As I write this the sun has been trying to find a gap in the clouds. It has seemed to start brightening up a couple of times, but each try only lasted a few seconds, but the latest revision to the forecast insists we will have sunny spells until 5pm when there could be a couple of hours of light rain. It should stay dry through the night, although clear periods will let the temperature drop from an after noon high of 13° C to maybe 8° C in the early hours of tomorrow. Tomorrow sees a return to copious rain. There might be three hours of heavy rain at the end of the morning, but the rest of the rain might be fairly light. The afternoon temperature should reach 13° C. For once, the BBC forecast broadly agrees with the Met Office forecast for today and tomorrow.

   Yesterday was one of those good and bad days, although maybe it was all weighted toward the good end of the spectrum. The lousy weather dampened my spirits as well as the world outside, and so I stayed in and tried to ignore what was happening outside.

  There were several things I had to do before starting a Thursday afternoon beer tasting session. One was to wash my hair, and to have a shower. At the end of that I started soaking a small white towel, and a white t-shirt. I have to admit they are still soaking this morning. Finishing that laundry will/should be the first bit of action for me this morning.

  The next thing I did was a part triumph. Since breaking the spout on my mixer tap over the kitchen sink, water has been pissing out in all directions when a tap is turned on. It meant placing sponges at strategic places, and wringing them out after using the tap. The problem is that I couldn't see how the spout was fixed to the main block of the mixer. My best guess was that there was some sort of rubber gromit that probably needed a special tool to compress it when the mixer tap was made.

  I tried some rubber "O" rings, but none seemed to work, and often made the problem worse. Yesterday morning I tried that universal wonder stuff for plumbing, PTFE tape. I wrapped a lot of tape around the bottom of the spout, and it sort of went in like a cork into a bottle. For now it remains leak proof, and I am now back to the original problem of the badly dripping hot tap. It is possible I will have another go at that today.

  While my lunch heated up in the microwave I used the non leaking mixer tap to clear a small backlog of washing up. There wasn't all that much to do, but while the spout was pissing water everywhere I didn't dare wash more than one or two items at a time. Yesterday lunchtime I did everything. My lunch was a bit daring. It was the Singapore fried rice from my Chinese takeaway - the likely source of high blood glucose readings yesterday morning.

  I had a spare hour before I was expecting Jodie and Michael to arrive for our beer tasting. I decided to try and get Bluetooth working on my new (old) iMac computer. I got to the point where I could use it to play music from my phone through the computers speakers, but I could not upload pictures from my phone to the computer - which was the more important thing.

  I tried lots of things to get that Bluetooth working, but the more I tried, the more I broke things. I ended up with Bluetooth not working at all, the computer saying it didn't have a WiFi adapter. Worst of all was that I could no longer access the internet from any web browser, although I could ping stuff from the command line, and see my local server. Somehow the address of the DNS server had gone missing. ( DNS - Dynamic Name Server, the magic that turns a web site name to it's numerical address).

  With about half an hour to go before we would start drinking I decided it would probably be easier to do a complete re-install of the operating system. At first I couldn't even do a reboot for some unknown reason. All I could do was to pull the mains plug, and do a hard restart. I wasn't quick enough to hold down the "Alt" key to select booting from the live install DVD, and it booted into my broken Linux. At that point I could play music, and show pictures from the hard disk. That was good enough for the time. Fixing it is another job for today.

  Our boozing session was pretty typical - Jodie stuck on her phone like a teenager for over half the time, Michael jabbering away non stop, and me just getting drunk. Getting drunk was aided by Michael bringing a miniature of rum with him. I was sure I recognised it, and sure enough I had an identical bottle in a set of 4 rums bought reduced  price in Aldi about 5 years ago. Michael drank his rum, and I drunk all four of my rums. They were all surprisingly pleasant.

  Michael and Jodie left at about 6.30pm, and I put my dinner in the microwave to heat up. It was the last bit of my Chinese takeaway order from the previous night. It was Chicken Chow mein, and it was deliciously tasty. As hoped it did have a high proportion of bean sprouts, and I hoped that would dilute the possible sugar content. It is quite possible that the 4 miniature bottles of rum I drank may have been a bigger source of sugar.

  My memory of last night is rather hazy. I know I watched some Star Trek(s) while eating dinner, but I can barely remember anything about them. I can't seem to recall if I bothered to watch Star Trek: Voyager, or if I went to bed well before 8pm. What I do know is that I woke up around midnight thinking I had had quite a good sleep. I also needed a pee - which wasn't surprising after the beer I had been drinking.

  It was last night I finally found out another reason for dreams. Scientists and philosophers have long debated the reason for dreams. Last night I stumbled on another reason for them. After having my midnight pee I seemed to have a long period of insomnia, but I noted two things. One was the clock suddenly jumping an hour or two, and the other was a memory of a dream. I can't remember what the dream was about, but the memory of having it seemed proof that I had been asleep when I thought I was awake.

  I had several periods of seeming to be awake for ages, and yet there were those jumps of the clock, and one at least one occasion a very long seeming dream. The best example of the clocking jumping ahead was after I turned the heater on full at about 5.30am. I thought I would just stay under the duvet until 6am, and when my bedroom was hopefully feeling less chilly. Seemingly all of a sudden, it was nearly 7.30am !

  Before worrying about my blood glucose readings there was one other health thing of concern. I don't think I passed a single poo yesterday, and yet I didn't really feel constipated. I was hoping that all would be back to normal this morning. It was, and wasn't. This morning I did have a poo, and it was easy to do, unlike the first after being constipated. It was not surprising it was easy - it was a very small poo. I expect there could/should be more to come, but it is a possible indication that my feeling that I have been eating less lately could be true.

  When I weighed myself I had put on a few hundred grams, but still well under my "official" weight when I was in the surgery a couple of weeks ago. I then checked my blood glucose readings, and they were good, good, and very bad !  The oldest meter, which I used first gave a very bad reading of 9.7mmol/l. The newest meter gave a good 8.4mmol/l, and the older meter an even better 8.2mmol/l. On the face of it, the two in rough agreement should be the real reading, but I think that after what I ate, and drank, yesterday is probably closer to the truth.

  Having now finished all the Chinese takeaway I have, in effect, taken the firsts step to reduce my sugar intake. Only having a single instant noodles was another step. All I have to do now is to be very careful what I eat, and I can hopefully get some lower blood glucose readings tomorrow morning. Some exercise would help too, but I am highly unlikely to go out in the rain.....on the other hand it would be interesting to see how deep the river has got after all this rain. It should be a raging torrent.

  I have already mentioned three things I will, or should be doing today. The first is to finish washing the white hand towel and white t-shirt. Reinstalling Antix Linux on the iMac is worth doing, but that is only medium priority. In theory, the high priority thing to do today is to have another go at repairing the dripping hot tap in the kitchen. It is high priority, but the struggle last time, before I had a decent adjustable spanner, means I keep putting it off....