This was garage cleanup day. I tried scrubbing the floor with dish detergent and cat litter but when Libbie came home we got out the pressure washer and hooked it up. Had to first get gas from the McDonald's then started blasting the grease off the floor. While I sprayed, Libbie pushed water out. We hooked up the big fan to dry the floor. Had to dash outside at 5 to gather up everything before a thunder storm hit us. We let the fan run all evening to dry the floor. Dinner was bean burger, corn and not Vidalia but a fake version of the onion which was way too strong.

I went driving around to car dealers today. Started with Mark Jacobson where I found they sold 29 Prius's in 3 days. Did not like this lot. Next stop was Fred Anderson because I saw they were getting a Gold Prius on Aug 3. They looked it up and said yes it was coming on Monday. I gave them my credit card for a $1,000 deposit to hold the car. We got a call that the car was unloaded from a truck in the PM and was available. We tried draining the gas from our old clunker but had no luck. We drove the old minivan to Fred Anderson at 7:30 and they did the deal. We paid list price plus a $500 dealer fee which was a rip off but we like the car and like the deal. The clunker program gave us $4500 for our minivan which was worth about $2500 if it was in good shape. It had an oil leak, sticking accelerator and transmission linkage, and bad ball joints causing the car to pull right and wear the tires unevenly. In addition, the power windows didn't work. Dinner was Briyani.

We got up at 6, I was too tired to get up but rallied. Packed the car, had cereal and coffee and were on the road by 7 AM. Stopped in Kissimmee McDonald's for biscuits and coffee at 8:30. Traffic was pretty light and it was a nice day for driving. Our next stop was in Brunswick for gas at 2.29. Libbie got us a turkey sub at Subway which we split. Our next stop was in Florence for gas at 2.23 which was 8 cents higher than a week ago when it was 2.15. We got home somewhere around 6. Noticed that the exit onto 1&64 was backed up for miles so we got off at the Cary Mall exit and went home via Lake Pine. The skies opened up when we got home and it poured rain. Our timing was great. Dinner this evening was a BLT.

Found out this morning that I couldn't buy ATPWF on Scottrade but would have to call a broker for a $27 fee. I bought 1000 shares of ATPWF on Schwab and tried transferring money back to cover the 8300 cost. Next I will try to transfer the Schwab stocks over to Scottrade and close the Schwab account. Will probably have to wait until next week to do this in order to allow credit for the shares in my account. Also bought 100 shares of CEG-pa to round that up to 1000 and also picked up 300 shares more of SZG, Selective Insurance, which rounded that one up to 800. Not sure if I should go for 1000. Did not walk this afternoon but went over to the pool with my book while Libbie swam. It sprinkled on and off while we were over there. This morning we went to Selby and enjoyed the gardens and the art in the Selby house. After Selby we had lunch at Marina Jacks. I had a half Cuban with a bowl of seafood chowder. All was excellent. I enjoyed the legs of the girl at the next table. She had on a miniskirt covering a bikini bottom and sat with her skirt open and legs up on a chair. Nice site! Researched Matrix and Prius when we got home. Wonder if Internet departments at some dealers are worth anything.

It was a rainy day on and off. After walking the loop around Stoneybrook I went out and got a newspaper. Still 1.75. Left around noon and did a super long walk out to the junkyard on the legacy trail. It was cool on the way out but the sun came out back. The walk took 2 hours. Later in the afternoon we went out to Panera but stopped at a car lot first to look at Toyotas and Honda's. The Matrix is pretty ugly but the Honda Fit may be a good choice followed by the Toyota Prius. At Panera I got a chipotle chicken and french onion soup. We got home dry but later it really started pouring.

Did an early morning walk before breakfast which was unusual for me. Studied stocks for some of the morning then went on my long walk for one hour and 45 minutes, this time I went the other way down the rr trail coming out at a parking lot on McIntosh. It was a different walk but I wished I had a wide brim hat. Came home and got cleaned up then played with painting before we went out for dinner. Dinner was fantastic. I had the Asahi tuna over a mitsu noodle base. The saices were fabulour with a ginger base. I had a glass of Shiraz with dinner. Libbie had the grilled salmon with 2 glasses of Shiraz. Came back and saw Big Al swimming in the condo pond. Had not seen him this trip yet. Did some more studying of financials this evening. It looks like I may be able to buy ATPWF on Scottrade which eliminates the need for the Schwab account. There was a spectacular sunset tonight.

After breakfast we got going at 8 for the East Coast. Stopped at the outlet mall in Vero for kitchen stuff. Bought mugs and silverware plus a casserole dish for home. We also stopped in Gibsonton for gas at 2.38 and Mulberry for McDonald's coffee and sausage and egg muffins for 2 for $1. Reached the Backus around noon and found they were closed for the season. Stopped into the Chamber of Commerce and couldn't figure out why they were in existence. They did guide us to a nice restaurant, Uncle Carlos down the street overlooking the river. We shared a turkey Ruben panini which was excellent. Stopped in 2 galleries in the arcade which were pretty expensive. Next went to Peppermint Patties then down the street to talk to a guy selling art under a tent. He was quite a character and a lot of fun. On the way out of town we stopped at Treasure Island antiques in a very nice air conditioned house. It was very neat and clean. Headed home and made it back to Sarasota around 7 PM. Libbie picked up a couple of crab cakes for dinner from the clubhouse.

We took a short walk to the front entrance then went to Walmart for my watermelon and also purchased a painting kit to experiment with oil paints. Later I took a long 4 mile walk out to the back of Stoneybrook by the junk yard. The walk took 1 hour and 40 minutes, it was long and I was sweating pretty bad but I enjoyed the walk. At 6 we went over to rib night. We ordered the prime rib with salad and glass of Shiraz. Very hot rolls were included with dinner. afterward I came back and basically passed out on the bed until the phone rang. I seemed to get a second wind after the nap did some financial looking online. Hillman announced they were going to pay the dividend with interest which comes to 1.49 per share, a very nice check. All other stocks seem to be doing OK. Even MWE has recovered nicely to the low 20's. The message boards seem positive toward the stock although I'm glad I unloaded half my shares at $29 almost a year ago. It may be time to buy them back, mainly to get the dividend.

Got up at 6:50 which is late for us. I slept soundly after the drive yesterday. Had the waffle for breakfast and some juice and coffee before hitting the road. Got gas at 2.41 before getting on i-295. Stopped in a place called Palm Coast for coffee at a McDonalds. It was a very nice town, well landscaped, no signs, fancy street lights. A miniature Cary! We stopped at Celebration on our way because Sue said housing is getting reasonable and Celebration allows you to walk everywhere. Houses were around 1,000,000. which we don't think is much of a deal. Made it to Sarasota around 2. Visited Yoders but they were gone. Did some looking around and finally found them in the Mall next to Penneys in a very nice modern store. They don't seem to be getting the traffic they used to but the store looks promising. Also did Publix for ice cream and laundry soap.
At 6 we went over to pub night in the grill room. We both had Salmon over Linguine with a glass of Chardonnay. They served a salad family style. Jeannie and Mike were at the next table and came over to talk with us after dinner. I thought that was Jeannie but Libbie didn't think so.

Today is Libbie's birthday!!! She had her cholesterol checked at Kroger yesterday and it was as good as mine. My weight this morning was 235. I'm afraid it won't be going down because of our upcoming trip to Florida. I need to make a card this morning.
Made the card and went over to Walgreens at 11 AM and it wasn't printed yet. We left at 12 noon without the card. Stopped for gas and Libbie's lunch in Florence then our next stop was the Florida visitors center in the late afternoon. The center closes at 5 PM and we got there a little after 5 but we used the bathrooms anyway. Hooked up the GPS and it led us to Singletons Seafood Shack in Mayport, also called Atlantic Beach or Jacksonville. It was a very eclectic place right on the water. We ate next to the windows looking out at a fising boat. We got to see the cargo ships going in and out of the channel. The food was outstanding. I had deviled crab and scallops with cole slaw and black beans. They served us chardonnay in little plastic cups. Afterwards we used the GPS to get us back to our hotel, the Comfort Suites on Commonwealth. The hotel was very nice and new. Our room was $76 with all taxes. After checking eMail we went to be around 10:30. It was a long day driving.

This is a busy day. Marjorie sent another episcia photo which I added to the mix. Now we're only missing two. Installed Breeze Browser and HJsplit on the new computer then used Breeze Browser to build html pages for the library. Uploaded it all to MAAVS. The library photos are done for another year with the exception of the missing two pictures. Turned my attention next to the watering. Had to go to Walmart to buy a new male end for the hose. Also picked up a timer. When the thing went off for testing it flooded the yard. 15 minutes is way too long but it is the minimum time for the Walmart timer which is too long. I resurrected the old Hydro Rain and tried to get it to work. Got it all set up but didn't hear the solenoid activating so I disassembled everything. I was premature since the shutoff outside was in the off position. When it's like this the valve doesn't make noise. Will try again tomorrow. Dinner was a bean burger with Vidalia. Researched palette painting on the web and downloaded some samples. Weight today was the same as yesterday - 236. Ruth wanted photos for the article so I ran half a dozen through Photoshop and sent them to her. I also was in touch with Williamsburg about menus. Had trouble getting hold of Sarah and when she finally responded she sent Kings Arm menus instead of Shields. I have a bad feeling about this hotel. As if I didn't do enough today, Libbie came with a pile of stuff to be scanned. Worse, she mixed up the stuff I already scanned with other papers not scanned. Ahhhggh! Finished this stuff late and uploaded it to the tourdocs web site.

With some luck I'll drive to Florida on Tuesday but before I go I need water hooked to the grow boxes and all the AVSA pictures completed. Weight is 236 this morning which still matches my 2.5 pounds a week loss. We went to Home Depot to get parts to build a header for the watering system for the Grow boxes. Tonight's pizza was with wheat graham flour. IT was different, had texture but was very good. We'll do this again. Libbie added some tomato pieces to the sauce and it worked out pretty good. We had a pretty good rain today, need lots more like it. Finished the AVSA pictures today and created contact sheets. Sent the sheets to Marjorie and Anne.

Earlier today I tied the zinnias and dahlias to stakes. After my 4 mile walk I tried the gasoline trick on the yellow jackets. An hour later they still were there so I mixed up some Orthene and sprayed the zinnias and roses before using the rest of the tank on the yellow jacket nest. This seemed to bring them down. Every time a few would fly I would spray the stuff over them and the nest would settle. The Orthene seemed to do them in. The highwaymen painting came today - I knew it was dark but I really really like the palette knife technique. I even watched a Youtube video on painting with a palette knife. The Highwaymen painting I have was primed with white paint first. You can see the remnants of the paint on the back of the painting. Painting is by Charles Chico Wheeler. Dinner was stuffed flounder with steamfresh vegetables.
Weight today was 236 which is super!!! I had to check the fat ass chronicle to see if this was a loss - it was a 1/2 pound loss.

Instead of walking I mowed the backyard. Got stung by a nest of yellow jackets in one of the old stumps in the backyard. This ended the mowing. I wasted a lot of time today installing XP on the Compact Flash card in the Atom CPU system. The CF is too slow to be useful as an easy to boot system for my stereo system. Dinner was chicken Briyani.

The Newegg disk drive and compact flash arrived. Spent some time trying to get an XP install image on the compact flash. I just found that the max was 2 gigs supported. I hooked the 1 TB disk up inside Manon2 and started backing up some of the files on Manon2 to the drive. I will eventually mount this into the external case I purchased and use it as backup. Dinner was a beanburger with Vidalia.

Worked on quite a few of the AVSA pictures late into the night. Did an 8 hour fast from 10 AM until my Krogers cholesterol test at 6:45 PM. I was a little hungry wishing I could have an apple or some cherries but I knew i wanted good reading tonight and also the fast would be beneficial to my diet. Still did my 4 mile walk. While I was out the HVAC anemometer came in. This thing measures CFM as well as temperature and also IR temperature with a laser pointer. I'm going to check the air flow of our home as well as compare it to the Florida condo. Preliminary results shows 130 CFM in our bedroom vs only 95 CFM in the playroom over the garage. Our upstairs system needs help including a duct redesign.
Went to Krogers at my appointed time and got a very good blood test and helpful analysis from Michelle the pharmacist. My levels are outstanding - low cholesterol, low triglycerides. Blood Pressure was not great but with weight loss it may come down but I'm not so sure. Will keep trying. In the evening I continued to work on pictures - am now up to number 46 but quite a few numbers are missing. I'm also in the last two chapters of Clyde Edgerton's Bible Salesman which I think is outstanding. So far it's a good read.

Got on the scale this morning and I gained half a pound. It was expected since I dropped 1.5 pounds yesterday which was too much. Today's activity is to work on the Reno pictures. Did the grocery run but first went to Tier Direct and returned the not needed DVD drive. I picked up another 2 GB mini Sd card for my music player while there. Dinner tonight was a bean burger with Vidalia. Tomorrow is my cholesterol check so I didn't want a BLT tonight although we have all the ingredients.

Only have 2 paragraphs so far for my Lonestar article. Need to step it up! In the meantime I received a nice surprise this morning on the scale. I dropped 1.5 pounds.Spent most of the day in avoidance behavior. Ordered an anenometer for the AC ducts. While I was on the Amazon site I also ordered a replacement cabin air filter for the Corolla. AAA said it was bad but they wanted $75 to replace it. I also went to eBay and won a Highwayman painting by Charles Wheeler. He's one of the original Highwaymen but it's not a vintage painting. Later in the day I finished the Lonestar article but then was informed by Kathy Lahti that Ruth is expecting me to put an article in AVM about the convention. Started writing that one as well and finished it in a few hours. I had to install Office on my new computer to send the pictures with captions even though I will be sending the original pictures later to Ruth. Dinner was beanburger with vidalia.

We slept a little later - the alarm was on and Libbie got up first which she never does on Sunday. I was going out the door at 6:50 for the newspaper when the phone rang. Watchung Ridge was calling to let us know Aunt Helen had fallen again. Maybe old people need training wheels to keep them upright. Maybe they have them - it's called a walker. I read about weather server software this morning then when Libbie came home we walked around Seagrove Farm. We met Bonnie and Oliver, owners of Lot 67. He's with Fidelity and just graduated from Univ of MD. Also did a little gardening today - the tomatoes in the Grow Boxes needed water and everything needed tying and a light weeding. Weight this morning was another surprise since I clocked in at 238.5. After a tiring walk around the lake I lost another pound down to 237.5 before gaining back a half pound by eating watermelon. Dinner was Libbie's yummy pizza again. Good stuff.

The heating element is supposed to come today. I removed the old element which seemed to be OK. I'm writing this after mowing the front lawn and the element still has not come. Tracking said it's on the truck, I'll be surprised if Fedex delivers on Saturday. I weighed 239 this morning. That's another half pound drop from yesterday. Little by little I'm getting healthier. Let's hope this continues although I know there will be periods of seemingly no progress in the future months. I did a lot of weather research on the net this morning looking at various hardware to collect weather data. I want to gather temp, humidity, etc and archive it on a website. I think I also will build a temperature logger. My device will collect one wire data and store it in an SD card.
The card did arrive on a Saturday, hooray Fedex. It arrived at 3 PM and I soon had it installed and the motor wired up before putting the covers on the motor and the control box. I put some water in the tub then tried the motor - Eureka! Filled it the rest of the way to the top and put the outside skirt back in and watched the temperature slowly rise at about 2 degrees per hour. I do believe it's fixed!!! Dinner was BLT and Bush's barbecue beans again. Yummy.

Returned to Tiger Direct to return the Compact Flash. while there I bought a keyboard and a DVD drive. The keyboard was what made the MSI take off. It would not boot without it. Used a USB stick and installed ?Ubuntu. It sucked big time. It was bloated, did not load as quick as I would like and worse, it would not stream with the existing MP3 player. I nuked it and installed Win XP. Had some trouble getting it to boot on it's own but after editing the boot.ini, all was well. I only had a cucumber for lunch today. Tried the watermelon that Lib bought but it was awful. It was white inside and not ripe. Had a peach instead. Dinner was crab cakes with baked beans, the Bush barbecue style which had peppers and a little bit of zing. I loved it. After dinner I worked on my XP installation some more. I need to get XP to start Firefox automatically with the Music server set as the home page. It seems to play music OK and work on the net just fine.

Went to Tiger Direct this morning to get a Compact Flash and LCD Monitor for my Atom Barebones PC that arrived via UPS this morning. It looks like a pretty nifty PC for $119. There wasn't much in the way of docs or anything else but I didn't expect it to be so barebones. The fire department was there when I got to TigerDirect - apparently the fire alarm went off so I waited for them to signal the all clear. I bought a 4 gig CF card for $48 with tax. I'll return it because CF cards on Newegg are less than $20. I took the 500 gig drive out of Mazeppa and put it into Manon2 to transfer all the files off the drive so I can format it for use by ubuntu in the new PC. Need a name for the PC. My weight this morning was 240 which is just under the obese label. Whoopee!!!! Dinner was pasta tortellini stuffed with pesto.

Weight still holding at 241, boooo! I had a panic moment when I discovered half of the AVSA pictures were not on the new PC. Looked at Manon and Mazeppa but no luck. Checked Traviata and had a real panic when I everywhere I looked I couldn't find the pictures. Finally I took the shoebox out of the closet and discovered that one of the CF cards was not downloaded. I downloaded the card and breathed a sigh of relief. I have also slowly been scanning and uploading the tour sheets to a web site for Nancy Carr. Dinner was a BLT and also roasted beets. I never thought I would like beets this much. What a treat. Stayed up late and finished scanning all the papers and postcards that Libbie has given me but there is still more to do.

Worked on the new PC today some more transferring the AVSA pictures over to the new PC. I did the 4 mile walk again today after the grocery store run. I also went to Trader Joes today - lots of little kids running around. Dinner was beanburger with fresh corn again.

Still holding at 241. Installed Photoshop CS2 on the new computer then found out how to save my old actions and load them into photoshop. Walked the full 4 miles today - it was overcast and only in the 80's. Dinner was fresh corn on the cob from the Farmers market with bean burger and vidalia onion.