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What was your fasting blood glucose? (full on chat)

Even by your standards that is quite, quite special.
 
geefull said:
Paper prices (and sizes!), are a thing aren't they
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I agree so confusing, I stick to A4 because I can buy laser cut mounts that it fits and get frames that the mounts fit into, just lazy really.

Thank you for comments on Tryfan. My Mountain Bike painting will now have to wait until June as we are away by the sea, yippee, for a week on Saturday.

I think we are all fed up with rain. So empathy with Mr Gee.

Your painting today reminds me of the top end of Loch Lomond. You have caught the wet day feeling very well and the light is amazing as usual.
 
Thank you @geefull

Brilliant majestic mountains and calm loch...
 
@geefull Fed up of the rain here too. Many heavy showers interspersed with occasional sunshine. Although we do get variety, some of the showers have thunder and hail. Other times the rain arrives before the clouds, bringing a rainbow. Either way the showers are too heavy to work through, so quite disruptive.
 
Just dipping in because I still haven't got around to operating on myself with a swipey...
Some news.
One of the many applications I made to the good old BBC finally came through and eventually I got through the process to join the BBC Sport digital teams as an online journalist on a six month contract.

It has been pretty intense and, given that it is still being all done remotely, quite challenging with a week of education via zoom, and last week was my first week of Newsdesk shifts.

A little amusing irony... when I was working on my own site, well meaning friends would say "Oh you know what you should do, get a job with [Eurosport, Sky Sports, BBC, ESPN, INSERT OTHER BIG NAME HERE] as though it was simple as walking in the door.

Now I have a six-month full time contract, they are all saying "Oh no what are you going to do about your site, you can't leave it" ... sheesh!

Anyway... I am debating when best to submit to my OCD with regards to Swipey... maybe on Sunday so I can start a new month with it...

Above all else, regular income for the next 6 months will mean
1) I can afford to buy fresh groceries every couple of weeks which most certainly aids the whole LC malarkey
2) I can pay back into my life savings which I had to borrow from A LOT to help keep things ticking along - in fact most of what I will earn in the next six months might be funnelled back to help boost that
3) Let's face it... Having BBC (together with ESPN and Sky Sports) on my CV hopefully won't do me any harm.
4) Did I mention how I was crying with joy at the fact I will be getting a regular income?

Anyway... I will try and remember to put Swipey on at the weekend and hopefully things won't be so intense... my head has never felt more word-tired than in the last couple of weeks!
 
A moody sky emerging over Tryfan and all the best with that Mountain Bike Rider Commission.
 
Thank you @geefull. Good cloud formation and the scene looks cold and wet. Well captured. Smashing.
 
ianpspurs said:
I always have mixed feelings and we - my good lady and myself- find it hard to agree on what is clutter and what is indispensable. Skip rage is a thing.
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I almost initiated skip rage once when I threw out some unused and unwanted things Mr K had stored in the kitchen for absolutely ages 'just in case it might become useful at sometime in the future '. He said that he knew I had thrown out his stuff but couldn't remember what he had stored there. I said 'I rest my case '.
 
23.05.2021
8.00am BG 5.4
Yesterday: more hand weeding the drive.
Started digging out a second vegetable bed. MrSlim says the weeds should be dug in, I prefer to dig them out. Am sure some of you will have opinions as to which is the best method.
Have cleaned and oiled most of the kitchen work surfaces, today will first coat the one left. Still no internet except on phones. MrSlim spent nearly six hours on the phone yesterday trying to get it sorted out. Very frustrating for him. He still has a part time job, so not completely finished work, but perhaps this half way to retirement will be better than his two previous attempts to give up working. Although to be fair it was the pandemic that sent him back the second time.
It was glorious sunshine thirty mins ago, now the clouds are lowering and threatening to douse us once again.

@RSFMarsh glad to see you back and agree that having regular income us beneficial in many ways.

Thanks to everyone for the kind and supportive messages.
Tried to post pics but the app is not loading. Maybe later
 
CONGRATULATIONS @RFSMarch
Absolutely brilliant all round!

 
Good for you. A six month contract - congratulations.
 
Sorry fellow posters, painters and gamers.

Bit of a rush here in Tilehurst Towers.

5.4 this morning.
Time out to say congratulations to @RFSMarch on your 6 months and hoping it leads to more.
 
Good morning everyone from under a sky of mixed messages here in the dark and dangerous north
The wonder wheel of lamb breast, simply roasted in the Ninja and some mighty mint came in at 5.2 this am

Late breakfast in town, indoors, hardly anyone in. Hospital rickshaw duty today. Mrs Miggins is taking her sister to hospital as I write, for a small operation. We also have the girl in the bubble today so I am on standby to collect sister sometime this afternoon. Hope I remember how Mrs Miggins’ car works. Must sort my bike out today. Part of a motorcycle escort at a funeral on Thursday. I am part of a group that supply such escorts when people ask, mainly veterans but not necessarily.

Art stuff. Monoprints - take a sheet of acetate (mine from an unused clip frame), rough up the surface with sandpaper. Dribble ink and a bit of paint on it. Now lay a piece of rice paper on it, pat down and see what you have. Once dry, try to make something of it. Did a few - some will be used to make collage I think but here is my first attempt. Have a wonderful day. Koffy time.

 
If I had been treated like poor mr.K I would have been spitting fire!!!
 
Fbg 6.7

My digital painting for today in ZenBrush3 on my tiny Pixel phone screen.
The actual size of the painting that I am working on in my Pixel phone screen is 6cm by 8.5 cm. Which in inches is a tad over 2 inches by a tad over 3 inches for those of us who still like inches (that is me).

For a change I took a leaf out of @Muddy Cyclist 's watercolour techniques. That is do the background the previous day, and then finish up the foreground/more detail the next day.

Because I do get bogged down doing a lot more detail in the background than is probably necessary especially for a small phone screen.

The background took half an hour last night before I went to sleep, and it's quite relaxing doing that the last thing. I thought the background was a bit rough and I thought I'd probably do a bit more work on it in the morning, that is this morning.

But when I looked at the background this morning with fresh eyes, I realised I didn't really need anything more on it, so I left it as it was and just worked on the trees in the foreground and also the rock on the foreground.

Then I decided to be adventurous and add a few tiny figures. Try adding a few tiny figures on something you are working on in a digital painting which is about 2 inches by 3 inches. It is practically impossible.

Doing something tiny like this with the real brush, real paint, and real people, is another board game because it is easier to do an impression of something. But in this case I am working with pixels. And that is not always the easiest thing in the world to do an impression of something with.

My first attempt, the figure looked like Dennis the Menace. For my second attempt the figure looked like something out of the Simpsons. Finally, I had to give myself a talking to. Just get on with it I said to myself (that's what I tell my students when I am teaching painting, just put the rest on the paper! I say...)

So I did the pictures and I thought they were terrible, but I just carried on doing them until I finished. And then I thought we didn't look too bad....

So here is my offering for today's painting, about an hour's work.

Have a good day. Don't get as drowned as I did yesterday when suddenly an ocean was dropped from a moment's earlier clear blue sky. And the roads and pavements were awash in rising flood water. If I hadn't have my walker with me I would have been washed off my feet. It was like a strong tidal wave. At one point, to get back to the car I had to cross the road and the water rose to well above my ankles, halfway between the ankles and my knees. My car was on a bit of a hill and I worried it might move itself.

The last time this happened where I live in the High Street, I was in the car in it and the manhole covers in the road just blew into the air and I was so terrified one was going to blow underneath my car.

So that was my fear yesterday, while I'm sitting in the car completely drowned to skin. I waited about half an hour, and then when it shows signs of abating I finally drove home. All my clothes had to go in the washing machine through the spin cycle, I just put on clean clothes that morning, I needn't have bothered.

I was so cold, and I felt really ill yesterday. I spent the rest of the day underneath my electric blanket sleeping. It was evening when I finally actually warmed up all the way through.

Have a dry day, somehow x

 
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Wow, this is brilliant @dunelm
I love the experimental stage in anything...more exciting!
 
lindisfel said:
If I had been treated like poor mr.K I would have been spitting fire!!!
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If I had done the same in his garage - he would most definitely have been spitting fire. Actually, I couldn't do the same in the kitchen now either because my kitchen has gradually become his kitchen since he has become a superb chef and now does all the cooking. If I did try it again I think he would end up doing a very good impression of Gordon Ramsay.
 
I gave you a winner but it’s very funny and frustrating all at the same time. You are a human dowser. I like the finished artwork. Wonderful swirls of ink, brilliant trees, well observed figures - great detail - very good.
 
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