After the paper this morning I worked on the microwave all day. Finally got the probe working wihtout error and also designed a nice error recovery algorithm. After Libbies wonderful pizza we drove to the post office and mailed the controller to ME using priority mail.

Worked on building a microwave probe then got dressed and out to the opera. On the way there I stopped into Best Buy and picked up a Sony PSP for the web browser function. I plan to do Greenhouse monitoring by using the browser to see a local web page with greenhouse sensing. The opera was great. I enjoyed Mark Morris choreography. Afterwards I stopped by the airport on the way home and picked up Libbie. The opera was over at 2:45 and I was at the airport by 3 PM. We picked up Ribs in Trader Joes for dinner which we had with Butternut Squash and Shiraz.

Spent the whole day doing various changes to the microwave probe. Nothing seemed to work. Went to bed as a failure. Libbie called at 9:10 PM. She's bringing her Mother's quilt home. The temp went to 60 today, completely melting any last traces of snow. For dinner I had the Trader Joes calzone. It wasn't too bad in the microwave.

Went to Tiger Direct and bought speakers for Mazeppa. Downloaded Songbird and had fun walking through my music collection and playing random tracks. The program has a fantastic tag editor which I used to classify a lot of my music. Worked a little on building the Venus packet system in my shop. Charged the HandiTalkies, mounted the TNC board and a terminal strip. Will probably mount the Venus board with velcro. Dinner was Lean Cuisine French Bread pizza and also a Lean Cuisine Veggie pizza.

Did the credit union today with Libbie's checks and a rebate check I had. I also paid the Stoneybrook bill via Visa for 565 today. Went out for the first time of this storm today - roads were mainly clear except for shady spots which were still icy. Shoveled the sidewalks and driveway pad but they were still icy. Came back with cat litter and sprinkled it around. Had trouble with the spark plugs. The new Champion D14s needed a 7/8 deep socket which I didn't have so I bought one at Ace hardware. Surprisingly the existing Autolite 35's have 18 mm threads like the Champion D14's but they only need a 13/16 wrench. Communicated with Barb Pershing about the species program. For dinner I bought a roast chicken which was marked down to 2.99

This is inauguration day. woke to a few inches of snow on the ground. We may end up with as much as 6 inches or more of the stuff. It was a surprise. They predicted this but I had my doubts. A cold wave was making it's way down from Canad while Atlantic moisture was supposed to come in to collide over NC for 2 to 5 inches of snow. It may be 6 inches or more - who knows? I watched some of the pre-inauguration on TV. Instead of doing the dumb coverage of reporters in the snow they switched to National coverage and said to go to the HD transmission to see local snow coverage.

This morning we heard that it was going to snow tomorrow. I worked to change Libbie's reservation so she leaves today instead of tomorrow. Took her to airport for a 3:50 flight which didn't leave until 5:15. They waited for the plane from Philly to get in. It was pretty late. She flew to Baltimore and then was to go to Providence tomorrow. I rounded up the garbage, threw out a lot of CD's from my office and also picked up the greenhouse garbage and put it all in the can out at the street. We're getting ready for some snow that's supposed to start after midnight. Picked up a new remote control for our fireplace. It's an RF remote instead of ultrasound. Dinner was a mish mash of everything - some egg rolls, a Lean Cuisine and fruit.

Did not get much done today. Read the Sunday paper this morning then did some reading about packet and TNC communications. Need to build a comm system for the greenhouse. Dinner was Libbie's super pizza as usual. She used a frozen dough which makes a nice crust for reasons we don't understand. The frozen ones come out better than the fresh ones.

Did another day of reading about TNC's. Dinner this evening was salmon with sweet potato and shiraz. We had Birds Nest veggies as an appetizer beforehand.

We got up at 6 am this morning and drove over to the greenhouse to see how things looked. It was 16 degrees outside but nice and toasty inside. Both heaters in house 1 were running keeping the interior at 61 degrees. Libbie called the greenhouse every few hours all night long. After she came home late at 2:30 PM we had lunch then headed over for some repairs. I installed the aluminum heat shield then replaced the fan belt, The old belt was paper thin. Not sure why it was so thin. I loosened the motor mounts so the belt wasn't so tight. We had an appetizer of the birds nest vegetable with soy dipping sauce. Next course was salad then a pork BBQ sandwich. Very nice.

I picked up lathe at Home Depot and some Mollies to hang the quilts using the lath strips. After a dinner of chicken, rice and cury simmer sauce, Libbie and I hung one quilt in her office room and the other over our bed. It is going to be cold tonight so I went to the greenhouse at 10:30 and checked the probes. It was 25 outside but the probe was reading 29. Moved it higher away from the greenhouse roof and now it is reading 27. This is good enough to detect the 22 degrees that turns on the second heater. We woke several times during the night to check the temperatures. All seemed OK. Earlier in the day I checked the fan belt. It is well worn even though installed Dec 24. I cut a piece of aluminum to use as a heat shield for the belt when I replace it again.

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.