There was another deep frost this morning after the temperature fell to minus figures in the small hours of this morning.  The latest revision to the forecast shows the a chance of some precipitation, and at 11am and midday, it could fall as light snow !  1pm could feature drizzle. The BBC say it will be completely dry with sunny spells, but a look out the window at the horrid grey sky suggests otherwise. Both forecasters say the temperature will only rise to 3° C today. Tomorrow could be even colder with just 2° C for a few hours. The day may start at -1° C, and end at 0° C, but the afternoon may feature a couple of sunny hours.

   Yesterday was generally pleasant, but I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to do anything, or to go out. I seemed to spend my time burning up the kilowatts of electricity keeping warm - something I will doing today and even more so, tomorrow ! One little thing I did was to do some washing up, and prepare my dinner ready for the evening.

  I am almost forgetting one important thing I did because in one sense it was more of sitting at my PC, but rather than read some technology news, and other stuff, I was logging on to my credit card and banking suppliers. I paid off my credit cards, although in the case of my Tesco credit card I think I overpaid, but that is no bad thing. It was a bit backwards, but after paying off the credit cards I checked my main bank account to see how much money I had. It was looking rather healthy, but that was in part due to getting my £500 winter heating payment to top up my pension, plus it didn't show the money I had transferred to the credit cards at that time.

  With my bank balance looking healthy I decided to spend a bit more. I ordered two new SODIMM memory modules for the Apple iMac 8 in the dining room. At the moment that computer has two 1GB modules in it, and struggles a bit (or crashes if asked to play a high definition video ! Ideally I wanted to increase the memory to 8GB using two 4G modules, but 4GB modules seem to be about 8 times the price of 2GB modules. I ordered two 2GB modules to give a total of 4GB. That is usually plenty for a Linux computer. I can still boot into Apple OSX 10.6, on half the disk, but for me the primary operating system is MX Linux.

  At the same time as ordering the memory modules I ordered a new keyboard with a built in USB hub - just like on Mac keyboards. The one I chose is very considerably cheaper than even a non Apple version of the keyboard for OSX computers (even though the only difference is how the key caps are marked). It was just £18, and should be fine for light duty use - which is all the computer in the dining room is liable to get. The important thing is that the mouse can be plugged into the USB port on the keyboard, and so keep an extra USB socket free for other things on the computer.

  With drinking happening later in the afternoon, I decided some sort of suitable lunch would be a good idea. Actually it probably wasn't such a good idea to have a small plate of chips. I know that they seem to be good, or at least inert, when it comes to my blood glucose readings in the morning, but they are bad for my weight. It does seem to be a paradox that something could be good in one way, but bad in another. One possible explanation, although I don't understand the chemistry involved, is that the energy (calories) in the chips is instantly converted to fat before the sugars can diffuse into the bloodstream.

  Apart from one pineapple flavoured beer, which I found disgusting, we had a good beer tasting session in the afternoon. As usual there were many arguments about music. I can't remember what it was now, but Michael contradicted himself at least once, and essentially said that not all music was good because there was some he doesn't like. I think for Jodie and I it is almost the other way around - we generally like the music genre(s) we like, but do like a few oddities outside of our normal choices.

  We finished drinking in time for Jodie to go and get the 6.15pm train, and Michael left very soon afterwards. I grabbed my recently reheated dinner from the microwave, and went up to watch the usual Star Treks. I tried to watch some of Deep Space Nine and some of Enterprise to see which had the more interesting story. I think I ended up watching more of Enterprise. That was followed by Star Trek: Voyager, and it was not one of the half dozen good stories they did during the entire 5 (or 6 ?) season run.

  My dinner, eaten while watching TV, was a diced beef and sprouts stew. It was nice, but didn't seem to be satisfying. I ended up taking a huge chance of having a small pot of instant noodles as a sort of dessert - even if it was a savoury dessert ! By 8pm about an hour had passed for dinner to settle down, and I was almost ready for bed - which might translate to "I couldn't find any other distractions on TV". There was also the fact that it was close to freezing outside, and my bedroom was not that warm. It would be warmer under the duvet.

  I read for about 20 minutes, and then turned out the light. I doubt it was as long as 10 minutes before I was fast asleep. I guess it was about 4 hours later I woke up feeling a bit too warm under the duvet despite it feeling very cold outside of it. I decided to hell with the electricity bill, I was going to, and did, turn the heater up full. I then tried to remember the dream I had before waking up.

  That dream was interesting because there was so little to it. I was at a gig trying to watch, and photograph a band playing on a concave shaped stage. I have never seen a stage like it, but like a curved mirror it had a focal point, and that is where I wanted to be to take photographs. The trouble was that there was a woman dancing on that spot. There was also a sort of shallow hole/dip in the floor there, and I was closely watching her feet, waiting for her to stumble into the hole. That would be my cue to jump into that position to take my photos.

  That much of the dream was a bit odd, but the real oddities were that I only ever saw the feet of the woman. She had black boots on, with a medium heel (maybe 2 or 3 inches high). I never saw the rest of her body. I also didn't really see the band. I was aware there were 4 individuals on stage, but they had no features, and no instruments. They were also completely silent. None of that seemed odd during the dream, but is very weird now.

  One of the problems of going to sleep so early is that it seems a recipe for some insomnia during the night. It is hard to say how long I was awake - maybe because I think I probably had as many as three short periods of insomnia instead of the more typical one long period. I guess I probably got my full 8 hours sleep, but it was in shifts. I almost got up at just gone 6am, but thought I would try for another 5 minutes. I woke up again about an hour later.

  I thought that I ought to be prepared for bad blood glucose readings after chips for lunch, and that extra instant noodle pot for dessert after my dinner. It seems I have nothing to worry about at all. i seem to have started December with three excellent readings. The Contour and GlucoRX meters both read 6.6mmol/l, and the Sino Care read 6.7mmol/l. All far better than I thought possible. It would be too incredible to think I could keep that up for the rest of the month, but at least it is a very good foundation to start the month.

  I really don't know what I will be doing today. It feels too cold to do anything. There are a few things I would like to get from Aldi, although none are of any great importance at the moment, but it it is possible I could go out shopping. There is a gig I would like to go to tonight, but the thought of all that icy air in the evening puts me off. There is also a gig I would like to go to tomorrow night, and is sort of more important, but I am not sure even that is important enough to risk the effects on my chest of breathing in the icy air - and tomorrow looks like it will be colder than today !