Today's forecast is both right and wrong. It is most definitely raining this morning, and so fat the BBC forecast (screenshot above) is closer to the truth than the Met Office forecast. The Met Office predicted a lot more heavy rain, but at the moment the only heavy rain has just finished - The BBC said at 9am, and that fits. It is the afternoon where there is some unknowns. The BBC says the rain will continue all afternoon. The Met Office says the afternoon will be bright and sunny. The BBC say a max of 12° C, and The Met Office say we could see 14° C.  It is probably going to be quite a cold night, and tomorrow may start at just 6° C, but it will warm up after a possible very sunny start followed by sunny spells until sunset. The temperature may still only rise to 14° C, but at least that might be 2° C higher than today.

   Like most days, yesterday had it's ups and downs, but most of the day was fairly good. The late evening was a total disaster, but I'll come to that later. I think I felt mostly OK despite my health indicators suggesting otherwise. In theory I did all the right things to improve my blood glucose level and weight.
 
   I had a fairly relaxed morning, or at least it didn't seem like I had to rush to do anything. The first bad, but good thing happened soon after I finished writing yesterday. I decided I would order more "exotic" beers from Beers Of Europe (dot com). I particularly wanted more of the super strong barley wine (14%) that I got from there last time, but that particular one had sold out. I did find another one or two, slightly lesser strength barley wines, but I am unsure what exactly I ordered.

  Having selected £100 worth of beers (for free delivery) I went to the checkout, and that took me to the sign in page. It would not accept my password for some unknown reason (although I did get a possible hint later). I tried twice to do a password reset, but the emails I expected never arrived. In desperation I signed in as a new customer using my usual email address, but that didn't work because it said someone else was using that email address.

  I then signed in as a new customer using a different email address, and that worked. Having presumed to have placed my order I waited for the usual email confirmation which would also list exactly what I had ordered. Nothing arrived, and nothing has arrived even as I type this almost 24 hours later. It seemed obvious that they had lost the ability to send emails, and that was probably handled by the same computer that checked passwords and email addresses.

  I started to feel a bit gloomy, and worried that I had just spend £100, and there was no record of it. I wondered if the whole order had failed, but a bit later in the afternoon I got an email from DHL confirming they would be picking up my order, and hoped to deliver it today.  This morning I got another email to say DHL will deliver it between 14:54 and 15:54 today. I will finally be able to find what I ordered !

   With the beer (at the time) hopefully ordered I could have my usual morning rest and even allow my eyes to close. I think I might have had a 5 to 50 minute snooze. Then I had a shower - rather late in the morning - so late it was actually closer to 1pm ! I didn't really have anything to do to prepare for an afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie, and so I did nothing, although I did put the heater on low in the dining room because it was a bit cool in there. Oh, and I also cooked and ate three Polish "Weekend" sausages. They didn't seem anywhere near as good as I hoped for.

  Having the dining room warmish was a definite good idea because at about 3.15 Jodie arrived dripping wet, or at least her umbrella was dripping. It had been bright with sunny spells earlier, but Jodie was unlucky enough to get caught in a shower. While she did her usual fussing around, and making a mess in my kitchen preparing her lunch, I continued to drink a can of beer I had started about 10 minutes before she arrived. I knew it would be some time, thirsty time, before she was ready to select and open a can of beer for us to try.

  That first can of beer was one I had only bought from Aldi the last time I was there. I felt sure she would have had it before, but to my, and her surprise, she hadn't logged in in Untappd (the beer spotters web site). It was a Pineapple flavoured pale ale. I expected it to be awful. It was a bit strange, but not that bad. The second can also came from my last visit to Aldi, and once again it seemed she had not tried it before. Sadly it got the big thumbs down from both of us.
  On the left, Silver Lake, West coast IPA - in Jodie's words "it was minging", and I agree. On the right, Pineapple flavour pale ale - it was strange, but not unpleasant - maybe because it only had enough pineapple juice to flavour it, but not enough to overwhelm the taste of the beer.

  It was after those first two cans that I sent a message to Michael to say we were drinking. He admits he knows that he has an open invitation, but his mind is so twisted by his demented wife, in the care home, that he says he needs a positive invitation every time. Michael eventually acknowledged my message, and joined us at about his now usual time of 5pm. Jodie left us in time to get the 6/30pm train, and Michael and I continued to drink until about 6.50pm when he rushed home to watch Star Trek: Voyager.

  None of the beers I had was very strong, but I had enough of them to get mildly drunk. I knew absolutely I was drunk, but I was at that stage where I didn't really feel drunk at all. However, it was enough to cloud my judgement. I had not got any dinner prepared because at one time I thought I might just have soup, but after the beer I wanted something more substantial. I ordered a Chinese takeaway.

  It cam from the Noodle House place in Catford, and they seem to produce very tasty stuff, and it seems to have no added sugar (although anything sweet and sour obviously does contain a lot, but even when drunk I know to stay clear of such dishes). Their main downfall is all the extra cost loaded on top of their bought in the shop prices. I made matter worse by adding a not really needed portion of deep fried spare ribs.

  My order arrived very quickly, and I tucked into what should have been the main, and only dish of the night - a portion of Singapore fried noodles. I had also ordered a spare of the same for dinner tonight. What I probably should not have done was to tuck into the deep fried spare ribs. It could have been those that took me over the top, although all the gas in the beers I had been drinking would not have helped.

  Fast forward to 9pm, and I had been reading in bed, and starting to feel uncomfortable. When I turned over to try to go to sleep I was hit with what soon turned out to be the worst indigestion/heartburn I have maybe ever had. With the added bloat from the beer gases it was easily up to angina standards - but only while I was laying down in bed. I spend almost the next 7 hours trying to get to sleep while taking antacids several times with initially not that much affect.

  At some time in the 7 hours I tried washing down and or diluting the stomach acid with a couple of big gulps of water. That was a bad mistake. I burped and as I did so I came very close to throwing up. I could feel a spray of hot acid come up my throat. It would actually have been beneficial in several ways if I had let myself just throw it all up, but it didn't really come to that.  I am sure I did get snatches of sleep before it, but it was nut until almost 4am when I had any meaningful sleep this morning.

  Even then, I still had to get up once for a pee, and while doing so I could still taste those deep fried ribs when I burped. I managed to sleep through to 7.30am, but I still consider myself sleep deprived, and ideally I will get some very long snoozes in today. When I got up I went to the toilet for a pee, and also managed to pass quite a big poo. It was not much more than 20 minutes later that I did the same again.

  That was good because without out that second visit my weight would have been really terrible. With it, it was only plain terrible. I seem to have put on so much weight in the last week or so that it feels like the tapeworm, or whatever was doing a good job of controlling my weight, has died or something. I now need to lose about 2kg before I can be proud of my small weight loss again.

  Fortunately my blood glucose did not suffer much from the beer and all the food I ate yesterday. All readings were in the old "normal" range. The Contour meter read 8.5mmol/l - spot on my old target. The GlucoRX meter read 8.9mmol/l - a bit too close for comfort to the lower limits of "bad". The Sinocare meter read a slightly better 8.8mmol/l. Next month, which is approaching very fast now, I may start a new experiment of taking a single blood glucose reading at about 9pm every night. I will use my currently unused Vivachek meter. I did do a reading using it last night. I expected a very high reading just a few hours after eating, but it read just 8.5mmol/l. it will be interesting to see if I can learn anything from these evening readings.

  One good reading was my blood pressure. This morning, after breakfast of two small tomato flavour instant noodles made up in one bowl (not exactly ideal when I should be drastically cutting my food intake for a while), my blood pressure was another excellent 102/50. Incidently, I read my blood pressure in the middle of my heartburn yesterday evening, and despite some similarities to angina, or other heart problems, it was a very good 108/49.

   There are several things happening today, or two things that are definite, and one that may actually be unlikely. The first obvious thing is to try and catch up with my lost sleep by snoozing when ever I can. Later today, between 14:54 and 15:54, I am expecting my beer delivery. Tonight I could be going to a gig. It is in the Fellowship Inn in Bellingham, and so is easy to get too. It doesn't start until 9pm, and that puts me off. There is also the problem of when I am going to have part two of my takeaway from last night. Once I stuff those Singapore fried noodles down my throat I will not want to be doing anything else but rest. I will also want to be eating them very early in the evening so I have plenty of hours to let them settle before trying for sleep. The one reason I would like to go is it is The Entourage band, and the photo on the poster is one of those I took Wednesday of last week. It was nice to see my handiwork put to good use. Another reason why I probably won't go is that I have just got out of the habit of going out in the evenings, It just seems to unnatural to me.