It is bright and
sunny this morning, and iut could stay that
way for a few hours yet. This afternoon is
just pot luck. It probably will rain sometime,
but the latest revision only shows light rain
at 2 and 3pm and another shower at 6pm. It
seems like no one can really predict this
weather, and it could equally end up as a dry
day, or one with heavy rain. It is still
predicted to be 17° C in the early afternoon.
The forecast for tomorrow is probably just
fantasy at this time, but for what it is
worth....it should be bright in the morning
with some sunny spells in the early afternoon,
but rain towards the end of the afternoon.
Once again 17° C is predicted, but even that
could be very different tomorrow.
I guess I could describe yesterday as
being a sort of quiet day. I didn't do much,
but then again I didn't have a lot of free
time. The most significant thing I did was the
housework in the dining room that I suggested
I might do when writing yesterday morning. I
did slightly more than hoovering up all
Jodie's crumbs from the floor while hoovering
all the floor. I also scrubbed the "wipe
clean" PVC table cloth in the dining room. All
the beer and food stains are gone, but some
splashed of red candle wax will have to stay
for now.
After the hoovering and tablecloth
cleaning. It would almost look quite good, but
apart from some stuff on the floor (in boxes)
that I would really like to store elsewhere,
the ancient carpet has seen better days, and
some stains are so old they are now probably
holding it together. If I ever finish the
painting in the dining room, I may look out a
cheap bit of off cut/end of roll carpet to put
down in the dining room - possibly using the
old carpet as underlay.
I thought I had better record some
confirmation of my saying that the temperature
rose to 20° C yesterday. The bottom figure in
the picture is the room temperature, and it
was being heated just by sunshine - on a day
when there wasn't really supposed to be any
sunshine. All three outside sensors are on the
north side of the house, and very rarely see
the sun, and then only for a few days either
side of mid summers day when the sun is at
it's highest. They can see reflected infra red
radiation from the clouds, and maybe that
might have added a degree at best to these
readings (but of course that is really just a
figure drawn out of thin air). Maybe the best
indicator is that I went into the garden for a
minute or two, with no shirt one, and while
there was no hot sun on bare skin feeling, it
did feel warm out there.
The thing that took up a lot of my time
was a return to copying stuff from recordable
CDs and DVDs onto exteranl USB hard disks. It
all came about when I was cleaning the dining
room table. I needed to take two candles in
old bottles off the table, and I decided I
would put them in the front room, above the TV
in there. They can stay there until autumn
when a bit of extra heat and light would be
useful. Before putting them above the TV I had
to removed about a 4 inch high pile of
recordable DVD disks.
I had made them as video DVDs to make
playing video files easier on the TV using a
DVD player. The annoying thing is that my TV
can play some video files direct off, for
instance, a USB thumb drive. But it is very
fussy, and I have yet to find a definitive
answer about what kind of files it can play,
and those it can't. In the end, to avoid
delays and disappointment, I just burned the
video files to video DVD. Not all the disks
were video DVDs. Some were data disks, and one
was a VCD disk.
As I say, the pile was about 4
inches high, and that was without the disks
being in boxes or sleeves ! I had hoped that I
could find the original video files I had
burnt as DVDs, and in some cases I could. That
speeded up the process, but in quite a few
cases I couldn't seem to find the originals,
and I had to resort to ripping the DVDs back
to mp4 video files - a rather slow process.
All through the day I was keeping an
eye on the weather, and comparing reality with
the ever changing forecasts. One oddity was
comparing the BBC forecast and their animated
weather map a bit further down the page. That
animated weather shows the clouds, and the
strength of their rainfall zipping across the
sky. While their main forecast showed the
possibility of all hell being let loose, the
animated weather suggested we would just be
touched by the very bottom, and quite narrow
portion of a single rainy cloud, and that was
the light shower at 3pm
I took the two
pictures above at approximately midday -
when the first heavy rain was originally
predicted. The top picture, looking north,
shows a large area of blue sky, and mostly
fluffy and streaky clouds - the type that
don't usually drop rain. The lower picture
shows bright sunshine (look at the shadows
cast by the cars, for instance). A lot of
the morning was like this, or better, and
although it may have got slightly duller
for the next three hours, it wasn't until
3pm when we had the first light shower
(and only shower until very late
afternoon). I could have gone for a nice
sunny walk in my shirtsleeves if only I
had known it would be like this.
My eating was a bit variable
yesterday. I had a double dose of instant
noodles for breakfast. A packet of cheese
flavours micro chipsticks for elevenses.
Lunch was two little "salad pots" of puy
lentils. Dinner was going to be diced beef
stew with broccoli, but I didn't have it
ready on time because I was stupidly
trying to cook the broccoli with the heat
turned to low on the slow cooker.
I went for something faster
to cook. It was a pack of cheese
croquettes. They were supposed to be
cooked from frozen, but they were
defrosted when I bought them from the
reduced price shelf in Tesco. Maybe if
they had started frozen they may have kept
their shape during cooking, but mine just
sort of melted. In that state, and with
some of it stuck to the foil I lined the
cooking tray with, it came out looking a
lot smaller than expected. It topped off
that small dinner with haolf a tub of low
calorie/sugar ice cream.
I did my typical TV viewing
yesterday evening, and by 10pm I was
feeling rather tired despite doing so
little during the day. It was remarkably
easy to fall asleep once I had put my book
down, and turned out the light. I could
have slept really well last night but for
one problem - the temperature. It was
almost warm enough to sleep uncovered, and
a little too warm under the duvet. After
waking up feeling cold twice I gave in and
turned the heater on low. That helped but
it didn't seem to be a complete cure.
The outcome of my unusual eating
yesterday was not terrible, but 9.2mmol/l
is a higher blood glucose reading than I
am happy with. Tonight I will definitely
need to eat my beef and broccoli stew, and
hopefully I'll get a better reading
tomorrow morning. Of course there is one
factor that may send things awry today,
and that involves Guinness !
Until this morning I was looking
forward to seeing Angela in the pub at
lunchtime. A few days ago I spoke to her
and she was looking forward to it (as far
as I can tell), but this morning she
messaged me to say she couldn't come
because today she is getting a ceiling
re-plastered. It was ages ago she told me
it would have to be done some time because
a large chunk of plaster had fallen down
after a water leak.
It looks like I'll be on my own in
the pub today, but I shall go there via
the railway so I can grab a couple of
copies of The Metro, and do a bit of train
spotting. It is possible I could stay for
three pints of Guinness today, and who
knows how I could ruin my diet after that
!!! All I have to do now is to see if I
dare go without a coat. If it is like it
is as I write this, it would be fine
without a coat, but it could pour with
rain when I leave the pub.....
1
