Today has started with some sunny spells, and the temperature is around 7° C. From 10am we may lose the sunny spells, and get light rain instead. There could be some gusty winds this morning, but if they are like yesterday it will not be that noticeable indoors. The afternoon may be brighter, but the rain may continue for almost the rest of the day. The afternoon should see 8° C, but they say it might feel like just 5° C. The current forecast says tomorrow will see about 8° C, and light rain right through the whole day.
 
  Yesterday was almost completely different to any earlier thoughts about what the day would be like, and it was all thanks to the appalling weather - even if the weather actually turned out to be only 75% appalling ! I don't think I have ever done less in a day before. The only interruption from a lot of boredom was my Amazon delivery.

  One look at the weather forecast for yesterday convinced me that I would not be going out to go to the late afternoon gig I wanted to go to. That left the possibility of resuming my regular Sunday visit from Jodie for an afternoon beer tasting session. It was towards late morning when Jodie phoned me to say she had consulted the weather forecast, and had decided not to venture out in it. I can't say I blame her.

  It was just after 11am when I got an email from Amazon to say my parcel was out for delivery today - by 9pm ! Of course that is their standard estimate, but I was fairly sure it would be before that (although on one occasion it was around 9.30pm - I was not amused !!). By midday I was on high alert, and couldn't lay down and read because I would probably have a snooze. I had to spend hours at my PC looking for news items and other stuff to amuse me.

  The only other thing I could do was to snack, and I think I managed to do that carefully - except for one thing, chilli coated peanuts. They were not very low in sugar, like ordinary salted peanuts are, and they had a lot of calories in them. I still have some left in the bag that has been open for a couple of days now. I think I can say I have been semi moderate in my consumption.

  I was looking forward to a another tiger roll with salad leaves and beef or ham, maybe 2 if I had two left (I can't remember without rushing downstairs to check in the fridge). When it came to it I decided to have some fruit instead. I had a nice texture, but short on flavour plum, and an apple. Later on in the afternoon I had some rice crackers and cheese. At this point it doesn't feel like I had eaten to excess, but maybe I did later, or maybe it was something else when I weighed myself this morning.

  My Amazon delivery arrived at just before 5pm. It was good to get that out of the way, but the contents were not exciting. Most of it was a packet of test strips for two of my blood glucose meters. So nothing new and exciting there. The other half was rechargeable batteries - a pack of 8 2/3rds AAA cells to try and get some solar lights working again, and a couple of AA cells to go in my electric beard shaver.

 Real time update 9:50am: I just heard a noise - it was the sound of fairly heavy rain hitting the windows, and it seems to have been driven by a fairly strong gust of wind. The rain may have slackened off since that first fall, but it still seems quite windy. 10:05am and the rain has stopped, and the sun tried to come out.

  During Jodie's call in the morning she gave me permission to drink up to three named cans of beer unsupervised ! Of course they were beers she had had before on draught, or some other situation where she could not get any of the labels. I was under strict instructions to keep the cans so she could peel off the labels (she collects them).
  All were from the Bullhouse Brewery in Belfast. In my ignorance I drank them in the wrong order. I should have drunk them from right to left (in the picture) instead of left to right. The nicest beer was the "Light Zippy Crisp Citra". It was very similar to a nice lager, but with a hint of citrus from the citra hops. The "Pillowy Soft Fruity"  was a medium cloudy beer with a stronger citrus taste. The "Rolling Papers" was a bit unpleasant with a very strong citrus taste, and foggy rathethan cloudy. It is the very murky looking beer in the glass on the right of the picture.
  My dinner should have been a beef stew. I had part cooked it, and just had to add some vegetables before zapping it in the microwave for 15 minutes to be ready to eat. I don't know why, but when the time came I didn't fancy that, and so I left it covered up some I can resume cooking it today. What I actually had were two dishes I found when I was shopping in Aldi on Saturday. The looked "interesting".

  The first thing to say about them is that they are a lot smaller than it may look. Both together would be about equivalent to a can of soup, and they were quite soupy in a way - soup with what looked like spaghetti posing as noodles. Both had quite a nice taste, and both were fairly insubstantial. I would say at least 50% of them was just a thinnish soup. Apart from the sugar content, 2.2gm per pot, being fairly low, everything else was a bit high. Both had a high salt content. It was a pleasant experiment, but I feel no urge to ever buy any more from this range.

  I followed those two pots with a nice-ish dessert. Once again I was trying a measured quantity (just under 100gm) of a new ice cream bought from Aldi. This one was peanut flavoured, and it was nice, but not that nice. It was another product that was interesting to buy and try, but once is probably enough (apart from the rest of the tub). I guess that small amount of sugar, plus the small amounts from the two Ramen pots, adds up to a medium amount of sugar. I have no idea how much any of the beers may have added. I think it was the "Rolling Papers" that did taste sweetest.

  I was saved from utter boredom in the evening by a few episodes of The Simpsons - two of them were labelled "NEW", and I certainly can't remember seeing them before.  Those two episodes ended at 9pm, and I went straight to bed (after brushing my teeth). I read in bed for a while, and then tried for sleep. It was one of those trick times when I felt sure I would never get to sleep, but 20 minutes or so later I was in the land of Morpheus (at least I think that is the saying.

  There was the usual getting up for a pee every 2 or 3 hours, but it seemed less than usual in quantity, if not in frequency. I only remember a few seconds of one dream. I was at work, and it seems I was sleeping at work (in the night). I had a temporary bed in the corner of the workshop while something was done to me bed (possibly a new mattress) in a room upstairs. The snatch of dream I seem to remember was about a workmate arguing with the boss that he wanted a double bed as well.

  I seemed to wake up quite naturally at about 6.30am this morning. As I walked to the toilet it felt like my gut was less bulgy than usual, and it was as if I had lost a bit of weight. It was a bit of a shock that after having a pee (but no poo) and then getting on the scales, I seem to have put on a full kilogram. I'm not sure that is possible in terms of fat, but is more likely to be water retention, or even poo retention, or more probably both.

  My blood glucose was certainly up a little bit this morning, but all readings were quite good enough. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l. That is 0.1 more than yesterday, and still fairly good (for me). The GlucoRX meter read 8.2mmol/l or 0.2 higher than yesterday. The Sinocare meter read 8.4mmol/l. That is still fairly low, but 0.5 higher than yesterday. Meanwhile, my blood pressure is also slightly higher than yesterday, but 111/50 is still very good.

  If I had not seen the weather forecast, and based my future plans only on what I am seeing right now, I would be going out, possibly for a good walk around one or other parks. At this very minute the sun is shining brightly from a 50% clear sky. I can feel that sunshine warming my room up. The chances are that in another 20 minutes it will be raining again. I note that the strong winds forecast for 11am and midday now seem to have moved to 10pm to midnight. Once again the forecast is no more than a wild guess instead of an accurate science.

  I think that it is very likely I will be staying in the warm and dry again today. I have no idea what I will do today, but a couple of things are possible. If we get another dry spell like now I may go into the garden and get a few failed solar lights, and see if new batteries cure them. Incidentally, the bigger solar light that uses an AA cell, and which I replaced with a high capacity cells is still lighting up brightly during the hours of darkness. I wonder if the cell is charging OK, or if it is just sipping from the full charge that was in the battery when I installed it ?

  Another probable project for today is to edit (top and tailing plus advert removal) a new, small collection of recordings of episodes of The Simpsons to add to my archives. One other thing is not exactly a project, but I think I need to modulate my eating a bit better today. I think that lunch, and snacks, may just be fruit. If nothing else it should be good for my bowels. Dinner will have to be the beef stew I half cooked yesterday. Maybe, after padded out with broccoli and other vegetables, it might be so big that I will only eat half of it.