It is currently about 5° C, but starting to fall, and it is raining. Only light rain is forecast, but it seems heavier than some of the heavier rain forecast for yesterday. There maybe little to no rain after 11am this morning, and it may slightly brighten up, but the temperature is going to slowly fall to 2° C by the end of the day. We might see a few sunny spells tomorrow morning, and the rest of the day could feature bright clouds. Tomorrow may start at -1° C, and it will only warm up to about 7° C in the middle of the afternoon. The day after tomorrow, Sunday, could see a marvellous 14° C if we are really lucky !
 
   In the grand scheme of things, yesterday was at least a satisfactory day - mostly. There were a few disappointments, and one of them was part of one of the two good things yesterday. I went shopping in Tesco late in he morning, and everything seemed fine. There was little rain, and the walk seemed pleasant enough, but when I got home I realised I had forgotten to buy a few things that were part of the reason I went there in the first place.

  I did get the essentials - stuff like cabbage and broccoli, and some chicken and diced beef. I didn't get any cheesed or ham (or other cold meats), and I am not sure if they were essential or whether it might have even been a good thing, aka more healthy, not to have bought them. It was still disappointing though.

  One thing I did buy were two pots of Itsu rice noodles. One was chilli, and the other was satay (peanut) flavoured. They looked enticing, but I have to say they were most disappointing. They claim to be based on a wonderful broth, but I found both flavours to be insipid, and rice noodles seem a bit crappy compared to wheat based noodles. Oh well, it was an interesting experiment, and now, having tried them, I can consign them to the deepest depths of my memory, and never buy any more.

  I must admit I was tempted to buy a big pot of Soba instant noodles. The sachets are very nice, although more expensive than most. The big pots cost £2 each, and seem like a rip off to me. Those Itso rice noodles were not cheap either, but maybe Clubcard discount (£1.75 discounted down to £1) was the trigger to buy them, although after eating them I doub't they were worth more than 50p !

  I know half my lunch was the satay flavoured rice noodle pot, but I can't seem to recall what the other half was. It may have been a sandwich, or it may have been soup. Maybe I will never remember. After lunch I relaxed and did almost nothing for maybe an hour, but then I had to get the dining room ready for some boozing, and do some washing up so I could prepare the first stage of my dinner's preparation and cooking.

  I thought I was expecting Jodie to come over in the afternoon for our mostly regular beer tasting session. She has been busy lately, and I know, or at least I think I know that she wasn't available last Sunday because she was either preparing to go to Finland, or may even have been on her way. I think she, and boyfriend Alan were going to a gig - evidently of some importance to Jodie (I can't even be bothered to go to Bromley recently !). Maybe Jodie was not back yesterday, or was back but too tired/beered out/or something to come over.

  Fortunately Michael was definitely up for a beer, and we had a good time drinking and chatting about this that and the other. We also delved into my latest beer delivery - featuring beers that Jodie doesn't even know I ordered. All the beers we had ranged between very nice and excellent - which make a change from some of the beers Jodie's likes - or maybe used to like. It does seem recently that her tastes are heading back to the more conventional.

  After Michael left, at around 6pm, I added the last ingredient to my dinner, and did the last 15 minutes cooking in the microwave cooker. Apart from stock cubes and some white pepper, it was no more than chicken breast and broccoli. I can't understand how it happened, but as I gave it its final cooking it was as if the stock boiled off, or was absorbed by the broccoli somehow. The end result seemed very nice, but it seemed smaller than desired. It was not long before I had a cheese sandwich because I wanted something else*.
 
* What I really wanted was a cigarette. After eating is the most common time for wanting one, but maybe only towards the end of a day that is starting to get boring, or unexciting. A cheese sandwich was probably no less healthy than a single cigarette, but I went for the cheese sandwich anyway.

  Last night was another night where the programme guide description for QI didn't look appealing, and I headed for bed at 9pm instead of turning the TV on again. I read in bed for maybe half an hour, and then tried to sleep. It did take maybe half an hour before I fell into quite a deep sleep. After drinking 3 or 4 or (?) bottles of beer I could not ignore any feeling that I needed to get up for a pee. My memory of last night's sleep is hazy like a dream memory, but I think I may have only woken after getting three hours of sleep instead of the more usual two hours.

  I seemed to have some "comfortable" dreams last night. They were sort of interesting without being very exciting. One dream involved going for a train tour on the preserved "little red train", ex Central line tube train. It was one of those strange dreams where what started out as a 2 car train gradually lengthened to a four, or even five car train. Maybe only one of the carriages actually had the traditional old style tube train interior.

  The train tour covered quite a lot of ground, but I think most of the travel was sort of edited out by having each stop as a separate short dream. One stop was supposed to be Chesham, but it was nothing like Chesham. It was in the middle of a field with nothing around by a buffer stop at the end of some rusty rails. The opposite was a stop at Waterloo station that for the sake of the action had a disused tube platform next to the mainline platforms.

  There were other oddments to those tube train dreams, but most were too vague to try and describe - except one. This bit of dream only lasted long enough to open a door, look in and close the door again. What made it weird was that apparently hat carriage had a leaky roof, and what I saw when I opened that doors was about two inches of water slopping around the floor of the carriage.

  I had one more set of linked dreams shortly before I woke up. They were set in a sort of mix between different places I have worked in, and my workmates were also drawn from different jobs. In the dream I was designing and building a piece of test equipment for checking, and programming EEPROMS (electrically erasable programmable read only memory). I woke up just after the triumph of my test box seeming to work as desired.

  It felt like I had slept well last night, and I seemed to feel moderately well. My blood glucose had dropped a small, but useful amount to 8.4mmol/l. That is just under my typical average for a month, although I have had so many higher readings this month that it seems unlikely that my end of month average is going to be anything to be proud of - actually quite the opposite (unless a miracle happens). My blood pressure is quite good this morning. It was 110/70, and at this time of the morning it is often a fair bit higher.

  I have two probably plans today, and I don't know if I will do either. One plan is to go shopping in Aldi. I could get the cheese and ham I wanted, and stuff like some sugar free soft drinks, and maybe some tissues of toilet paper (maybe both). I am sure there is other stuff I would end up buying as well.

  The other plan is to go out to a gig tonight. On current form the chance of that happening is slim, but there are a couple of things in it's favour. The first is that it is in The Birds Nest pub, and that is just 15 to 20 minutes away on a 47 bus, and second is that Michael would like to go as well - more than I do because his son (in law?) is the drummer. One minor downside is that before the interior of the pub was changed, the bands were tucked away in a cramped corner. I believe things have been improved, but I can still imagine it being a bit of a crush. The bigger downside is that while it should be dry, it could be as little as 2° C by 9pm, although very light winds may make that more bearable. Last night we decided we would make our decisions by 5pm tonight. I am sort off hoping that Michael pulls out first.