The forecast has changed to show more sunshine than the early version in the screenshot above. It seems odd that the temperature prediction hasn't increased - particularly considering all my thermometers say it has already hit 10° C 4 hours early. The wind is predicted to be very light today, and so it should feel warmer even with the apparent lower temperatures. Tomorrow should still stay dry, and it will be several degrees warmer despite there being less sunshine.

   My original plan for yesterday was to see how my previously volatile guts were doing, and if they seemed OK I would go for a walk - maybe a short walk, or if I felt OK, a longer walk. That didn't happen because everyone else's plans changed. I was expecting two parcel deliveries today, but it is lucky I checked because both were going to arrive yesterday.
  It meant a sort of stressful day being on high alert so I didn't miss the couriers. The first delivery would be by Yodel, and like many courier companies they have a possibly undeserved reputation of only giving you 3.7 seconds to answer the door before they are halfway to the next county. Fortunately they do provide a very good tracking service, and by keeping an eye on it I was able to open the front door just as the van pulled up.

  I think it was almost 2pm when that delivery arrived. It was two boxes of beers. One was an assortment of beers from far and wide, and the other was a a box of strong beers. They may not be ideal beers if you are having a session in the pub, but I do like a couple when drinking at home. I did indeed have a couple last night. One was a Belgium Gulden Drak (Golden Drake) - a delicious 10.5% red beer.
  This was the other strong beer. Only 7.4% this time. It is something I have never seen before. I have seen and drunk plenty of monastery brewed beers from Belgium or France, but I've never seen on from England before. It's style was very typical of monastery beers, and because I like that style a lot I very much enjoyed it.

  My next deliver was from Amazon, and the best they could offer as a delivery time was between 4pm and 7pm (earlier in the day it gave an even wider spread of times). I knew it would not be early because the driver (or at least my parcel) didn't leave the Dartford depot until 11.44am. It actually arrived at just gone 5pm. I had to slightly delay my dinner to play with what I bought. It was another analogue video to streaming video via USB converter. I have one which does a fair job, but really only works using Windows XP (or later).

  I wanted another, and hopefully (and actually) different model to see if I could use it with my Linux PC. The answer to that was yes and no. I did sort of get it to work, but the frame rate was American 30fps, and not the English 25 fps I was feeding it, and the picture resolution was about right for American, NTSC VHS quality. If I were to use the app that came with it, which is only for Windows, I could change both the frame rate, and screen resolution with ease. It should be possible to do so using Linux, but it is a matter of finding out how.

  While waiting for my deliveries I needed lots of little distractions. Reading stuff off the internet took up a few longish periods, but I still wanted some short distractions. I looked around and spied my Pulse Oximeter gathering dust in the corner of my desk. I thought that if my recent off colour days were anything to do with Covid then I might have a reduction of lung capacity. My Pulse Oximeter tells a different story. A %SpO2, or oxygen concentration was remarkably good. 99% is very high, and many healthy people can't get more than 97%. As can be seen by my pulse rate of 55bpm, I was getting that high reading while very relaxed.


  Another brief distraction was when I spotted a strange bird fly into my garden. It first alighted on the fence, and then flew to the bird table, where I took this useless screenshot from my CCTV camera. It gave the bird table a quick look over, didn't like what it saw, and flew off again.

  It took a suggestion from a friend to finally confirm on the RSPB website that it was a Jay. There is, of course, an infinitely better picture of a Jay on their website, and it does match what I saw with my own eyes rather well.

  The website says their favourite food is acorns, but that they eat other nuts, as well as some young animals. I wonder if it has visited my bird table before, and found peanuts on it. If it is quick it will find some this morning.

  I was quite tempted to get a takeaway last night. Past experience many times has proved that shish kebabs are very good for my blood glucose, and after my high reading in the morning I was trying to control what I was eating better than I had done in the last few days. I had two cans of soup at lunchtime, and very few snacks during the day. A couple of shish kebabs would have gone down well, but in the end I decided to make my own dinner.
  It was quite a simple dinner, but it seemed to be quite filling. It also required some preparation. Mostly hidden by the pile of Rocket are cherry tomatoes, radishes. spring onions, and celery. On top of the Rocket are a couple of Aldi, quarter pounder beef burgers. I hope I recognise the packet, with a fuller description on it, the next time I am shopping in Aldi (probably tomorrow). Those burgers were semi lean. They had just enough fat to be moist with a good taste, and yet left very little fat in the dry pan I cooked them on in my mini oven/grill.

  Last night, being a Saturday night, al the TV schedules were different. It is the night where the best TV is Sky Arts, and there were a few possible music programmes on last night. I watch some Robert Plant in concert, also with a few interspersed interviews. It was interesting. That was followed by what should have been good, but wasn't. It was The Who doing a "Tommy" concert. I found it irritating because it was heading towards opera, with lots of orchestra type accompaniment. At the start Roger Daltrey did say that if you weren't expecting electric guitars you would be wrong (or words to that effect). It did include some great screaming guitars, but more of it was soft pap. I turned off after a couple of songs.

  Last night was yet another night when I lost all track of time, but I think I was fast asleep not very long after 9pm, and like the last few times I have written this....and possibly before. I slept really well until about 4am when I sometimes seemed to be more awake than asleep. It was probably indicative that I had gone to sleep early, and had had almost enough sleep by 4am. In the last 2 and a half hours before I gave up, and got up, I felt all sorts of discomforts, and had a sort of nightmare.

  The nightmare seemed to be set in some sort of workshop somewhere, but the nightmare aspect was that that their was a creature from Venus loose in there. It initially took the shape of a small hard pebble that was bouncing off the walls at ground level. I managed to jump on it, and that squished it out like a pancake. In fact I think it looked a lot like a pancake. It was known to be very dangerous (somehow), and it was fighting back all the time, and I looked around for some sort of weapon. I think I wanted something like strong acid, but all I could find was my hot soldering iron. I plunged that into the creature, and there was a lot of bubbling and hissing, but eventually it was dead.

  It was nice to finish that dream, and to wake up. I think that was when I decided to get up. As usual, one of the first things I did was to check my blood glucose. I must have done everything right yesterday because it was down to just 7.8mmol/l this morning, and almost on target. I also checked my weight, and although it has gone up by 300gm it is still a bit lower than it has been for some time now.

  It probably wasn't a good idea, but I thought that two bowls of instant noodles couldn't do too much harm this morning. It just means being a bit careful about lunch, and a bit more careful still about dinner. While I was "cooking" the instant noodles I went out and topped up the bird table. I note that there was still a fair amount of grain left on it from yesterday. I get the impression than now it is a bit warmer, the pigeons are less gluttonous than they were. I mainly put down some bird table quality peanuts. It was while I was in the toilet, just before starting this paragraph, that I heard a sound that is something like a Jay makes (there is an example on the RSPB web page I linked to further up the page). As soon as I finished I rushed into the back bedroom to look out the window. If a Jay had passed by, it didn't stay long.

  The main thing on today's agenda is an afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. Before that I need a shower, and I think I'll wash my hair too. If it feels like I have the time and inclination I would like to go to The Metro Food Centre to but a few ingredient for tonight, and a few upcoming dinners. Stuff like coriander leaf, spring onions, and cherry tomatoes. I think most of those are better than Aldi sell. I may well buy other stuff too, but none of it is essential, and I can get some substitutes form Aldi when I go shopping there tomorrow morning.