I went out and picked up the Sunday paper from a machine on Honore. I did find the ad for the Black Friday sale at Van Wezel. Any performance is 50% off. Around 10 we went to the Venice looking for a bike rental. Found a beach rental shop downtown where we got a cruiser for Libbie for $36 for the week. Got back at noon and got dressed for biking - water bottle, hat, etc. Went down to Laurel Rd and turned around. It was 14 miles round trip. Mile marker 900 is at Laurel Rd. and Mile Marker 894 is at our atart on Central Sarasota Pkwy. After biking we went to Haverty's and bought two leather couches for $2400. I was happy with the deal since it included 36 months free interest. Went to Publix to pick up some supplies then we went to lunch/dinner at the clubhouse. It was football Sunday, they have $5 build your own tortillas but we ordered plated dinners. I had a cuban with sweet potato fries and Libbie had the crabcake sandwich. Both were really good. We had two glasses of Mondavi Cabernet each. It wsa Happy hour so the drinks are 4.50 instead of $6. Very nice but I was totally inebriated. No food, lots of alcohol until we then had food. After dinner we relaxed (fell asleep) and watched 60 Minutes then Undercover Boss. Undercover Boss was about the head of marekting for Subway going undercover.

This is our travel day to Sarasota. Got up early, had breakfast and out the door at 7:08 AM. The trip was uneventful, traffic was not bad. Stopped at Kingsland, Georgia and had a Wendy's Baja salad then got gas across the street for 2.67. The Wendy's Baja was excellent. I would do it again. It basically was a green salad with chili over the top and bits of cheese and a pack of Nacho strips. All was going well until we reached Lake Mary just before Orlando. We creeped and crawled through Orlando until Sand Lake Rd where the traffic suddenly started moving at 70 again. We got into Sarasota later than usual, around 6:15 PM. It was dark already. We unloaded the suitcases and food, got cleaned up then went to the club for dinner. They had a special dinner menu in the grill. I had pasta with shrimp, scallops, crabmeat and swordfish. Libbie had crusted Tilapia. She also had the chocolate cake while I sipped a nice cup of coffee. It was a nice dinner out and we didn't have to go out.

Laura wanted some changes to the album. The ovals with her and the picture with her grandmother were different sizes, she wanted them the same. It was a huge effort but I got it done. The new Credit Card came. After a BLT lunch I went to Crossroads and bought an antenna at Best Buy and a doorbell button at Home Depot. installed the button, it's lighted. Wow! Called Zookbinder and got my account changed to (I hope) the new credit card. The bad news of the day is Libbie got a call from Sue. She and her deadbeat husband are going to join us for New Years in Sarasota. What a depressing disaster. New Years is always fun with the party, the Rose Parade and finally the concert at Van Wezel not to mention the Audobon stuff in Venice and the landfill. With the Clampets visiting it's going to look like a bleak weekend. I'm really depressed. I need to escape this crap.

I sanded the new plaster in the shop and put another coat on. Next job was to install the Sirius radio in the Corolla. All went well with threading the antenna, soldering the power into the power system and routing the audio wire. Tested it out and didn't like the interference with my knee so I raised the radio a little. Raked the driveway with Libbie. It's a nice day out. Returned the unused plaster to Lowes and then went out to dinner with Libbie to La Cocina. I used a $79 prepaid debit card I received from Sears as a rebate of the delivery charge for our Washing machine. I enjoyed listening to Don Pasquale live from the met on sirius but I had to turn it off at 1:30 since it was late and I was tired.

Took the bench out of the shop and plastered the wall. Bought some plaster materials at Lowes. Received a strange phone call from FIA Security about my credit card. It had a $2,000 charge for jewelry in the UK. They shut down the card and said they would FedEx a new one out to me Friday. I have to sign for it. Dinner was Bean burger with potato and beets baked in the Oven. Spoke with Anne earlier today. She's going to Wichita for Laura's birthday.

Did the groceries as usual today including a trip to Trader Joes. It's a rainy day but Libbie put out the overly full garbage cans. Continued to work on the shop. Bought a shelf for the audio system to be mounted on the wall. The Zookbook test prints came by FedEx today. all looks good to go. Dinner was Trader Joe's pasta.

Worked at trying to get the album finished for Laura. She's away this weekend but I want to finish this before we go to Florida. Dinner was beanburger. Watched Dancing With the stars a little bit tonight but I have so much to do with the album, controller cards and MAAVS website I didn't pay much attention.

Early morning pick up a newspaper at McDonalds. After the paper I went to the greenhouse at 11 and planted the flat of pansies. I was hoping to have some left over for home flower boxes but used them all. After a lunch of chicken salad with cranberries and mandarin oranges we went to the Farmers market and picked up 2 six packs of pansies and some veggies. Earlier today I soldered 82 capacitors onto the 4 PCB controller cards. This evening i soldered the first AVR chip and screwed it up. I did not orient pin 1 on the correct pin. will have to use a heat gun to remove it. Libbie made her usual great pizza and also started her fruit cakes. On the way back from the Farmers Market this afternoon we stopped into Krogers and got the eggs, butter and flour to round out the ingredients. Libbie discovered that I didn't get the pineapple when i picked up the ingredients this week. I made a separate trip and got the pineapples, multicolored! Finished the Nicholas Sparks book tonight, Safe Haven. It was OK although I'm not into ghosts and spirits.

Short day today. At 8 AM we took the trailer loaded with old TV's, computers and microwave and took it to the Rex Healthcare recycling day. A small army of workers unloaded our trailer in no time which was nice. Libbie came with me since she thought we would both be unloading but didn't have to. Worked on putting down parts on the controller cards this morning and a little on the wedding album. I also got my Atom based PC working in the shop streaming wirelessly from Traviata. Not bad. I measured 21 watts. We left for the opera at 11:30. It's a beautiful day. There was a line outside the doors since they weren't open yet but it was nice standing out in the beautiful weather. The North Hills Farmers Market was breaking down when we arrived. They seem to have shopping center supplied tents and tables which looks like it works out OK for the vendors. We loved the performance. Such delightful and lively music. Anna can really sing but I also enjoyed the acting and singing of Pasquale. Our next opera is Don Carlo. On the way home we stopped at BJ's and got ribs and another pair of jeans. I had to pay $45 for membership renewal. Ouch. Not sure if this is worth it but I'm going for another year. Dinner was ribs, butternut squash and Shiraz.

I had a 10 AM appointment this morning for tire balancing. I found out that tire rotation and balancing was free at Just Tires because I bought my tires there. They balanced the wheels but i requested no rotation because i did that yesterday. The car seems to ride smoother. Received some of the MAAVS photos from Ann-Marie. Now I need to figure out the menu's for the Owego convention. Looked at re-arranging the bookshelves in the playroom for light shelves. I'm going to out them into a corner of my workshop that currently is not used. Dinner tonight was salmon and beets and potatoes. Very good. We also had white wine with dinner.

I finished a first pass of Laura's album today and sent it to her and Anne. Talked to Anne as she was driving to a hotel candidate for Lonestar next year. Went to Home Depot to research materials for the light stands. Luan plywood covered with vinyl sheet goods looks pretty good as a candidate. Next I went to Just Tire where I bought my tires in December 2009 and made an appointment for tomorrow to get them balanced. Dinner was rotisserie chicken from Krogers with potato and beets roasted in the oven. Delicious. Did a little touch up on the album after dinner while listening to Sirius Tosca with Shirley Verett and Luciano Pavarotti. In the evening Libbie and I loaded the trailer in the garage with old TV's for recycling day tomorrow at Rex Healthcare. I left my car outside. The console TV in the playroom was a challenge to get down the stairs. It was easier getting the 31 inch TV down from the attic.

The 4 PC cards arrived FedEx this morning. I tried putting the larger 1210 470 ohm resistors on and had ample room. I may reduce the 1210 footprint in the future since it's more than needed. I also put the buzzer driver transistor on the card. This card has a 485 transceiver correctly controlled with unused lines turning the drivers and receivers on and off separately. The issue is the TX/RX is shared with keypad lines so they must be disabled to use the keypad. I found my way around the Zookbinder ordering software and ordered the 3 test prints required by their process. After lunch Libbie and I went to the Farmers market and picked up beets, potatoes, squash, apples, pecans and bread. The Pecans were 3 1/2 pounds of shelled nuts for .44 per pound. I compared this later to Krogers where the shelled pecans were $7 for 12 ounces which worked out to .58 an ounce. Listened to Don Pasquale on Sirius tonight. James Levine had to stop conducting before the end. Margaret and Will bided some time then an announcement came from the stage that there would be a replacement conductor. The LA times the next day announced this but with no reason given. While all this was going on I worked on Laura's wedding album. I'm within a few pages of completion. Dinner tonight was beanburger with onion and tomato. Libbie baked potato and beets to go with it.

Did a quick supermarket run and bought all the fruit cake ingredients My supermarket bill hit a high of $84. Wow. I got enough gas points for a tank of gas in one trip. They didn't have the raisins and figs for the fruit cake. I also skipped the Pecans because Libbie said we could get those at the Farmers market. Came home and started the oven for the chocolate chip cookies. I put both boxes of Trader Joes cookies on the tray and they ended up running together. I ended up with a chocolate chip sheet cake. i also bought water. Brought juice, cups, water, napkins and cookies to the greenhouse for the TAVS meeting. I stayed for the business part of the meeting and left when the workshop was going to start. i have much to do today. Dinner was chili with cornbread.

I visited the eye doctor at 9 this morning. He wants to redo the optic nerve test. I have an appointment but will cancel it since I don't think it was done correctly the first time. I spent lots of time on the phone with Sirius trying to get my credit card credited with $14 for the internet service that I canceled. Next I bought an Atom barebones from Newegg for $299 and it was declined by FIA services. Spent a lot of time on the phone with them and they said they were going to shut the card down because of a faulty attempt by classmates.com. I looked through my receipts and found a purchase Oct 26 of Gold membership using Shopsafe. The tried to auto renew but it was declined due to bad expiration date. Good for that but it caused security concerns. Finally got that straightened out. Libbie brought the huge pile of mail and it was more bad news. My PSA went up to 0.49. I may get this diagnosed along with the enlarged prostate. What next? Libbie made chili for dinner. This was the meat, tomato and beans we bought for chili for when the Benzigers visited but we didn't use.

We got up at 3:45 AM San Antonio Eastern Time (we set the clock back one hour). After settling our bill with the hotel we got off on the highway at around 4:15 which was great! It was a chilly morning but we made great time down I-10 to San Antonio. Got gas at the Anderson loop which connects to the airport. Our rental car went 340 miles on 11.xx gals for a calculated 29 mpg. We took a road with lots of lights to the airport then couldn't find the rental return since the signs were not marked clearly and GPS didn't help. Eventually returned the car and had smooth flights to Baltimore and Raleigh. We had a McDonald's breakfast in San Antonio airport and a Quizno's sub in Baltimore. I wore my sweatshirt and ended up getting a pat down for the sweatshirt. There was more controversy, a lot more serious, when we found we didn't have our suitcase with my computer, camera and Libbie's violet purchases. someone took the wrong black bag off the parking lot shuttle. We called the number on his luggage tag and eventually got hold of him. He returned to the parking lot with our suitcase. We got home at around 3 PM. Stuart and Duncan were at our house looking at the firewood. I picked up skim milk at Krogers and Libbie made her pizza which was very nice. This evening after dinner I ordered the other 4 AP PC boards. I'm not happy that Sirius charged my card for the trial account after I canceled it Oct 20.

We got up early. I redid some of the photography after breakfast. My results were much better this time. I went to the Andrea presentation and also Dale's Strep show. Both were excellent. I was not going to go but ended up having the lunch buffet with the Nicholas's and Dale. I had beef brisket and lemon pie for desert. We went across the street for baggies then went to the banquet. It was enjoyable. We sat with Ken of Hill Country and Bill Foster. I was the birthday boy and the group sang Happy Birthday to me as well as giving me a signed card. After the banquet I spoke with Andrea about the blog. Nobody had talked to her yet about it so she awarded me the prize of first person at Lonestar to say they read the blog. I won a sucker plucker.

We had a nice breakfast buffet at the hotel. We stuck to the continental side of the buffet. I had oatmeal and a bagel. After breakfast we went to the meeting for judges and clerks. I enjoyed clerking with Kathy Bell as the team leader. I learned a lot. After it was done I went back to catch up on blogging, etc. We had the lunch buffet at the hotel. I had clam chowder and beef brisket. Wonderful but too much food. I even had desert in the form of cheesecake and peanut butter pie. Everything is made on premises. This is an unbelievable place. Our next adventure was the Western Art Museum, a nice facility on a hill. We paid the $6 admission each and wandered about the 4 galleries of Western Art. Most of it was by contemporary painters hung on the four walls of the room with a few sculptures in the center. It was enjoyable Western art, too many horses but good quality paintings although I'm not much of an expert. I think I may want to sculpt a cowboy someday after I do some dance sculptures. We stopped by Walmart on the way back since Libbie needed tape for her plants to carry home. I had a nice chat with Hortense in Ken's booth of Hill country Violets. We decided to do the seafood buffet. It was great. I had shrimp, seafood wellington, parmesan crusted Tilapia and popcorn shrimp with hush puppies. Desert was Italian wedding cake and also a piece of lemon cake.

We had the breakfast buffet at the hotel which was outstanding. We got off to a late start after breakfast. We met Anne and Richard then spent some time talking with everyone before eventually getting in the car for San Antonio. We had to turn around when we got to Comfort, about 20 miles away when we discovered we forgot the Hertz coupon to switch our rental car to the free coupon. Finally got to downtown San Antonio around 1:15 and bought Imax tickets and switched the car contract at the Hertz desk in the Marriott. We next went to the other end of the Riverview Mall and watched the Imax movie about the battle and downfall of the Alamo. One hundred fifty men tried defending the fortress against a Mexican force of thousands. The lost but this galvanized the army of Sam Houston and the battle cry of "remember the Alamo" as they ultimately marched to victory in the republic of Texas. After the movie we walked the river and were appropriately wowed. I never expected this much on the river walk. It was great. We had an early dinner at Boudros then took a narrated barge tour before going back to our car for the drive to Kerrville. We had a tiring but fulfilling day doing tourist activities and enjoying San Antonio.

Went to the greenhouse this morning and put up the Fanjet tube in house 2 before we leave for TX. Temps are predicted for below freezing this Friday and Saturday and we wanted a backup solution. This heater is on the white thermostat on the thermostat bank. It's a cloudy rainy day. We left for the airport at 12:45 for our 2:50 flight, dropping the car at the relax and park. The flight was uneventful but cloudy all the way. It was a little bumpy into and out of our stop in Nashville and also very windy going into San Antonio. Our car is a Kia which seems to be OK. They can't start our 3 day coupon until tomorrow at noon so we will have two contracts. One for today and then we switch to the free 3 day rental. Got into Kerrville at around 8 and had a pasta buffet at the hotel. It was over the top outstanding for only 7.95 each including desert and coffee.

This was an easy day. I dug a hole in the backyard and replaced the fence post the tree fell on. I also moved a bunch of the maple logs to the brush pile by the power transformer. Still have many more to do. Stuart was supposed to pick the tree up but this doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon. I was a little late checking us into the flight tomorrow so we have B tickets. Dinner was salmon and butternut squash. Listened to Don Pasquale live from the Met this evening and also packed for the trip tomorrow. We have to go to the greenhouse tomorrow morning because it's supposed to get cold this coming weekend and I want to be sure we are OK.

Everyone was up early. Took the Benzigers and the 4 microwaves to the airport this morning leaving the house at 7:15. They are flying US Airways. Heard later that their flight was uneventful. Dinner was pasta from Trader Joes.

Picked up the paper this morning. Mary came with me and picked up some cheese, Fritos and other misc to go with the egg omelets she made. They were excellent. Yummy. We went to Duke Gardens and walked the formal gardens. The reciprocal membership parking pass worked fine. We got an all day pass. Dinner was several of Libbie's good pizzas she made from scratch today.

Tonight we went to the Ballet with Mary and John. We saw Dracula and Red Mask. Attended the pre performance with the composer which was quite good. The guy is very dynamic and I learned a lot. We had box seats which had a limited view but nice nonetheless. In the afternoon we went in to the NC Museum of Art. We had a very nice lunch in the Iris cafe. I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich. Yesterday we did the sculpture walk, today was a visit to the inside. The galleries sure are nice.

Finished wiring the microwaves then took a trip to Lowes and picked up some missing screws and fluorescent fixtures. After a nice lunch of BLT, we went to Jerrys to get paints for Mary who is starting an acrylic class. Our next stop was the art museum where we did the sculpture walk including a walk across the beltline bridge. Left there almost at dark. There was a traffic jam on the beltline so we did some evasive behavior and took Buck Jones to BJ's to buy salmon and milk. Our salmon dinner with sweet potatoes and peas was delicious.

John and I worked on microwaves all morning. He drilled the cases while I wired the controller cards. We did all 4 microwaves. The great news is the card he brought from Maine did not turn on the microwave. I found two of the connectors were installed reversed. Fixed that issue and now everything works as planned. Next we took a nice walk around the developments behind us, Seagroves and Vintage Grove. Got cleaned up and went to the Nasher. I was disappointed in the collection but the dinner there was memorable. I had Thai crab cakes and pumpkin soup. We shared a bottle of Chardonnay. Got home at 9:30. Interestingly as we left the Nasher they were setting up for a student party with fancy h'orsedeouveres and cookies and drinks.