There should be sunny spells later today, but the latest revision to the forecast now says the first will be at 11am. At the moment it looks rather dull. It should stay dry today, and the temperature should rise to 7° C. That may not feel too bad in sunshine - provided the wind is no more than the very lightest breeze. Tomorrow could be a watered down version of today - the temperature a degree less, and only a handful of sunny spells.
 
   This morning I feel I can only judge yesterday as good and bad, but I suppose that doesn't make it all that different to most days. One good thing about yesterday is that I made sure I kept warm, and I suffered from hardly any aches and pains for most of the day.

  A nice hot shower would have dealt with any lingering pains, but first of all I had to finish the washing that was all nasty and cold after being abandoned the day before. Doing laundry by hand is a fair test of how my body is working, and yesterday it did seem to be working quite well. That washing consisted of two white t-shirts and a hand towel. As usual the hand towel seemed to need more rinses than t-shirts. Instead of three rinses I gave everything 5 rinses before dunking just the t-shirts in fabric conditioner.

  I think it may have been after hanging the washing up to dry that Jodie called in sick. It seems the bug she has is hanging on, and she has an appointment to see her doctor in a few days time to see if she needs any medication. Apparently it started as a dry cough, but is now getting wetter and wetter. I'm sure she said she was producing copious green snot when the phoned last Sunday, but she now says it was just a cough.

  Not long after Jodie called I heard from Michael. He was heading for Tesco, as he usually does on a Thursday, and asked if I would like him to pick up some bottles of Diet Coke for me. I said yes please. On this occasion I was doubly grateful for him getting them. I had been considering going out myself, but I was most happy to avoid a walk in the cold air. Staying in the warm was probably instrumental in avoiding the aches and pains I suffered from the day before.

  It may have been around 2pm when Michael sent a text message to say he would drop the Cokes off in 5 minutes time. That did mean going out in the cold air, without a coat (although I could have put a coat on) to collect them from the back of his car.  Michael asked if we were drinking later, and I said that Jodie had called in sick. I also said it could be a good opportunity for a drink in a pub, but also that my guts felt a bit volatile, and I didn't fancy going to a pub like that, but if Michael wanted to pop around as usual we could have some beers together. That is what happened.

  Not having to wait for Jodie to slowly sip her beer, and write up her tasting notes on the untappd web site, meant I could pour myself a beer as soon as my glass was empty. Apart from one very nice German beer, which we shared, we generally drunk our own beers. I guess I probably drank more beer than usual, but not a lot, and there were no follow up whiskies. I seemed to feel almost sober.

  Michael went home about his usual time, or at least half an hour before Jodie would typically leave. Once I was on my own I added the vegetable to the diced pork I had stewed earlier. I gave the complete stew 15 minutes in the microwave, and started watching some TV. I then waited for a commercial break before getting the stew out of the microwave. It had had about 15 minutes to cool off, and I could eat it straight away.

  I don't know if it was the booze, or if it was part of the healing process for some sort of bug that had been responsible for all my aches and pains, but when the episode of Star Trek I was watching finished, I seemed to feel very tired. After taking the casserole dish I had cooked my dinner, and eaten it from, to the kitchen, and then brushed my teeth, I was in bed by 7.15pm. I them seemed to sleep fairly solidly for 4 hours.

  I woke up at about 11:15pm and didn't not feel all that good. First of all there was the old problem of feeling too hot under the duvet, and too cold without it. One option was to turn the heater completely off. That would have saved a lot of money, and would probably have worked well. The only downside, and why I didn't do that, was that it would take ages to warm my bedroom up in the morning. The other option was to turn the heater up so it was warm enough to not have to worry about leaving arms or legs outside the duvet. That is what I did.

  I think it was towards the end of that first 4 hours of sleep that I had the strangest of dreams. It was one of those dreams that had no real start, and no real end. The first I remember was sharing a bed with a woman. On the other side of the room was another double bed which had a woman who I would have preferred to be in bed with, and a younger women sharing the bed.

  It was strange that despite how you (or I) might think when in such an intimate position, there seemed to be no thought of sex. The only interaction between me and the woman in the same bed was that she fluffed up my pillows when I sat up for a few moments. I think my main though was how wide the bed must bed because I seemed to have some room to move around without disturbing the woman. I managed to find a very comfortable position, and just about to go to sleep when I got cramp in my left leg - both in the dream, and in reality.

  I instantly woke up, and after a slight wriggle, or something like that, the cramp eased. It was unusual that I didn't have to get out of bed, and put weight on my legs to clear the cramp. It was during the short time I was awake that I formed a hypothesis about why there was no physical interaction with my bed partner in the dream. I think that each of us was laying on a folded over duvet, with the fold on the middle of the bed.

  After a while, having rationalised why the dream couldn't get sexy, I fell asleep again. I wasn't really that comfortable when I fell asleep, and it wasn't until I woke up another 2 hours later that I realised what was wrong. It was the ultimate outcome of the same dodgy gut feeling I had mentioned to Michael in the early afternoon. Finally, half a day after I started to feel that my guts were volatile, I had to go out to my very cold bathroom, sit on the toilet, and make a large deposit. After that I should have slept well, but I just couldn't seem to get comfortable for other reasons than my guts - which seemed fine until this morning.

  I suspect I was getting a lot more sleep than it seemed like, but by about 6.30am I gave up trying to sleep, and got up. Soon after I did three things. One was another productive visit to the toilet. Next was to check my blood glucose. I had tried to be careful about what I ate yesterday, and I was successful. My excessive 9.3mmol/l yesterday morning had dropped to a perfectly good 8.1mmol/l when I checked my blood glucose. The third thing I did was to weigh myself. After eating more sparingly, and avoiding anything known to have too much sugar in it, it would seem I put on about a while kilogram. I though I might have taken a few hundred grammes off. Oh well, you can't win them all.

  I suspect today will be a boring day. I don't think I will be doing anything, although maybe I will wash a few items of clothing. I had been thinking of going to Aldi, but there is nothing I really need, and I think I would prefer to stay in the warm, and also avoid temptation. I have plenty to read today, and I still have loads of episodes of Futurama to watch in another binge session if I think that will fill a need.