The forecast says it should be light grey now, but I would say it is more medium grey. The slightly thicker cloud is probably why the temperature is currently 7° C instead of the forecast 6° C. The afternoon temperature should reach 9° C, and the clouds should have broken up enough to give sunny spells in the afternoon (and hopefully earlier). The sky could be completely clear tonight, and that will allow the temperature to drop very low tonight. It might get low enough for some frost in sheltered areas tomorrow morning, but it should soon warm back up 9° C, and tomorrow should be nice and sunny. It looks like we may be looking forward to a week of sunny days.

  The whole of yesterday hinged around my expected beer delivery. It was not due until 4pm at the earliest, and so I had plenty of time to do other stuff, including going out for my Wednesday lunchtime Guinness in The Jolly Farmers. I guess the big trouble was believing that yesterday would feature loads of heavy rain.

  Yesterday morning I wrote 2,364 words here, and I think most of it was basically OK (unlike this morning when I seem to be badly suffering from fat finger syndrome !). I started fairly early for a change, and I finished writing in plenty of time to have a short rest, and then wash my hair, and have a shower. I guess the weather forecast left me feeling too depressed, and then using the beer delivery as an extra excuse (even if not really relevant), and I decided to be too lazy to bother to wash yesterday.

  One thing I did do quite early yesterday morning was to order a new computer monitor from Amazon. It was a "renewed" product - i.e. secondhand. What I thought I ordered was a 14 inch monitor for just £15.99 (including delivery), but what I seem to be getting is a 17 inch monitor. That shouldn't matter. It is to pair with a mini PC I bought ages ago to use as a replacement for the beaten up old laptop that is my web page server.

  Amazon estimated it would be delivered between 4th and 6th March. This morning I got a message from DHL to say it is being delivered this morning between 10am and 11am ! That is bloody quick ! It's condition is quoted as "used", and I hope it is not too beaten up, and works correctly, but if not then wasting £15.99 is not too much to cry about.

  At midday, when I would have been walking to the station, I think it was pouring with rain....at least I think it was. The rain was not as persistent as the forecast suggested, and there were many times when it didn't rain, and so it is hard to say for definite that it was raining, but it didn't matter because I was looking forward to lunch instead of going out. Incidently, if I had gone out I would have been equipped with my waterproof cameras.
  I have two specifically waterproof cameras, and the one on the right is rated to actually work underwater down to a depth of 33ft. My big Nikon cameras seem to survive being used in the rain, but I don't like to chance them when one of the above cameras will do a good enough job. The only problem with the blue camera, the Fuji XP71, is that the battery tends to slowly discharge when the camera is supposed to be off.

  I only use these cameras on rare occasions, and I usually find the battery in the blue one is flat, or about to go flat. By 11am I still thought that maybe I would be going out in the rain, and so I charged up the battery in each camera, plus a spare. The only use the blue camera got was at just gone 4pm when I took the picture below.
  I took this picture when I decided I ought to take it in case the weather changed suddenly.  The weather forecast said there was still a few hours to go before we got the first sunny spell. In fact there had even been a short sunny spell in the morning. The sunny spell in the picture had lasted about an hour, and so it really should be described as "sunshine", and it continued for maybe another half hour before it clouded over, and eventually rained again. I wasn't paying enough attention to say it actually happened, but Sod's law says it probably started to rain just as the forecast was saying the sun should have just come out !

  Back to midday, and I made my lunch. It was the last two (not very) crusty breakfast rolls with sliced beef in them. One had horseradish sauce, and the other piccalilli. The piccalilli was fairly good, but I think it goes better with cheese. I'll stick to horseradish with beef, although maybe English mustard should go well with it. After lunch I laid down and read for a while, and I suspect I had a snooze too.

  It probably got to about 3pm and I wasn't doing anything more than reading, and that did not seem enough distraction to stop me thinking about a mid afternoon snack.  I tried a potentially dangerous experiment. I got away with a few times in the past, and I wondered how I would fare yesterday. The experiment was to have some naughty ice cream. It was very nice, but maybe that was spoiled a bit by some guilt. To make matters worse it was a bigger portion than I thought might be safe - basically I was so close to the bottom of the tub that I just finished the whole lot off.
  It was not too long after the estimated earliest time when my box of beers arrived. There was a mix of bottles and cans adding up to 27 different beers. Most were low to medium strength basic lagers and IPAs, but a few were strong ones, although I don't think any were silly strength beers. I spent some time juggling beers around in my three fridges (a big one in the kitchen, and 2 small ones in the dining room - those in the dining room almost exclusively for beers). There were nine beers I could not fit in a fridge, and I expect Jodie would say they were the first she wanted to try !

  One little job a bit earlier in the afternoon was to prepare and part cook my dinner. It was a pack of diced beer that was nearly a fortnight after it's use before date. It looked a bit brown, but smelled OK, and ultimately tasted OK. I stewed in the microwave oven in two sessions, and I added one tomato and a few hot chilli peppers (one seemed extremely hot !). It should have been a very low sugar dinner.

  As usual, I ate my dinner while watching an episode of Star Trek, although that finished before I finished eating, and I ended up watching The BBC News at 6pm. Later on I would watch one more episode of Star Trek: Voyager, and then several episodes of The Simpsons. At 9pm I was about to go to bed when I realised I had not taken the medication I usually take around 4pm. It was already ready to take, and I gulped it down followed by a mouthful of Diet Coke.

  I don't know if it was the action of gulping down all the pills (medication and vitamin pills), but I went from feeling fine to feeling a bit like heartburn after laying in bed for a while. I am not sure it was heartburn. It could have been angina, and it did certainly feel worse after going out to the freezing cold bathroom.  I had to sit up at my PC for almost an hour while some antacid tablets and some Paracetamol hopefully worked their wonders. Neither was a 100% cure, but one or other helped a lot.

  I am unsure what time I finally got to sleep. Having started earlier I am pretty sure it was before midnight. I was still feeling a bit off when I woke at a little after 1am to go for a pee. It was curious last night in that I didn't seem to get up to pee as often as usual, and each time it was not generally a very big pee. I can only remember one bit of one dream, and it was unusually unusual (if such a thing is possible).

  In the dream I encountered a very strange animal. It was like a 30ft long black slug - with teeth !  Nothing really happened, but there was a sort of voice over, as if it were documentary, saying that the only one of these creatures in captivity was in the London Zoo. All very interesting, but a rather bland dream otherwise.

  I was unsure how I felt when I got up this morning. I seemed to feel neither good nor bad....which I guess is a reasonable compromise. Maybe all I ate yesterday, or maybe less peeing in the night was one reason why I seem to have put on 900gm over the last 24 hours. I did do a reasonable poo this morning - more than the little bit, and then no more, yesterday. I have been again since then, and I have a feeling I will be going more today to clear a backlog of a day or two.

  My blood glucose level this morning is probably pretty good considering the ice cream I ate, and I am sure I had some sweet fruit at some time during the day yesterday. The Contour meter read 8.4mmol/l, and that is very acceptable even if not very good. The GlucoRX meter read a slightly better 8.3mmol/l. It was the Sinocare care meter that let the side down. It read 8.0mmol/l 0 just touching the bottom end of danger territory.

  My blood pressure is pretty good this morning. Actually at 106/46 it is probably very good considering there has already been some rushing around and excitement this morning. At about 10:25am, almost exactly 24 hours after ordering it, my new ("renewed") 17 inch 4:3 monitor was delivered. Of course I had to test it - a priority before writing this. The good news is that it works, and looks to be in good condition. It's resolution is 1280 x 1024, and that is fine for my uses. It wasn't shown in the original spec, but it has not only a VGA input, but a DVI imput as well.

  I have a DVI to HDMI converter, and I was 100% positive I had a HDMI to display port lead, but after a lot of looking I could not find it. I eventually had to test it by using the VGA port on my main PC. That allowed me to use it in dual monitor mode. There are times, like video or image editing when that could be useful. I had never tried it before, but in mere seconds I had it the PC running in dual display mode. The big difficulty is my desk is too small for two monitors side by side. The important thing is that I am happy with the £15 99p I paid for this new monitor.

  I think I still just about have time now to wash my hair, and have a shower, and then go out to Aldi to buy a few things from there, plus of course check out all the special to waste money one. I may even buy some more beers ! Later this afternoon I should have Jodie here to be (hopefully) a bit amazed at at least a few of the new beers that were delivered yesterday. There are several pils type lagers for Michael to sample if he manages to get here.