Yesterday was a bad day if only for one special reason - my broadband internet connection, provided by Vermin media has died, and may not be restored until sometime this afternoon - possibly just after 3pm. It is curious that they provide such an accurate sounding estimate - not 3pm, but 3:02pm !

  To get the screenshot on the left, plus the weather forecast, I had to use my spare mobile phone, with it's Smarty SIM card as a WiFi hot spot. In one sense it is a good use of a lot of data allowance that often goes to waste. The possible flaw with that is that I cannot remember just how much data I buy every month.

  Err, I've I have just checked, and it is 5GB a month. Maybe I can afford to use it as a WiFi hot spot for more than just the odd occasion. On the other hand, some social media sites can burn through that data in a fairly short time.

   My broadband dying, plus it mostly being a grey and drizzly day, combined to dampen my enthusiasm for doing many things. I did have fanciful ideas about doing more than being lazy almost all day, but my morning was another morning when after I finished writing I laid on my bed to read and snooze, and little else.

  As lunch time approached I did become a bit more active. By then my broadband had failed, and I spent some time going up and down stairs to reboot the cable modem to see if it would start working again - it didn't. I then set my spare mobile phone as a WiFi hotspot so I could go through the tedium of trying to navigate through the Vermin Media website trying to find the status page. They do not make it easy. It seems you can't get anywhere until you have logged in, and that was a complete muddle since they have improved the security of their web site. I think I managed to log in OK, but changes were needed, and I have probably locked myself out for future visits.

  Having apparently logged in I could not find the status page. I had to do a Duck Duck Go (not Google) web search to find the direct route to the status page. That revealed that there was an issue in the SE6 area, and another website (is it down dot com) suggested there was a widespread outage over a lot of London, and further afield. From that I conclude they are putting in more Government taps to monitor and censor our web usage. Unfortunately it will probably reveal I am disloyal to The Party, and will soon have to go and visit Big Brother for typical torture and brainwashing.

  I'm trying to think what my lunch was. All I can think of was that it was ice cream and cake. If I were more patient it could have been something healthier like cheese and fruit. On Wednesday I bought a couple of potentially nice oranges. One of them looks like it might be really good, but I can't seem to find the right occasion to eat one - which is silly, but true.

  The biggest plan of the day was to grab my big camera, and go and see Chain playing a gig in The Partridge pub in Bromley. I think by early afternoon I knew I would not be going. I think the bus ride there would be a bit boring, but tolerable, but there were several negatives, including one I had not thought of. The main negatives were it is always a bit packed in The Partridge (but maybe mild compared to The Bricklayers Arms in Beckenham), and it is always very dim in there. The other negative, that I hadn't considered until I saw a picture taken there last night, was there was a man who irritates me enough by his existence that it would dampen the whole experience if I had gone.

  While my conscious mind was still kidding itself I would go to the gig, my subconscious seemed to have other ideas. Instead of having a shower, and washing my hair first, I cluttered up the bath by deciding I would start to wash some clothing. In an ideal world, maybe one where it was bright and warm enough to open the bathroom window to let in a warm and fresh breeze, I could have done that laundry quickly, and had a shower afterwards. As seems to happen far too often, I took a break and never resumed the laundry. It is still waiting for this morning. All it needs is the last rinse water wrung out, and then the fabric conditioner stage done.
  While most of me seems to feel pretty good after my hospital visits, and having my new heart valve fitted, there is one area that can still cause a little bother. It is around the entry point of the small catheter used to inject X-Ray contrast dye wherever it was needed. Like the big catheter entry point, that is healed, but still a bit tender, this small entry point is sometimes also a bit tender. It is as if there is some underlying muscle damage, and doing stuff like wringing out wet clothes can get it sore.

  Incidentally, the actual entry point is in the middle of the red circle. I am unsure what all the other red bits are. They may possibly be tried and rejected possible entry points,or something completely different, but given enough provocation my wrist can feel sore - not agonisingly so, but enough to be annoying. It was another reason not to go out last night. I must admit I didn't test it, but I use my right hand to grip my big Nikon camera, which I would have been using last night if I had gone out, and I can imagine holding the camera out and steady would have created a lot of discomfort from that wrist.

  My other weak point that could also have made going to the gig uncomfortable, was my ankles. They are improving, but still ache when walking. I rarely sit down at a gig, and I am always bobbing around with my camera for loads of alternative position shots. That would probably put a lot of strain on my ankles, but without trying it I can't say for sure. My health was another negative against going out. Sooner or later I will have to test the health aspects to see if they are as bad as I fear, but last night was not the night.

  It was because I wasn't going out that I could have a nice dinner. Usually I prefer to go out without too much food swilling around in my belly. My dinner was not actually that big, but enough to feel some bloat when attempting to walk. It was some roasted root vegetables with some (alleged) "southern fried" flavour coated bits of boneless chicken. I think the chicken may have been better as part of a sandwich (or between two burger buns with salad and stuff). There was nothing bad about the meal except it was not wonderful (as it might have been in my imagination). I had more ice cream for dessert.

  TV entertainment seemed to be a bit thin last night, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to watch the pilot episode of the TV adaptation of Douglas Adam's "Dirk Gently" books. It was a brave attempt to put it on the screen, and the producers did their best, but nothing beats your own imagination when reading the books themselves. My dodgy download included the first, and only 4 actual episodes, and I will dutifully watch them, and do my best to enjoy them, but.....

  I watched both QI and Have I Got News For You (on Dave) before heading for bed at 11pm. I felt sufficiently tired that I expected to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. That was a bit optimistic, and it may have taken 10, 15, maybe even 20 minutes (or maybe it just seemed to feel that long) before I fell into quite a deep sleep - I think. I know I got up to pee several times in the night, and I am sure I had a dream, but all memories of that dream have now evaporated.

  This morning I feel sort of healthy-ish. My weight has dropped 900gm since yesterday morning. I have no idea how I managed that, but it would be good if I could do that every morning. My blood glucose was pretty good, but that was Mounjaro's doing, and not me being hyper careful of my food intake. I got readings of 6.9mmol/l (very good), 7.1 and 7.9mmol/l (good but not magnificent). My blood pressure seems good to me. It was 108/51 just now.

  Apart from finishing my laundry, I have no definite plans for today. It seems to have stopped raining at the moment, but the chances of it starting again seem to be high enough to make any outdoor plans unlikely - almost. One thing I have been tossing around in my mind is to go out for some rail trips with one of my bigger cameras. Maybe some tube train photography could be good, and of course much of that could be underground where the weather doesn't penetrate. If I do that it is likely to be a split second decision. At the moment it just feels like a possible good idea that is unlikely to happen.