This morning started out dry, but when I opened the curtains just before 8am I saw the first light rain. It is still light enough to be almost invisible when looked at through the window, but it is still getting the road very wet. If the forecast holds it will soon turn to heavy rain, and that could last until midday. The latest revision to the forecast shows light rain for 1pm, and then from 2pm to 4pm there could be sunny spells or even full sunshine - just as the sun is setting. The light rain following sunset in the screenshot above is not shown on the latest revision. Today's temperature should rise from 11° C this morning to 14° C for a couple of hours in the mid afternoon. Tomorrow may only see a high of 12° C after a wet morning. The afternoon may see sunny spells, but rain is expected again later.

  I am doing my best to limit my electricity consumption this winter. It is because the price of all fuels is rising so high now. I am hoping to build up a bit of credit for when it get so cold that I need to use the heater up high, and for most of the day. However, now and again, a little luxury is called for, and yesterday I turned the heater up full blast for half an hour, or maybe even nearly a full hour.

  The special occasion was that I wanted my bedroom to be nice and warm after coming back from the bathroom with wet hair after washing my hair, and having a shower. Once I was in my bedroom the heater was turned off in favour of the hair dryer. Once that was off I left all the heating off for a while. It was because I knew the next thing I did, walking to and from Tesco would keep me warm, and in fact would heat me up internally enough that a bit of coolness would help me cool down.

  I don't know why I do it, but as usual I passed by the reduced price shelves, and bought some inappropriate things. You have to be very selective about what you get from that bit of the shop. It does not seem a good bargain to find packs of rather expensive steamed salmon with just 20p off, and I didn't even consider it. I did consider, and buy, several packs of mini pies that were close to half price. I also bought a shallow dish shaped pack of humus with chick peas. That was also close to half price.

  The trouble with the humus (spelt with a "u" in my brains spell checker, but not the computers spell checker) is that I bought it without a clear idea of what I was going to do with it. I may end up scooping it onto rice cakes today, or......???? The big trouble with these bargains is that they are not always good for me. Yesterday, as part one of lunch I ate 4 mini pork pies, and two mini (mini - two bites) pork with cranberry pies. They all had a low sugar content, but a high calories count - at least I think they did, but I didn't dare look.

  Eating those pies then was a stupid idea for a better reason. One thing I intended to buy and use, was a small pack of oven chips. The smallest bag I could find was actually seasoned, thin potato wedges - basically triangular chips. That bag held about two reasonable sized portions, and because two many came out the bag when I poured them onto the baking tray, I ended up cooking a medium large portion. I stuffed them down for lunch part two.

  The chips and the pies left me feeling quite stuffed, and I needed to lay down while I digested it. I mostly read, but I did try and have a snooze. I didn't fall asleep because I knew I had to get back to washing a hand towel that I had left soaking after my shower. It must have been 3pm before I had given it five rinses followed by fabric conditioner. It was only one item, and not really that big, but with that lunch inside of me I had to do it is two sessions, but I eventually got it hanging up to dry on the clothes horse.
  After all that I reckoned I deserved a whisky. I have know idea what caused the change, but it seems my taste buds have changed. This Johnnie Walker Double Black label whisky always seemed to taste unpleasantly sooty, but yesterday the sooty taste seemed to be very mild, and it was quite enjoyable. During the rest of the afternoon, and early evening I had several tots of the stuff, but it didn't feel appropriate to get blotto yesterday.
  When the sun started to go down I thought I would bring a bit of warm light, and potentially a nice smell to my bedroom. I lit up four large tealight type candles that I had bought from Savers the previous day. On the previous day I had tried some "mixed berry" scented candles of the same make and size. They were definitely scented and gave off a sort of cooking jam sort of smell. It was OK, but not a really nice smell. I had high hopes for the vanilla scented candles of the same make and type. I was very disappointed. There was hardly even a hint of vanilla, or anything else except for burning wax.

  I spent a fair bit of the evening watching the usual TV programmes, and in the middle of watching I had my dinner. After my excessive lunch I knew I had to have a small-ish dinner. I chose 4 Turkish beef sausages with a bit of low sugar tomato ketchup. Those sausages gave off a lot of fat when I cooked them in my mini oven, and they ended up a little bit dry. They were quite expensive, and the sad thing is that I didn't really like them. They were not unpleasant, but just lacked any excitement.

  I had a terrible night last night. It took ages of thrashing around before I finally got to sleep after midnight. For once it was not the old too hot/too cold bother. I just felt uncomfortable, and I can't really put my finger on any particular reason. Sometimes it was because I couldn't seem to find a good position for my arms, but I don't even know if that was a cause or symptom.

  What I can't decide is if this bad insomnia was only before the first time I fell asleep, or if it dogged me later in the night. It did seem that once I fell asleep I slept for over 2 hours, and possibly over 3 hours. I can only remember waking up for a pee twice for most of the night, and after the first one I think I struggled to get to sleep again, but it probably wasn't for long, and once again I slept for 2 or three hours. I remember putting the heater on at 4am, and so I was awake then, but after that I seemed to wake up frequently, and have difficulty getting back to sleep again.

  I finally got up at just after 7am, and it was mainly because I was getting bored trying to get back to sleep. It still feels like I missed a good couple of hours of sleep last night. After my excesses yesterday I was thinking my my blood glucose reading would be very high, but no, it was just 8.4mmol/l, and my running average for the month dropped a tiny bit. It is currently 8.33mmol/l.

  It was useful to not have a very high blood glucose reading because I wanted to try a couple of instant noodles I had never tried before. They were too expensive for anything more than a test. They were Nissin "cup noodles", and I tried two for breakfast this morning. One was Peking Duck flavour, and it started out tasting very nice, but maybe my taste buds were getting over saturated because the last bit of it was more a sort of cardboard taste. It was not a good time to test thes the second one with taste buds in poor state. Maybe the Yakitori chicken flavour would have tasted a lot nice with fresh taste buds.

  It must be getting boring to keep saying that I have no idea what I am doing today again. As I write this the sky is grey and the rain continues to fall. By now it should be heavy rain, but it still seems to be very light rain - the type that soaks you to the skin so gently that you don't realise it until you have to empty your shoes out ! I think it is pretty certain I am not going out in this weather. One thing I must do today is a small backlog of washing up. Once I have done that I can start to prepare, and partly cook my dinner ready for a final 15 minutes in the microwave tonight. Maybe I'll also try and have a good snooze today. After last night I probably deserve one. Other than that it will be a case of finding enough odds and sods to avoid too deep boredom.