Went to Home Depot and picked up a box to house the telephone splice. Looked up some sample wiring for a type 66 punch down block which I'll mount in the attic. Anne sent the species program from Barbara Pershing. It's pretty dry and boring but fact filled. Richard Nicholas will narrate the program. Picked up a copy of Wall-E which we watched this evening. Pretty creative stuff but I doubt if it's best picture Oscar material. Dinner this evening was Spinach stuffed pasta from Trader Joes.
I pretty much decided to go to Florida the last week of January instead of this week. Studied a little the sculpture of Harriet Frishmuth. Very nice stuff. I added some of her bio to Toms Life Bits. Stopped into NAD on 55 today and filled my tank at 1.79 and also filled the Kerosene can for 3.79 per gallon or $15 total. That was a shock. Kerosene didn't fall as much as gasoline.

Did some computer reading this morning the went out to the grocery store. I'm torn about whether to go to Florida tomorrow. I do and I don't. Charged up a camera battery and took some pictures of the internals of the LED grow light. Dinner was chicken with picata simmer sauce over noodles. Very good.

Libbie told me that yesterday was Mom's birthday. She learned that from Aunt Helen. I cleaned out a desk drawer and Libbie cleaned out Joe's closet in her office room. My laptop had trouble starting up and in addition exhibited a freezing which I couldn't figure out. Took out the hard drive, scanned it for viruses and also did a defrag and optimization. It was a success. The thing runs but not great. I'll probably re-install windows in the future. Dinner was the chicken/broccoli with curry simmer sauce. It was enjoyable.
The LED grow panelarrived via FedEx from Calif. I plugged it in and measured the power which was about 8 watts. The LED's are too bright to look at. The color makes violet leaves turn black. I disassembled it to take photos and measure voltages.
This afternoon I picked up some oil at Walmart and did an oil change at 36900 miles. Changed the filter as well which I had on hand. It's a FRAM PH4967. Couldn't find Champion D14 spark plugs for the generator. Tried Advance on 55 in Apex.

After the traditional morning paper, I scanned some more of the Christmas cards before Libbie came home. She and I took the old Love Seat to Goodwill and also went to target to buy 6 18 gallon tubs and 10 6 liter shoe boxes so she could empty Joe's stuff out of the bedroom closet. I did a little research on Landmark Forum and found that it's a cult. Downloaded a French documentary detailing the cult and their techniques to scamming people. I was pretty sad after seeing this and knowing what happened to Sue.

Scanned some of the Christmas cards in the morning then got dressed and ready to go to the opera. Left home at 11:45 and got to Brier Creek a little after 12. Decided to cruise the storefronts looking for Thomasville. Hit the McDonalds for a drive through hamburger before driving back to the theater parking lot. The performance of Rondine was enjoyable despite a few flaws. Peter Gelb announced that Alagna Gheigerou was recovering from a cold but would still sing. The real problem was the sound that quit during act 2, through the intermission and just for the first few bars of act 3. After that everything seemed to be fine. Theater management was very gracious at keeping us informed. The performance ended at 3:30 so we went across the street to the Thomasville store. Nothing jumped out at us so on our way to 540 we saw Ashbys LazeeBoy store. Lib found a chai she liked but the store was too busy to help us. Went to Raleigh and bought the same Lazeeboy chair and fit it into our little Corolla. Amazing. We paid $70 for the 5 year warranty which gives us a bottomless jar of leather cleaner. At home we had Salmon, peas and Yams for dinner. The new chairs look great in the family room.

Fired up Mazeppa today so I could burn a DVD for Marjorie. Got it into the mailbox at noon. After a salad fro lunch, Libbie and I went furniture shopping. We went up 70 and first stopped at a large warehouse near Car Max. Walked through miles of furniture but did not find anything that jumped out at us. There were lots of pieces and if we were outfitting a home theater we would be in nice shape. Lots of overstuffed recliners with cup holders, etc. Our next stop was Carolina Furniture were we ended up buying a Bassett chair for $1000. The next stop was Bassett furniture. We bought a couch for another $1,000. I think we need to go back there and buy a recliner matching the leather we purchased. We went home to get the minivan and returned to pick up our chair. On the way out we stopped at Kincaid but didn't like the selections. Went to Sams for supplies, mainly trash bags and soap. We stopped at La Concina at 7:30 for dinner. I had the quesadilla that Libbie normally gets and had it with a Margarita. It was great - lots of chunky shrimp, beef, onions and Avocados and sour cream. We moved the new chair into the family room and threw the old chair out into the garage. The upholstery was ripped pretty bad on the old piece.

I finished the two AVSA articles and sent them to Ruth. Much communication with Anne this morning. I ended up sending the whole directory of print ready files to CVS for her to print. Libbie came home in tears today. Bruce left Sue for another woman. Lib's pretty upset about it. After lunch we went to Crossroads and looked at furniture at World Mart and also Ethan Allan. Saw some nice furniture at Ethan. Also stopped at Gole's on the way home and talked about my broken remote control which I got from them and also looked at some of their chairs.

I spent almost all of today working and reworking the AVSA articles. In the evening we had high winds which knocked the power out. Our generator came on and gave us light and heat. We went over to the greenhouse to check the plastic. All looks OK. When I came home, Anne had another revision which I added to the article. Dinner was a very nice chicken and brocolli with rice medley that Lib created using the Cury Simmer Sauce I picked up in Trader Joe's.

Bid on an LED grow light this morning and won it. For the price it seems like a steal compared to the price of buying LED's and building my own. Did a grocery run today. I need to lose lots of weight. The scales say I'm 250. I want to be 200 and I'm going to do it. It was a miserable rainy day outside today but the temp is holding around 60. Got the first article formatted of the violet wedding. Now it's time to do the "how to" article.

Went through a mountain of mail but didn't do too much else. Paid the bills that needed manual intervention and re-applied to be on the condo board. Dinner was BLT in the evening. For lunch we had Lean Cuisines.

Got up early in Savannah and hit the highway by 7 AM. Traffic was heavy but not as bad as yesterday. We stopped for biscuits and coffee in SC, got some gas at 1.45 in Florence and got home just as it started raining at 12:00. I was wiped out so didn't do much. Libbie made her good pizza then we watched 60 minutes.

Lib cleaned the place while I went to the Post Office with our package for Anne and some postcards. Made a list of things we need to bring next time.
We helped Peter and Joe take down the condo Christmas decorations. We stored everything in our storage unit and got going by 12 Noon. We took I-4 and listened to LaBoheme from the Met. Did a McDonald's drive through just before Orlando around 2 PM and kept going. Traffic was not bad. Got gas at exit 15 in Georgia then shortly after that we got into a traffic jam that lasted all the way to Savannah at exit 87 where we got off. Checked into the Hampton Inn and then went in search of food. Found a nice little Italian restaurant called Gianni's. I had a Calzone and Libbie had Lasagna. IT was a small family run establishment and was very very good. We paid $23 including tip for our meals.

I burned a DVD today and after Libbie and I reviewed it we added a few slides and re-ordered some things that were wrong like the cake cutting before the food service. I think the DVD came out nice. When we were satisfied with it, I burned 3 copies and put it in a priority mailer to Denton. We had our last lunch today at the clubhouse. I had a Rueben and Libbie had the soup and a BLT. Her soup was excellent. I took half the Rueben home for dinner. Finished reading the book "Doing It" about a couple that has sex 100 days in a row. It was mildly interesting in how they revved up their marriages with all sorts of romance in spite of kids and the pressures of everyday life.

New Years Day. We did a nice walk to the wetlands out in front of Stoneybrook then picked up some supplies at Publix. Had a new years lunch buffet at the clubhouse which was very nice. I was expecting a grill menu but instead it was a buffet whcih was nice by itself. Our dinner was cheese, crackers and Chunky soup. I spent the majority of the day correcting pictures in Photoshop.

After breakfast we went down to Venice and enjoyed the Venice Rookery again. We counted 6 active nests with herons and either eggs or babies. Very nice. Two of the herons were into nest building. It was nice to see them fly to shore and pick up sticks or pull cattails out of the ground for use in their nests. Next we filled our tank for 1.55 then stopped by Lowes for some plumbers putty so I could finish the drain project. In Osprey I stopped in the produce store for some fruit for lunch. They had Honeybelles. We bought 4 as a trial. They were very juicy and yummy. We ate two for lunch (one each). Will go back for more.

After a lunch of cheese and crackers we went back to the produce store and picked up more Honeybelles. I worked on the wedding pictures some more before we got dressed up for the party tonight. Left here at 7 PM. At the clubhouse we had horsedouevres of mushroom, duck, surf and turf, chicken. fruit and cheese along with glasses of Chardonnay. We took our seats for the salad course. Our table mates were Wendy and husband John from St Pete, Jim and Donna from Deer Creek, and a couple from the Stoneybrook villas. We danced, used our noise makers and had champagne at midnight. Left at 12:15 when they announced the last dance.

After breakfast we took a walk out to the nature trail and boardwalk with our binoculars. Just before that we went to Lowes and bought a new faucet for the Master bath. The old one was dripping so I decided to replace it rather than repair it. After our nature walk we stopped at the clubhouse for lunch. I had the fish sandwich and fries. Lib had the burger with fruit. We ordered 3 glasses of Yuengling draft total. It was a very nice lunch. This is getting habit forming. When we came back Pat said she had a renter for March. This is good news for us. I needed only one month to cover our expenses but the second month is nice insurance.
for our dinner tonight we had crackers and cheese then some corn chowder soup by Campbells (Chunky).

We visited the Venice rookery after breakfast then stopped at the clubhouse for lunch. I had a BLT which I saved half of for dinner. Had a long talk with Anne about the wedding pictures. She had been busy with Helen Mahr and also a trip to Wichita and was now in the assisted living since Helen was sick again. We had soup and I had the leftover BLT for dinner. What a tiring day!!! We took a wlak around Stoneybrook. My camera is still acting up. It only works half the time.

Didn't have enough quarters so I went to Publix to get the Sunday paper. About 10:30 we went for a walk to the nature wetlands in front of Stoneybrook. Enjoyed the warm sun and watching the various birds in the marsh. On the way back we stopped at the clubhouse and ordered lunch. I had the Stoneyburger with a Yuengling draft beer. It was very excellent. Cam home and looked up the birds we saw and finished reading the paper.

This morning we went to the Venice rookery and watched baby herons and egrets. This place is a find. There were others photographing the birds with large telephoto lenses. When we came back we had lunch in the grill room. I had a Stoneyburger and 2 beers, Yuengling on draft. That took care of me for the day!!!! Came back and went through wedding photos and put together a wedding article for AV magazine. Have not heard from Anne in several weeks. Our dinner was chunky soup, clam chowder. We made one Publix trip for egg nog and frozen yogurt. Before dinner we had our egg nog with cheese and crackers.

This morning we went out to Selby but first stopped at the Mall to check out jackets on sale. Went to both Macys and Penneys but did not buy anything. Went to Selby and enjoyed the garden as usual. In the evening we went out to rib night aat the dining room. It was a rib buffet which I did not enjoy although the food was good. Table service was lacking and kids running through the dining room were distracting. Dinner was $84 and not worth it.

Left at 7 AM after breakfast but first had to stop at the darn greenhouse for something or other. Finally got going again at 7:30. We had light rain all the way to SC. Traffic was heavier than I expected. We stopped for gas in GA and then again on I-4 West of Kissimmee in Davenport. The weather in Florida was much nicer. There was a note on our door from Peter and Christa welcoming us and to stop over if we needed anything. We went over to their place and had wine with them in the evening after we had chicken salad sandwiches for dinner that we brought with us. There are no restaurants or grocery stores open for Christmas day.

I went out this morning looking for a belt for the fanjet in house 1. The new belt installed in October was shredded to a thin sliver. Tried Johnstone, RE Michels and PEP Boys. No luck anywhere. Finally drove across town and stopped at Graingers and bought 2 belts. Stopped at Krogers for eggnog before they close for christmas. Went to the greenhouse and installed the belt. It seems to work pretty good. It's nice and even on the pulleys. We had presents this evening, one day early. I got Lib Russel Stover candy and a Debbie McCromber book. Dinner this evening was salmon stuffed with spinach, etc and a yam with a bottle of Shiraz. Had to go back to the greenhouse to check things - it was 64 outside so no heat test. We went to a place down Penny Rd to see Christmas lights and were not disappointed. A house there had 87,000 Christmas lights.

Brought the JTAG over to the greenhouse and successfully put the new firmware into LOGE. Now the thing blinks out the temp correctly. Yeah!!! This version also has some cleaned up code for handling negative centigrade temps. Went over to Trader Joe's and got wine for the trip. IT was a party scene over there. Did a Krogers run and bought Krogers brand wheat crisps which turned out to be stale. Had to return them. Deposited the TDSP check and paid the bills - taxes, Visa and condo. Libbie and I returned to the greenhouse in late afternoon where I ran a generator test. It needs some maintenance starting with new spark plugs. Blew the driveway off since the wind from the past few cold fronts put down a lot of pine needles.

THis was to be a day of working on pictures. Libbie called to tell me the aux heater was on even though the temperature was 26 degrees. I drove over there and looked at it myself. Started building a second LOGE so I could debug the problem. Had trouble bringing up the second LOGE because the configuration silicon fuse was set to clock divided by 8. I wired up the JTAG as an ISP programmer. It didn't work the first time. found I counted pins wrong on the AVR. Fixed the wriing and sucessfully programmed the fuse and the unit worked correctly. Tried all sorts of machinations to get the thing to fail. Rigged it so that it was 26 degrees with the juper in and 22 degrees without the jumper to simulate outdoor temps. It did not fail. Work into the evening when it got cold. Built some probes and put one outside when it was 25 degrees. Just by accident I started looking at variable values with the JTAG and discovered the negative temperatures were not being handled correctly. When it is below 32F, it is negatice Centigrade temps. The probe only does centigrade. Made a trip to the greenhouse at 11 PM and retrieved the card for programming. Brought it back out there at midnight and hooked it up. The temp was 27. The pushbutton readout was always reading 32. Went home at 12:30 midnight but at least the big heater was on. Dinner was shrimp jumbalaya.

This was a squandered day. I have a microwave to work on, the nicholas pictures to organize and the Venus-LOGE circuitry to program but instead I looked at some of my digitized videos and tried uploading one to You Tube. Heard from Harrys daughter Alison from Facebook. I found some of my medical records in the file in the back room so I digitized them and uploaded them to the Life Bits site. Libbie made her traditional pizza but she used white flour instead of wheat which made the crust a different texture but still good! In the afternoon today I went to the greenhouse and tightened the fanbelt on the fanjet of the zux heater. Had to remove the two lower motor bolts and put them into the next lower slot so the motor can now be slid lower to tighten the belt even more. This worked well.