust. On the other hand, tastes do change, and I am finding stuff that I probably wouldn't have bothered to listening to once, is now, from slightly to better than slightly, enjoyable.

  I had to clear the CDs and external CD drive off the dining room table in the afternoon for another beer tasting/drinking session. On this occasion Jodie and I were joined by Michael for the first time in ages. Apparently he is still a bit unwell, but more stable now than he was, although he warns us that it is one of those things that comes and goes. Michael only stayed for just over an hour, but it was good to get a bit more conversation going. The thing with Jodie is that the beer is everything. Like a wine snob she has to savour it, and write up her notes and stuff. I assume she also enjoys it, but sometime I wonder.

  I think I can blame Jodie for turning yesterday into a disaster. It started when she turned up with a packet of what looked like crisps, but they were actually made with chick pea flour and other pulses. They were tangy tomato flavour, and too spicy for Jodie to eat. She gave them to me, and I found them extremely moreish. By the end of the drinking I had scoffed the lot. Their sugar content was a bit high, but if they had been the only bad thing I ate I might have gotten away with it.

  Jodie also brought over some "Wicked" long life mini vegetarian meals. One of them even looked palatable ! They reminded me of some vegetarian things I had bought in the past, and never used. In fact I would swear they came out of the same factory. Mine were an Aldi own brand, and so half the price of the fancy "Wicked" one, but they came in identical containers. When I checked the ones I have had sitting in the kitchen for ages I saw thet their best before date was last November.

  It seemed prudent to eat some, three of them in all, before too much more time passed. The reason I had not eaten them before was their relatively high sugar content. I also had doubts as to how nice they might be. Those doubts were confirmed. Maybe it was just their age, but the lentil shepherds pie was close to unpleasant. The mashed potato on top of the lentil stew was brown, and maybe it was mashed lentils or something because it didn't taste like potato. The three bean chilli was close to nasty.

  The thord pot was actually from Tesco and it was described as minced beef and onions. I am unsure now if it was described as vegetarian mince (as if such a thing could exist), but it didn't seem like meat mince unless it was minced gerbil or something. I can't say I enjoyed any of my dinner, and knowing that each pot seemed to have quite a lot of sugar in it just made things worse. Then there was the future effect of all those lentils to worry about.

  Last night was another night when I watched a single episode of The Simpsons, and then turned the TV off for a couple of hours until an episode of QI was due on Dave. It was a fair episode, although I could remember watching this episode before not so long ago - or so t seemed. At least it didn't have Johnny "Thick Git" Vegas on it ! I think it ended at 10pm (but it might have been 9pm). After it finished I went back to bed to read a few more pages from the book I am reading.

  I'm sure it wasn't long after 10pm when I tried to get to sleep, and succeeded in doing so fairly quickly. I didn't sleep well though. By 11pm I was up again because it was almost as if the lentils I had eaten earlier were doing their usual stuff rather quickly. I had a fair sized poo, and went back to bed. It didn't take long to get back to sleep. I woke quite a few times in the night, and on two occasions I woke up very abruptly.

  I can remember which came first, but on one occasion I had to leap out of bed with the muscles in my left calf cramping. Fortunately I got some weight on them before they became too painful, and a few minutes later everything was back to normal. The second time was when a dream seemed too realistic. I dreamed I was in bed, and had accidently crapped in bed. I woke up fearing the worst, but if anything at all happened back in real life, I may have farted.

  I was passing a fair bit of wind from time to time. It feels like it was too premature to blame it on the lentils I had only eaten 5 or 6 hours earlier, but maybe some evidence emerged that would put the blame on them. There were a couple of time during the night when I thought I felt hungry when I woke up, but one of my troubles is I can't seem to distinguish between hunger pains and a stomach upset. Last night it felt like hunger, but before long it would turn out that it was just my gusts churning away at, probably, an overdose of lentils.

  I got up before I really wanted to this morning, and it was partly because I felt uncomfortable, although not in any specific way. I had the usual selection of aches and pains, and any "bottom pain" seemed minor by comparison. It wasn't until I went to the toilet that the truth was revealed - a surprising amount of it - and I am sure I could detect lentils in it ! That, and the second visit to the toilet 10 minutes later, was not the worst of it.

  When I checked my blood glucose it was up to 8.7mmol/l this morning. It could have been worse, and I did expect it to be, but at a more rational level it wasn't too bad. I have had two reading of 8.8mmol/l this month, and still my running average is heading for a record low, but each reading above, say 8.0mmol/l, spoils the running average for the month. The current running average is 7.85mmol/l, and compared to every month for the last couple of years, that is still very good, but I think I am aiming for an average of 7.5mmol/l for my next target, and if I meet that then I will try for 7.0mmol/l. I doubt I will try for anything lower, although an occasional reading of below 6.0mmol/l would be nice.

  During writing the paragraph before last I have heard from Angela. On Wednesday she was saying she hoped we might be able to meet this lunchtime, and maybe even have a slightly extended lunchbreak, but she just told me she doesn't think she can make it today. I think I will get myself ready in case she changes her mind at the last minute. It might be possible that I will pop in the pub by myself. That assumes I take advantage of the sunshine, and get out for some photography and/or exercise.