This morning started misty, a fact only the Met Office correctly forecast. The sun burnt the mist of by about 8am, and it is currently bright and sunny. Having said that, the sky is only a pale blue, but it could/should get better. This full, or very near full sunshine should last until about midday, and then there may just be sunny spells. The afternoon temperature is forecast to reach 21° C today, and the temperature may still be 14° C at midnight.  Tomorrow may be very similar to today, but the afternoon temperature could reach 22° C. The weather for the whole of next week is currently looking really good !

   Yesterday seems to have been a rather good day, and I have no idea why. I only realised this a little while after getting up this morning. It mainly concerns my health in terms of my blood glucose and weight. I went shopping yesterday, and that usually kills any good intentions about my eating, but somehow it seems it didn't.

  I somehow seemed to write another long piece yesterday - not quite as long as the day before that, but 2,635 words is still a lot of typing. No wonder that as soon as I brought up yesterday's piece I found a spelling mistake staring me in the face. No doubt this morning will include several uncorrected errors of something or another. once I had finished writing I had my usual rest, and then....

  I knew that there were no more excuses, and I had to finish the laundry I had abandoned the day before as one of the first things to do after my rest. I needed to wring out the cold rinse water, and then do the fabric conditioner. It was not really arduous, and as I think I said yesterday, I mainly seemed to give it up because I was bored, and wanted to do something else - mostly reading, but I did do other things.

  One other thing was to wash my hair and have a shower. Once dried and cooled off a bit, I got myself dressed and ready to go out. I think I mentioned yesterday that I might try and get a bit of extra walking in, but in the end I just to and from Tesco. The core of what I bought was some ready meals, and they were lightly selected to have less sugar in them than some other near them.

  I also bought some stuff from the reduced price shelf, and that included a couple of Thai flavoured salmon fish cakes. They were from Tesco's "Finest" (i.e. expensive) range that I will only buy when on the reduced price shelf. I also bought some Tesco "Finest" baby potato salad. I didn't actually check, but I think it had onion in it as well. I left the empty container in my bedroom overnight after eating it with some cheese for an evening snack. This morning my bedroom smells like a sweaty armpit !

  I was wearing my new wide fitting trainers for the walk to and from Tesco. I think they are starting to feel more comfortable, but they will need a bit more wear to really break them in. Like the day before, they were good in so much as nothing was pinching, or rubbing - both very significant - but they still had the same, but hopefully improving hard and stiff feel that made my feet ache.

  On the subject of trainers: Last night I did something I was thinking of doing, and it was to replace the waxy laces on the new trainers I had bought for just £10 from Tesco as a clearance item. The new laces can easily slip through the eyelets, and so the shoe can better adapt to my foot. I wore them indoors for half an hour last night, and I think they feel better, but still not that good. They too need breaking in, but there now seems to be hope.

  After getting home with my new shopping I put it away, and started on some lunch. It seemed and was madness on a day when I thought I should be fasting until dinner time, that I had a cooked lunch. It was the Thai flavoured salmon fishcakes with a generous helping of "Finest" baby potato salad. I assume it must have been very unhealthy, although the nutrition information suggest only mildly bad.

  After lunch I had a lie down, and read another chapter from the book I am reading (Steve Squyres - "Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet"). It is fascinating stuff - even a lot of stuff about NASA internal politics. There is a fair description of the two rovers here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover. It got to a little after mid-afternoon, and I had an itch to do something more useful.

  What I had in mind was some more laundry. I had several t-shirts that needed washing, but I limited myself to just 3 t-shirts, and also a couple of pairs of underpants. I took a brief break in my reading to put that lot into soak in detergent. Half an hour, or so, later I was back in the bathroom to almost finish the washing in one go. I did end up taking a break when I had to stop to have a pee.

  I did the last bit, wringing out the last rinse water, and doing the fabric conditioner after I had a break of 20 to 30 minutes. My original idea was to dry it all on the washing line, but the promised sunshine in the afternoon never happened, and by the time I was ready to dry it the sky was starting to look slightly grey. I couldn't dry it on the big clothes horse because that had the washing on that I had finished earlier in the morning. I had to use the small clothes horse.
  The picture above, showing the small clothes horse was taken after dark using infra red illumination. The interesting thing is the the t-shirt in the middle of the picture is a black t-shirt, and yet under infra red light it looks white. The pigment used is a strong reflector of infra red. To the right of the picture, and in the background, is a waste bin with a black bin liner. That black bag looks correctly black, but I know that with even deeper infra red black bin liner actually seem transparent.

  There wasn't room on the small clothes horse for everything, and one t-shirt had to be hung on the kitchen door frame using a coat hanger. This morning it seems to have dried just as well, and somehow maybe even better that the other stuff that has a desk fan blowing at it. With the washing hung up to dry it was time to think about dinner. It was a liver and bacon ready meal, and for what I hoped would reveal the best flavour, I followed the instructions for heating it in a normal oven, and not the microwave.

  I ate dinner while watching TV, and I think it was probably the BBC News channel. The bacon in the meal definitely seemed nicer when oven cooked instead of microwaved. It should have been a very nice dinner, albeit maybe a bit small. However the liver tasted odd - not off, but something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It may have been something like cheap off cuts.

  Maybe an hour passed, and that (to me) quite small ready meal seemed to leave an empty space inside me. Throwing caution to the wind I had a snack. It was the second half of the "Finest" baby potato salaad covered in grated red Leicestershire cheese. It was pretty nice, and was probably not as unhealthy as I thought it would be - as I would discover this morning.

  I watched some other TV before heading for bed. Sky Arts were showing an ELO concert from (I think) 1977. They played some good tunes, but it seemed to be of little entertainment value (also the video quality was a bit 1977 as well). I watched a few episodes of The Simpsons, and then called it a day. I went to bed and started reading my book. I was feeling tired after a few pages, and I was happy to see a few more pages would take me to the end of the chapter.

  I don't really know what time I turned the light off, but I do think I fell asleep in minutes. It was probably around 9pm. Like the night before I woke up nearly three hours later, and for a few moments it seemed like I had slept right through the night, but then I noticed it was not quite 1am, and so after a pee I went back to sleep. Subsequent times when I woke up I knew it was just to have a pee, and it was not until just after 6am when I woke up knowing it was really time to get up.

  I seemed to have a lot of dream in the night, and most seemed inspired by the book I was reading, and involved the designing and construction of the rovers themselves. I can't describe hard details, and most of what I remember is sort of feeling. I don't even know what my official job was, or even if I had one. What I do know was that some of what I was doing was similar to what I was doing in my last job, and that was a sort of unofficial ideas man. I would hear of problems and would suggest ideas that usually worked.

  I seemed to be watching my weight during the night (after every pee). I was very surprised to see my weight was lower than I would have guessed just before I got into bed. I was even more surprised when I weighed myself after my "first pee of the morning", but once again, no early morning poo (that should be along soon). I seemed to have lost 800gm since yesterday morning, and that was without trying. I had thought I almost given up trying to exercise any control yesterday.

  There was similar good news about my blood glucose. I seemed to have peed a lot during the night, and that should have suggested high blood glucose, but it turned out to be quite low. The Contour meter read a marvellous 7.3mmol/l. Maybe I had an inkling of an idea that some of what I ate was very slightly low in sugar, but I never expected it to be all low in sugar. The GlucoRX meter read 7.5mmol/l - not quite as good, but spot on my current, and recently rarely achieved target. The Sinocare meter was the odd one out, but even 8.4mmol/l was nothing to worry about.

  The headline feature today should be another beer drinking/tasting session with Jodie. Of course that is another gran chance to ruin my blood glucose and weight. To partly offset that I have been thinking of going for a walk before lunch, and I will do it in a pair of shorts !! Last night I checked the fitting of 5 pairs of shorts, and they all seem to fit me well. The shorts I intent to wear today, and maybe most days in the week of hot weather coming up, didn't seem to fit me at all last year (or was it the year before ?).

  They are a pair of khaki, camouflage shorts. They have the useful thing of a few extra pockets - which is handy when not wearing a coat. I intend to walk in the reduced price from Tesco trainers that I replaced the laces last night. With no give in the laces they seemed what I can only describe as clonky. Like my new trainers they seem to be a fairly wide fitting. Ideally I should be breaking inn the newest trainers first, but I may do alternate days until one pair gives in and becomes comfortable. Maybe they might even be as good as each other in the long run. I am unsure how far I will want to walk in probably uncomfortable shoes, and I don't intent to push myself too far. Maybe, but it is highly unlikely, I might return home a bit early, and then change to an older pair of trainers for a bit more walk,