After a slightly late start, and then spending a bit of time in the park, I only arrived at the pub about 20 seconds before Angela. I didn't bother to check, but I think it only seemed like I was a bit late because Angela was a bit early. It was wonderful seeing Angela, but it was another occasion when it was just very comfortable rather than being magic. I am not sure what defines "magic", but I know it when it happens.

  I think one problem was that there was little to talk about. Both our lives seem to have been uneventful for the last few weeks. I ended up talking about the old Toshiba laptop I've been playing with. I know it must have been very boring, but Angela was very patient, and even seemed to show some interest, but I am sure she was just being polite...On the other hand, she does seem to draw things like this out of me, and the week before we even talked about train spotting !
  It does occur to me that Angela has no special hobbies, or indeed any hobbies. Although she claims to be not so, my experience, admittedly of several years ago now, that Angela is very house proud, and must do loads of housework. Maybe, and I admit it is a huge maybe, Angela finds my hobbies interesting because she has none of her own. After walking Angela back to her office, and saying goodbye with a nice warm hug, I walked home to pursue my hobbies.

  The first thing I did when I got home was to have some lunch. It started out as a bowl of bacon and lentil soup, but I followed that with some rice cakes with cheese and corned beef on them (plus a sprig of lettuce). I probably didn't need the rice cakes, but I thought I felt hungry, but it turned out to be something else. After lunch I had a snooze, although it actually started with reading a page of two from the book I am reading before I felt my eyelid drooping.

  The real task in the latter part of the afternoon was waiting for my Amazon order to be delivered. It was just some high capacity (800mb) CD-R disks that I didn't really need after changing the optical drive in the old Toshiba laptop to a DVD drive. I double checked the estimated delivery time, and eventually I guess the delivery would take place around 6pm. It was actually more like 6.30pm.

  The worrying thing was that during the afternoon a little grumble from my belly, that I thought was hunger, turned into mild pain. I had a pretty good idea what was happening. I had been to the toilet twice in the morning, but it seemed like my output was less than my input. The same happened the day before. With the Amazon delivery getting uncomfortably close I had to make a long visit to the toilet, and this time my "output was quite large". No more than 5 minutes later I had to pay another visit to the toilet. At least 50% of that was gas, and the combined amount was quite a lot ! I felt much better for that - I actually felt thinner, and I could relax.

  I partly relaxed by getting back to the Toshiba laptop. I wanted to do a few experiments on it. Both of which were successful, albeit it in a limited way. I managed to get Linux Mint 17.2 (my once favourite Linux) to run in live mode of the CD. That surprised me, but I knew it was running at it's very limits, and would be no good in practice. I then rebooted into the Antix Linux that I had installed on it. Once running I installed Lighttpd - the same webserver I use to show these pages.

  Once again I found that although it would run, and serve a default web page, it was pushing things to the limit. I could see that default web page on my desktop PC, but there didn't seem to be enough resources left to run a web browser properly on the laptop. There are other problems too. Antix-21 (the most up to date version) can't seem to get the sound card working - something that Linux Mint had no trouble with.

   It also seems to have difficulty using a Wifi card adapter. That is not essential, but is useful, and for me the sound card is essential because without it I can play any music. All this has got me thinking that maybe I should install another spare hard disk, and see if I can install Windows XP on it. I think it would have to be Windows XP Home edition because it uses less resources, but I am not sure if I have a copy that doesn't need to be registered/authenticated with Microsoft.

  Last night's dinner should have been very safe, but I made the mistake of forgetting that Aldi's Peri-Peri mayonnaise is loaded with sugar, and then used it far too liberally on the mixed lettuce leaves I had with the two warmed up southern fried flavour chicken breasts that I had cooked the night before.  Maybe I was remembering that sugar problem as I was eating because I didn't really enjoy that dinner...pr maybe I am just getting bored with lettuce or something.

  One good thing about that lettuce is that it is a soporific. I am sure I get better sleep after eating it, although last night, and the night before, I did take a couple of ibuprofen tablets before going to bed to help some of the aches I am experiencing lately - particularly my right elbow. It did take a little while to fall asleep because I was trying to go to sleep an hour or more earlier than seems to have become my habit over the last week.

  Once asleep, and I think that was not long after 10pm, I slept quite well. I think I remember getting up for a pee twice before 5am when I also turned the heater on.  I think I remember having a few bland dreams - bland enough that I can't remember a thing about them. There was one dream that I do remember, although most of my memory is of the concept of it rather than an all action, full colour, and probably Supervision, and Supermarionation dream.

  The bit of dream I remember, albeit rather patchily, was about a man who was growing grape vines, and apparently had to select the best, and destroy the rest. It seemed like this was some sort of government edict. I, and many others set up a protest movement about it, as well as stealing the vines that were to be destroyed for planting in our own gardens. Somehow so little action seemed to last quite a long time, but then again, time in a dream has no relation to real time.

  This morning I blame that Aldi Peri-Peris mayonnaise (and the Tesco version is just as bad) for raising my blood glucose to 9.1mmol/l. There might have been other reasons too, but it is not a terrible reading to get. The worst thing is that it ruins my average for the month - or may do. In theory I can take more care, and over the next few days get that running average down closer to a typical 8.3mmol/l.

  Jodie is busy today, and we will probably have our Thursday beer tasting session tomorrow. That leaves me free to do other stuff. I am not sure if the trains are running as usual today. Today being a platinum jubilee bank holiday). If there is a reasonable service I would like to get out, travelling on my Freedom Pass to a couple more limits of it's validity. It could be Chessington South and West Ewell. There is also the possibility of an afternoon gig. The Birds Nest are having a sort of mini festival that is free entry with bands on from 3pm until 11pm (or maybe midnght). If I go it will be for the forst couple of bands in the afternoon. Mostly I will make up today as I work out how I feel at the appropriate time. I may end up doing nothing !