Yesterday was horrible, although maybe not quite as bad as the forecast predicted,but today is going to try to be even worse. It seems to have recently rained, and that is contrary to the latest revision that has the rain start at midday. It should finish at 6pm, but some of those hours may see very heavy rain. The BBC have even thrown in a thunderstorm for midday, and they also show light rain from early morning up to midday. Both forecasters agree on 12° C towards the end of the morning, but as low as 4° C by the end of the day. Tomorrow's high could be 8 or possibly 9° C. The morning may be bright, possibly with some sunny spells, but rain will fall during the afternoon. The BBC gives the most pessimistic long range forecast of rain every single day until the end of the month !

    Yesterday could have been described as annoying because I can't think of a better description. The grey skies and rain were annoying, and it was annoying not going to the pub. It was also annoying waiting for my Amazon parcel delivery with no idea when it might be delivered.
  I spent the morning just whiling away the hours doing very little. I read a bit, I started off some laundry, and I selected some TV programmes I wanted to record using the built in recorder on my big, front room TV. As 3pm approached I was in a very relaxed state, possibly having a light snooze, when the doorbell ran at 2.50pm. It was the man from Amazon with the two parcels I had ordered.

  I then spent some time, maybe an hour or so, unwrapping, and fondling my new stuff. There were two important items that went together. One was a small battery charger for the batteries for my Nikon D3200 camera. The supplied charger was annoying because it was quite bulky, and plugged into a mains socket. I was also a bit unsure that it was fully charging the batteries, although I never had a battery get anywhere near flat on me.

  To go with that charger, which takes it's power from a USB style connector, I ordered a 4 port, high power phone style power unit. It is one where the device being charged can ask the power supply for extra power if they both know the standard protocols. If they don't then it is just the standard 5 volts.  My mobile phone is one that has such communications with the power supply, and I noted it did charge a lot faster this morning.

  My Amazon order included another spare phone charger, plus a pack of two USB-C leads designed to carry a bit more power, and the final thing was a 32GB Compact Flash Memory card. My two oldest cameras use Compact Flash cards, although one can also use a standard SD memory card as well. I had no urgent need for the new card, and maybe it might not get used at all, but I had an idea that the price of such cards seemed to have hit a probably short lived low.

  Another use of my time was to print off some labels using my Dynatag gun. Some labels were to show the power capabilities of my new, and a couple of older phone style chargers - aka "wall warts". Other labels were for the new, and a couple of old camera batter chargers. I recently decided it would be helpful to put a label on the bottom of my camera chargers. I have a lot of cameras, and so a lot of chargers. It is a lot easier to pick the right one out of the big box of chargers if they have labels top and bottom.

  In the time between the labelling job, and preparing dinner, I edited one of my TV recordings. It was an episode of "Secrets Of The London Underground". Editing those is very simple. One snip to get rid of any crap before the programme, and then three double snips to get rid of the three advert sessions during the programme. The major annoyance comes at the end where some brain dead TV announcer talks all over the end credits, and pushes them over to the side to show caption slides of some of their "great" * programmes being shown later.

* "Great" as in inducing great volumes of vomit in most cases.

  Just after 5pm, when I could have been watching the 66th repeat in two months of an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, I took some time out to prepare my dinner. Last night it was not a salad. It was a mixes of wild and other rices in ready cooked, ready to be heated before use, quick microwave packet. It was to supplement 2 grilled, alleged, quarter pounder burgers, and three herb meatballs, also grilled.

  It had the potential to be nice and tasty, as well as quite simple. It turned out to be a smaller meal than intended because the time got stuck again on my mini oven/grill. I think that oven is soon destined for the scrap heap. It's replacement has been sitting in the cupboard under the stairs for a couple of years now. (I like to keep a spare of most things). Fortunately the burgers and meatballs were only a bit dried our rather than cremated. Dinner was nice-ish.

  I locked up/shut down/turned out the lights and closed the doors, downstairs shortly after 6pm. Half an hour earlier it had still been almost light outside, but soon after 6pm it was fully dark outside. I think that probably made me feel prematurely tired. After watching a bit more TV, I turned the TV off and went to bed to read at about 8pm. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open, but I made it to the end of the book. I think I was fast asleep by 11pm.

  I slept unusually well last night, and I think I only needed to go for a pee once in the night, and I seemed unusually free from thirst (or at least suffering from a dry mouth). Those two facts suggested my blood glucose should be very low, but it wasn't. I know I did a lot of dreaming last night, but I only remember occasional fragments of most dreams, but one, or maybe a couple of dreams left a sort of memory even though much of it made little sense.

  In what may have been a two part serial dream I seemed to be mostly an observer, although I did contribute a few suggestions. The dreams took place in a room that in some ways was like a dormitory for students. There were a few beds in there, but there seemed to be stuff beyond what should have been the walls of the room. The students, a mix of girls and boys, were taking some sort of exam. It seemed to be a mix of health, hygiene, forensics, and at one point, bomb disposal.

  I found myself hinting they should look more closely at a potted plant where they found it was covered in mites or aphids. I then subtly drew their attention to what looked like a butterfly bomb lodged in the guttering of an adjacent building, One of the boys stood on a chair to get it down, and flick it's switch to off (if only all bomb disposal was that easy !). They found other threats to health and hygiene, and the first part of the two part serial was over.

  Part two was set in the same room, but with a different set of students. I was more interactive with them because they were using some sort of machine whose purpose was unknown to me, but I was aware that it contained a very large multiway switch in it, and the switch was very intermittent. The actual switch contacts were very similar to a telephone exchange uniselector - something I was very familar with - and it was caked with grease and fluff. I decided I was strip it down and clean it for them. I think the dream faded away, or at least my memory of it faded out, at that point.

  At 6.10am I woke up feeling like I would soon need a pee - the first since about 1am if my memory was correct. If it wasn't for that I may have turned over and got another hour or so of sleep. I think I could have done so easily because I seemed to be not fully awake, but 5 minutes in the cold bathroom woke me up. I came back to my bedroom, and blood glucose meters with freshly scrubbed hands.

  I expected to get very low blood glucose readings this morning, but the first one was very disappointing. The Contour meter read 9.3mmol/l, and that is very high. The GlucoRX and Sino Care meters roughly agreed that my blood glucose was not that high, although 8.8mmol/l and 8.6mmol/l are a little bit higher, but with their fairly similar readings I tried the Contour meter again, and this time it read 8.3mmol/l - which isn't so bad. It is strange how all the meters have their bad days and give unusual high (or low) readings. It is why I now use three meters to get a more reliable idea of how good or bad my blood glucose really is. I guess today the 8.6mmol/l reading is probably the closest to accurate, and that is higher than desirable, but OK.

  Several things should happen today, and one has already started. While I was in the bathroom I wrung out the cold soapy water from the 4 items of laundry I started, but neglected yesterday. It was a pair of lounge pants, a small towel, and two pairs of underpants. They are now in cooling off rinsing water. I will need to finish the next couple of rinses, and possibly conditioner for all but the towel (I like my towels to feel rough and absorbent), before I can have a shower, and possibly wash my hair.

  I hope I will get all that done with enough time left to go out shopping in Poundstretcher (and maybe Savers too). Top of my shopping list from Poundstretcher is a few more packets of Sugar Free "Fibre" biscuits before they run out again. If I am incredibly lucky they may have some of the other sugar free biscuits in stock again, but I am not holding my breath. One thing I must try and remember to look out for is a jar of English mustard - possibly 2 jars if it looks to be reasonable stuff.

  Later this afternoon Jodie should be braving the weather to come over for our regular Thursday beer tasting session. There is slight chance that Michael will join us for an hour or so. It all depends on if he thinks he can trust his wife not to do something stupid, like trying to microwave nothing - something she has apparently done in the past. Maybe she thinks you can pre-warm a microwave oven like you can do with a gas oven.
  I almost forgot that I took a picture of a couple of beers I had last night. These were beers Jodie lugged over to here a few weeks back, but once here she discovered she had already had them, and had logged them in her Untappd account. I think one was 5.2%, and the other 4.3%. They were not great, but still quite pleasant. They were the first beers I had drunk since last Sunday.