Today sees the return of rain, but as to how much rain, that remains to be seen because the forecast for today has not been finalised, and probably won't be until the day is over ! There was supposed to be heavy rain this morning, but I was not aware of it indoors, and as I write this it seems to be little more than some drizzle. From midday it might be dry, but still cloudy. Today could see the temperature rise to 15° C. Tomorrow could see light rain in the middle of the day, and it will be a bit cooler. Just 13° C is currently expected.

   Yesterday did not turn out as hoped, but it had it's moments. My hoped for plan of going out in the evening was scuppered by two things - a very minor stomach upset, which was no more than a slight feeling of queasiness, and the other thing was that it was, predictably enough, cold and dark !

  I did do two important things yesterday, and the first was to go out for a bit of shopping. That was interesting in so much that after walking for a minute or two I got a gentle ache from my tailbone area. It wasn't enough to want to slow down, and it faded away once I got home. Until then that pain had seemed to have faded to the point that in the ordinary course of affairs it was completely forgotten. it was a surprise to be reminded that it is still heavily bruised (probably internally) or even has a very small fracture.

  My shopping trip was purely to Poundstretcher, and generally for food, but I did buy some non food stuffs like spare Paracetamol, and Ibuprofen tablets. I'm sure I also bought something from the cleaning section, but I can't think what it was. One interesting purchase was a 330ml 6 pack of Tango "Berry Peachy" sugar free fizzy drink. The one can I tried was interesting. It trod a very fine line between nice and nasty. More beery or more peach, could have made it less pleasant, and pleasant in a sort of underwhelmed way, is the nest description for it.

  Food I did find and buy was some more instant noodles. I noticed an extra flavour, "Oriental style beef" to the range that included to puts of Firepit noodles. I tried one this morning, and it was not very exciting. I also bought a couple of 5 packs of instant noodles. One was (alleged) fiery chicken. I also tried one of those this morning, and it was almost good, but needed the addition of hot pepper sauce to make it anywhere near "fiery".

  My failed plan for the evening was to go out for a couple of hours to take a few snaps at a gig. With that in mind I decided on a bigger lunch so I wouldn't need any dinner when I came home again. It turned in to a two part lunch, or a lunch and extremely early dinner. The definite lunch part was a small plate of oven chips. I think they may have been Tesco branded, but I know Tesco do far nicer oven chips. These one were OK, but lacking in something hard to define.

  It got to about 3pm and I decided I would top up a bit to help keep the cold out when, or if I went out. I mini oven/grill cooked half a dozen frozen sausages. They were Tesco's own pork sausages, and a lot nicer than the Aldi frozen sausages. On the other hand maybe they were a bit too rich on their own, and I started to feel slightly queasy. It was not enough to think there was even a tiny chance of throwing up, but nevertheless, it was not good. Later in the evening I took some antacid tablets. Maybe I should have taken them a lot earlier because they did seem to work.
  One other thing I bought from Poundstetcher was a new double fitted sheet. It was black, and of course they recommended washing it before use. It was time for the great experiment !! I had washed the new sheet with my faded "Pisshead" t-shirt. The theory was that dye would come out of the sheet, and might be soaked up by the t-shirt. The theory seems to hold when washing a new black t-shirt with a white t-shirt - the white t-shirt comes out grey. It can be even worse washing something bright red with something white. Sadly, when I checked the 99% dry t-shirt this morning it looked like it had not taken up any dye - despite the water after the first wash stage being very black !

  I think it was just coming up to 5pm when I had the rare treat of a phone call from friend Kevin. It was principally a call asking what I knew about Android phones - which isn't a lot ! Of course we were soon off at tangents talking about beer, and beer prices, railway stuff, and other diverse stuff. It was not break from the monotony of the day, and may have been one of the things that stopped me going out later. I felt sort of relaxed after it.

  As soon as Kevin was off the phone I started watching Star Trek, or the first of three different Star Treks - as usual. On this occasion it was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which was the best of the three. It was unusual in that over half of it was about just two characters - Quark, the Ferengi bar keeper, and Odo the station constable. In the usual course of events they are often sparring up to each other, but in this episode there were just the two of them - initially in a shuttle craft, and for much of it on the surface of a deserted planet where they had to work together to survive. It made a change to all the bloody religious stuff about the planet Bajor !

  It was about half way through Star Trek: Voyager when I should have got dressed to go out. Earlier in the day I had got my camera ready, and topped up it's battery, ready to go out. When it finally came down to it, as I mentioned above, my guts still were not comfortable, plus it was cold and dark outside. Not only that, but I am so used to going to bed at the end of Voyager, despite it still being only just after 8pm, that I could not imagine going out, and didn't.

  I did indeed get into bed soon after 8pm. I had taken a couple of antacid tablets, and the slight queasy feeling just evaporated away. I read for maybe half an hour before trying for sleep. Within a minute or two or laying in the warm, and dark I realised I didn't seem to feel sleepy at all. I assumed that if I did my best to relax I would fall sleep in less than an hour. I didn't ! It was around 1am when I think I first fell asleep. I must confess there may have been short periods of missing time when I might have dozed off for 10 or 15 minutes.

  Maybe some of it was my own fault. I had been thinking about photography, and in particular, portrait photography.  For some time I have thought I would like to try and do some nude photography - for at least 10% genuine artistic reasons !!!!  I spent a lot of the time not sleeping thinking about such photography, and probably did my desire for sleep no good. Us unlikely as it may seem, I was mostly thinking about technical aspects of the photography rather than the cheap thrills of seeing a naked boob or two - as nice as that would be !

  Even when I did finally fall into a deep sleep, it only seemed to last a couple of hours. I may have only got two long blocks of sleep lasting around 2 hours each, and then odd sleeps until about 6am when I might have got up. At 6am my room was just warm enough to not feel too chilly, but I turned the heater up full, and went back to bed. It wasn't long before I fell asleep despite being mostly uncovered. With the room continuing to warm up I seemed to settle into a deeper sleep. I was quite surprised to wake up at nearly 8am.

  I am not sure that even if had slept really well, I would have been alert enough to consider a particular fact when checking my blood glucose readings. Every day I do a finger prick in the next finger along from the previous day. This morning it was my right index finger whose turn was due. Every time it is the turn of this finger I forget something important - it is the most used finger tip for all sorts of tasks, and so the skin is rougher and thicker. I should set the lancet of the finger pricking device to penetrate a little bit more deeply for this this finger.

  The reality this morning was that it only made a tiny hole, and it was difficult to squeeze out a decent bead of blood. I am sure that accounts for three very different readings. Best of all was the GlucoRX meter. It said just 7.5mmol/l. A really good figure. Worst of all was the Contour meter. It usually comes closest to the GlucoRX meter, but this morning it read a really terrible 10.6mmol/l. That is a huge difference in readings. The Sino Care meter read 9.0mmol/l, and that would be almost OK, but still a lot higher than desired. It all suggests that my blood glucose level is far too high today.

  What I should have done was to at least initially skip breakfast, and take another series of glucose measurements using a deeper lancet setting, for a better flow of blood. I can't do that now because I have had two small portions of instant noodles for breakfast. I may take a single reading early this afternoon to see if I dare have any lunch. If all goes to plan I should have a very safe dinner of home made shish kebab. I have some diced chicken that I think I shall grill with some chunks of brown onion and chunks of bell peppers.

  As to the rest of my day.... it seems it will be a grey day, although it is a shade or two lighter than when I first opened the curtains, but that greyness still sucks any enthusiasm of anything out of me. I may well have a very lazy day today, but maybe something will turn up.