This morning started with a frost ! There is a still a frost on the cars outside that are in the shade. My thermometers say it is between 3 and 4° C as I write this. The semi good news is that the sun is now almost high enough to shine over the rooftops to the east. The bad news is that it looks quite cloudy, and it currently seems unlikely we will get the promised sunny spells. It seems even less like that we will get the full sunshine shown for 9 and 10am in the latest revision. Most of today will feature white cloud, and the temperature may only rise to 8° C for just two hours at 2 and 3pm. It will be another rather cool night, although maybe not cool enough for frost in the morning. The day could start at 5° C, but it might warm up to 11° C despite the whole day being lightly overcast.

    Yesterday was a very successful day when measured by certain metrics. In other respects it was slightly boring. I did a few small things, but in some respects I did very little, and in one specific case I did nothing ! Doing that special nothing was quite a challenge, or maybe it was easy. All will be explained.

  The great challenge was to fast for the whole day up until dinner time. I needed to do it after I saw the devastatingly high blood glucose readings in the morning. As well as not eating anything at all until dinner time, I also didn't drink anything but tap water. I sort of did that without thinking why I was doing it, but it may have been that I feared the gas from Diet Coke would stir my guts up, and make me feel I was hungrier than I was.

  There was one other significant thing that I did yesterday, and that was to finish washing a hand towel, t-shirt and 2 pairs of underpants. The t-shirt was white, and so I could only wash it with undyed or light blue stuff, and the other stuff was light blue. I'm not sure if any blue dye came out of anything, and so there was no "blue whitener" effect. As usual, the hand towel needed almost twice as many rinses until the rinse water was no longer foamy.

  That is one trouble with washing towels. They do seem to soak up detergent, and only reluctantly let it go. It is not so bad with a small hand towel, but a bath towel can be a real bugger ! Anyway, the deed was done, and I hung the four items on the big clothes horse in the front room. I was surprised to see it had warmed up to 20° C in there just from sunshine coming through the windows.

  The other thing I did was less taxing that doing the laundry. It was to do the washing up, and to prepare my dinner. I allowed plenty of time for dinner to not only cook, but to spent time just soaking up some of the spices and stuff. It was basically diced pork with pak choi and a couple of chillies with a sprinkle of Chinese five spice powder. I've never had a lot of luck with 5 spice powder, but it did seem to work yesterday, although I slightly overdid the sliced chillies. It all became a bit too hot to appreciate the spices.

  I passed quite a lot of yesterday just reading. Some was technology news stories from the internet, but a fair chunk was reading the next Robert Heinlein book in my collection. I am sure there is a recommended reading order, but maybe that doesn't kick in until his later novels. I have started on date order, and I am currently reading another of his stories targeted at juveniles. It was written in 1951, and called "Between Planets". It could be 20 or 30 years since I last read it, but I seem to remember a lot of it - but not enough to spoil it.

  At 5pm I started watching TV, and an episode from Star Trek: The Original Series. It was entitled "The Tholian Web", and although mostly well remembered, there were a few bits I didn't remember - maybe about 5%, and so it was reasonably engaging. When it finished at 6pm I rechecked my blood glucose readings to make sure my blood glucose had come down enough for my to enjoy my dinner. If it hadn't I would tried to continue fasting, although I doubt I could hold out much longer.

  I had last eaten over 23 hours earlier before I did that blood glucose check yesterday morning. I saw rather a good improvement !
Yesterday morning=    11.3mmol/l    10.9mmol/l     12.6mmol/l
Yesterday evening =    7.2mmol/l       7.5mmol/l       8.4mmol/l
I used the same meters and I have shown the results in the same order. They show quite a big drop, and although I knew my dinner would be very safe anyway, I could enjoy it without worrying about the consequences. I will also admit that I had a small handful of peanuts while the last bit of cooking was taking place just before I ate it. I also ate a small lump of cheese as a sort of dessert.

  I continued to watch TV until 10pm. I could have watched another edition of Have I Got News For You, but I thought one was enough. I went to bed, but only managed to read a few pages before I could feel my eyelids drooping. I put the book down, turned out the light, and nothing happened. I expected to go to sleep instantly, but it really only took about 10 minutes. It was possibly even quicker than that, but time seems to drag in such situations.

  I did seem to get rather a good sleep last night. I still woke up a few times for pee, but as I would later find out, it wasn't because of high blood glucose. As is often the case, I remember dreaming but not the dreams themselves - except for the end of the last dream. In that dream I wanted to use a toilet, but the only one I could find free was in quite a disgusting state. Ideally I wouldn't have liked to sit down and done a poo, but I settled for standing up and doing just a pee.

  When I got up, not too long after 6am, I was moderately keen for a pee - so the dream was not lying in that respect. I assumed I wanted a poo as well, but that was no more than wind. In theory I should have felt good this morning. In one respect I did, but only as much as I didn't feel bloated. I should have felt full of beans after what I believe was a good sleep, but I still felt sort of sluggish, and while nothing was painful, I had quite a selection of mild aches.

  There was better news about my blood glucose levels this morning, although I think I expected better than I got. The Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l, or just about above my imaginary target. The GlucoRX meter read a slightly better 7.7mmol/l, and the Viva Chek meter read 8.4mmol/l. Once again that meter read higher than the other two, but even 8.4mmol/l is fairly good.

  Incidently, if you have ever wonder what mmol/l stands for it is milli moles per litre. It is the definition of moles that is hard to understand. If you have time to waste, you can read about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit)

  There is one thing I hope to do today, and that is to limit what I eat. I'm off to a semi-fair start. I had a single bowl of a medium sized packet of instant noodles for breakfast. Ideally I will slip lunch, but in reality I will be lucky to make it very moderate. The reason is today could be quite boring, and there will be no sunshine* for most of the day to lift the spirits. I may have to try and bury my head in a book or something.

* The 9am sunshine turned out to be a sunny spell lasting no more than 2 or 3 minutes. It seems the 10am sunshine stands no chance of happening.....on the other hand, the latest revision to the forecast has added sunny spells from 1pm until sunset. It feels unlikely, but fingers crossed.... Of course the BBC weather forecast shows sunny spells all day, but I guess 30 seconds of sunshine in a single hour is still classified as a sunny spell.

  One thing I will do today is to wash my hair, and have a shower. I did neither yesterday, and I feel a bit grubby. It does mean I could possibly go out today, but maybe for nothing more than a bit of shopping. I just don't seem to feel up to walking exercise lately, and it is mainly because I expect to get chest pains, although only one of several recent walks has produced any chest pain. There is a possibility that the chest pains could be a mix of inflamed scar tissue with "loose ribs" (or whatever) and acid indigestion. I do find myself taking antacids fairly frequently these days. It could be the result of taking lose dosage aspirin for the last 20 or more years - and I rarely take it with a meal as recommended. Maybe I ought to make a point of taking it with a meal - maybe switch it to the evening with my evening meal.