This morning started off very cold. My thermometers said it was below zero, and the thick frost agreed with them. On the plus side, it should be a sunny day, and that may help raise the temperature to 7° C in the afternoon. It is already looking very bright outside, although the sun has to climb a bit higher before it can shine into my room, and hopefully raise the temperature to a toasty 26° C with no heater running. By midnight the temperature may have fallen to below zero again. At 5am tomorrow is may still be -1° C, but at 6am the forecast says it will have jumped straight to +3° C. That sounds unlikely. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be medium grey all day except for 4pm when there could be a sunny spell. The afternoon temperature may reach a mild 9° C.
 
  Yesterday was an annoying day - mainly on account of waiting until almost 6pm for my Amazon delivery. On the other hand, I did seem to keep myself busy during the afternoon, and somehow I managed to control my eating better than any day for ages.

  I sort of guess that I would have a lot of waiting to do for my Amazon delivery, and so knew I would not be going out, plus the cold and grey weather made going out a stupid thing to even try. It all meant that I had another quick wipe over with a flannel instead of a proper shower. Not having a shower was sealed when quite early during the morning I put in my favourite bath towel to soak in bio detergent (in one of my big builders style buckets).

  By midday I had done no more than writing yesterday's electronic diary entry, and put the towel into soak. I spent the rest of the morning laying on my bed reading, and I expect I had a snooze too, but I don't specifically remember doing so. I was briefly disturbed just before 11am when I got an email to say my Amazon order was out for delivery. That was quite early, and it gave me some false hope that maybe my parcel would arrive early.....it didn't by my reckoning, but it could have been a lot later, "by 9pm".

  Just before midday I fancied some lunch. The day before I made two sandwiches, but yesterday I decided I would only make and eat one corned beef and horseradish sauce sandwich. It was because I decided that midday might be a safer time to eat some of walnut cake that seemed rather dangerously sweet. I had half of what was left of the cake. I expect I'll have the other half as part of my lunch today.

  After passing maybe an hour reading from book and screen, I thought I ought to do something a bit more productive, and that turned out to be more video editing of recorded The Simpsons episodes. I think I managed to do 6 episodes - removing the adverts, and trimming the crap from the ends. I took occasional breaks, and two of them (or was it three) were to do all the rinsing and wringing out of my bath towel. It was just one towel, and it was not very big as bath towels go, but I had to split the job up. I think it was as much boredom doing a repetitive job over and over, as much as my muscles getting tired. I had it hanging up to dry in front of a fan heater on low, by about 5pm.

  One thing I didn't do the day before when editing The Simpsons episodes was to actually stop and watch my work. Yesterday I did, and I watched 4 episodes that I had not seen before (except small bits while editing). At least three of them were quite entertaining. At 5pm I stopped because I thought it was time for a Star Trek, but I had forgotten it was the weekend, and there are no Star Treks over the weekend.
  While looking through the windows to see if there was any sign of an Amazon van I noticed a rather colourful pre-sunset sky. it looked like the clouds were on fire. This small picture doesn't really do the scene justice. To the naked eye it was very spectacular.

  I did find a Sheryl Crow gig being shown on Sky Arts, and I watched some of that, but she was doing stuff I had never heard before, and it alls seemed very disappointing. I was saved when my Amazon delivery arrived at just before 6pm. It was a new, and bigger camera bag. It seemed a little smaller than I thought, but it was bigger than the bag I used for my Nikon D610. I spent a bit of time, maybe not enough to get everything perfect, putting the camera, plus two other lenses in the new bag.

  There was also enough room for my flash gun, plus wireless flash trigger transmitter (the flash guns all have wireless receivers, although I rarely use that facility). There were a few very small spaces left after that. If I had re-arranged the dividers, I could probably make enough extra space for maybe another camera body. Maybe I will have to do that when I go to one of the big photographic occasions like Petts Wood Calling, where a second camera is very useful. On the other hand, at Petts Wood Calling I can use my camera carrying rucksack because I can put that down safely in the green room.
  While I had the Nikon D610 to hand I dared go just outside into the freezing air to take a picture. It shows a very thin crescent moon at the bottom. Above it is just a tiny white dot, and although I don't know for definite, I believe that dot to be Venus. On the 1920x1080 screen of my PC it all looks a bit more dramatic than this shrunken image.

  I had several idea for my dinner, and one possibility was to have the stewed beef I had already cooked, but I thought that might go better after some beers today. I left it in the fridge to keep chilled. I was going to have some fruit, and I was going to have the last bit of the walnut cake. What I actually had was nothing more than the remaining three quarters (approximately) of the tub of "no added sugar" chocolate ice cream. It seemed surprising how just that seemed adequate for my dinner. I think I am getting very used to eating less than I desire recently.

  There was almost no entertainment on TV last night, and I ended up reading in bed soon after 8pm. I did try to go to sleep at about 8.30pm, but I didn't seem to be ready for it that early. I was ready little more than half an hour later, and I seemed to fall asleep very easily when I tried then. In some ways I had a very uneventful night, but there was a short period of time when I felt a bit too hot, but for a lot of the night, and particularly after midnight, it felt like it was a cold night, and I pulled the duvet tight around me.

  I remember waking up for a pee.probably a couple of hours after first getting to sleep, and thinking "I must try and remember that dream". It was evidently an interesting dream, but now I can't remember a thing about it. What I can remember is that last night was another night where I seemed to pee very little, and maybe there was at least one occasion when I slept non stop for three hours instead of the more usual two hours.

  I seemed to feel that when I woke up at just gone 6am it was time to get up. I just seemed to feel that I could not sleep any more. I went to the toilet where once again I only seemed to pee about half of what I considered typical. On this morning I did do a poo as well, but evidently not enough because I have just had another. Like yesterday morning I wondered what all the lack of peeing would do for my weight and blood glucose. My weight, rather disappointedly, was exactly the same as yesterday morning. Later on I would pee and poo again, and if I had done both early enough I may have seen a loss of a few hundred grams.

  More interesting was my blood glucose level. The Contour meter read 6.8mmol/l, and that is the lowest I have seen for ages. It gets colour coded dark green on my spreadsheet. The other two were only in the light green, but that is still rather excellent. The GlucoRX meter read 7.0mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter read 7.1mmol/l. I guess I can cut myself a little slack today......but not too much ! My blood pressure was also good this morning, with a reading of 106/43.

  The big even today, apart from the nice sunshine, should be a beer tasting session this afternoon. Jodie and I may be joined by Michael on this Sunday. That is unless he thinks his illness symptoms haven't got worse, and he feels infectious. I saw him on Friday while on my way to Aldi. I knocked on his door to give him a couple of extra strong garlic sausages I had bought for him from the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. He came to the door saying he did not feel good, and had quite a few aches, and may have been running a fever. He said he was going to see if he could see a doctor. I have no idea if he did get to see a doctor. Maybe if he did he is now in self quarantine !

  One thing I want to do around lunchtime is to go to Savers, and top up on a few of the vitamin pills I take daily. Several of them are getting very low. I will probably go into Poundstretcher while I am there as well. My big dilemma is what to do for dinner tonight. Ideally I would like to have fruit, and I have a few soft fruits that will need to be used in the near future. On the other hand I have stewed beef that just needs some broccoli, and another 15 minutes in the microwave before being ready to eat. I think the fruit would be nicer, but that beef stews needs using up too. Decisions, decisions.....