Today is another day when the weather forecasts from the BBC and Met Office don't fully agree. Both say a nice bright start, but the Met Office say the early hours of the afternoon will be dull. The BBC says it will be sunshine all the way, although only sunny spells until 6pm. The afternoon temperature should reach 24 or 25° C. Tomorrow may see the return of rain, although I guess the garden needs it. Having said that, it is only the BBC that says rain, and then only in the early evening. Both say that the morning and afternoon should feature sunshine or sunny spells with an afternoon temperature of 26 or even 27° C. That sort of temperature could boil up a thunderstorm, although there are no warnings of such.
  In theory I should have fasted for as much of yesterday as I was able to, but I ate pretty much normally because the morning weather did not set me up with the right mood for fasting. More about this subject later. Now I have to work out a way to describe not doing anything important, but still doing something....yesterday.

  It's easiest to start at the beginning. I think I delayed it by maybe an hour, but I had my usual breakfast of a bowl of instant noodles. It was not even one of the smaller packs of instant noodles, it was more sort of medium sized. After such a high blood glucose reading in the morning, 10.8mmol/l, well into the red zone, it was not ideal, but as I explained yesterday, I couldn't believe it was an accurate reading.

  I think it must have happened after I finished writing yesterday - I had a text message from Angela. It was almost as if she wanted to remind me that it is my birthday tomorrow, but I think there was more to it than that. One other thing that she asked seemed significant. She asked if I planned to have my usual afternoon beer tasting session tomorrow. There was a hint that maybe, for the first time, she might join us to celebrate my birthday. I think it is unlikely, but could happen. It could also happen that we will meet today for our once usual Wednesday lunchtime pub meet.

  After exchanging messages with Angela I may have snoozed. I certainly laid down and read some pages from the current book I am reading. At midday I once again ignored any idea of fasting, and cooked 5 frozen sausages for my lunch. They double confirmed my idea that Tesco frozen pork sausages are far nicer than Richmond frozen pork sausages. It was while eating that I came across something that kept me amused for many hours in the afternoon.
  For a little while I was duped into believing the weather forecasts that said the afternoon was going to be bright and sunny. To the south there were a few small blue patches of sky, and the sun did shine through a few times for short periods of time (often as little as a minute or two). The picture above is a view to the south taken  at just gone 1pm. It was the opposite of inspiring, and my thoughts remained indoors. At

  Once upon a time there was, and still is an online comic that is updated a few times a week. It is written by a scientist who works, or worked for NASA, and who still thinks like a schoolboy. That comic is https://xkcd.com/. Most of the comics are a single image, and generally there is a semi scientific bias to them, but I don't think you need to understand any science to enjoy most of them.

  Randall Monroe, the writer of XKCD later branched out to a what if ? section of his website. In it he mixes science and comedy to answer possibly real questions sent in by his readers, and they are not "normal" questions (some involve destroying the world or universe !!). All his answers are based on real science, frequently to show why some ideas are impossible. The very latest, which started me off reading a load of his archives (use the left and right arrows at the bottom), is a question about stopping global warming by dropping icy asteroids in the ocean - https://what-if.xkcd.com/.

   Reading through the archives took me up to Star Trek time, and a little later, dinner time. I didn't like the episode of Star Trek: The New Generation being shown on "Pick" and turned over to "Legend" to watch an episode of the original Star Trek. Many of those old episodes don't seem so good now, but last night's was a good one - The Tholian Web.

  During the last commercial break, or maybe the one before, I rushed down into the kitchen and quickly threw my corned beef salad together to eat while I continued to watch Star Trek. The next Star Trek was "Enterprise", and it somehow seemed dull. Dull enough to send my mind wandering. Earlier in the afternoon I spotted my Panasonic DMC-FX100 camera in my box of cameras, and I realised I remembered very little about it. It was another camera bought very cheap from a second hand shop.

  If I recall correctly it came with no charger, no battery and no memory card. Therefore it could not be tested, and so was sold very cheaply - possibly a token £10. Looking at what was on the memory card (that I had put in) it seemed that I had taken half a dozen random test snaps, and never tried it again. In theory it is quite a good camera. It has a 12 mega pixel sensor and optical zoom. At about 6.30pm I took it into the garden for a few test shots.
  This shot looks fairly pointless, and indeed it almost is. The tree that is the subject of the photograph, was drawn to my attention recently because it looks like it is being used by some ring necked parakeets that previously had stayed in the nearby park. I wasn't lucky enough to see a parakeet when I was testing the camera, but it was a sort of test of the zoom, and sharpness. One thing it shows is how grey the sky still was at 6.30pm. In the bottom right of the picture can be seen a blue-ish bit of sky.
  This was a more useful picture, and one I was intending to take with any camera to hand. It is a cherry tree in my next door neighbours garden, and despite the attention of the birds, it still has a nice crop of cherries on it.

  It now seems a habit that once the third Star Trek, "Voyager", has finished at 8pm, I turn off the TV and read for an hour before going to bed. I was probably asleep well before 10pm, and my last remembered sight of the light peeping around the curtains suggests I may have been asleep before sunset at 9.20pm last night. I think I should describe my sleep as lots of good sleeps rather than a single good sleep.

  Once again I woke up feeling chilly at around midnight, and got up to close my bedroom window. It took a little while to get back to sleep. I am not sure why the next bit of sleep should be described as good. Maybe it was because I have zero memory of it. One moment I was wake, and the next moment I noticed that over 2 hours had passed. Once again I felt cold, and I had to do a delicate balancing act of how many limbs, and other body parts should I put under the duvet, and how many I should leave uncovered.

  I can't be sure, but I think the next time I woke up it was light outside. maybe once upon a time I might have even got up then, but not this morning. After a pee I went back to bed, and almost forced myself to sleep. It was during that time I had some related, but very mixed up dreams. I was dreaming that I had continued to work until 2 years after my retirement age. I had decided to leave then because a couple of workmates were leaving the company. One of them had a new job, and the other announced he was going to be a Druid !

  On what was supposed to be my second to last day at work I filled my rucksack with most of my personal possessions before going home. As I left work there was a sort of jump cut to being back in work for the final day. it was then that I realised I also had several towels and spare pairs of shoes, as well as other stuff to try and get home. The shoe problem when both pairs were essentially stolen from me by a couple of workmates. Why they thought it so important to possess is beyond me, although one pair was almost new because I found them really uncomfortable. The dream then faded away as I woke up.

  It was with some trepidation that I checked my blood glucose this morning. I was relieved that it was only 9.2mmol/l. That is still higher than I would like, but at least it is clear of the danger zone. The fact that I had eaten pretty normally when it seemed like I should have been fasting, does strongly suggest that the reading the day before was not accurate. Maybe today's reading could have been lower if I had forced myself to drink more water during the night, but it almost seems like I was not awake enough to drink more.

  As I am writing this I am waiting for an answer to a message I have just sent to Angela to ask if she wants to meet at lunchtime, and also where we might meet. I have suggested The Blythe Hill Tavern. It has a nice beer garden, and should be a lot cheaper than Angela's local pub where we met last time......I've given Angela some extra time to respond while I had a "comfort break" in the toilet, but so far no response.

  If we don't meet today it could be possible good news in as much as maybe it means she is thinking of coming here tomorrow. The downside is that with Jodie and Michael here it won't be very intimate. The upside of not meeting today, assuming she comes here tomorrow, is that it means I have more time for some emergency housework - stuff like hoovering the stairs, dining room, and front room. To be honest, I think I would rather be spending the time drinking and then snoozing.