Downloaded Visual Studio 2010 Express to rewrite Great Violets and also for my Chumby project. No newspaper today. After the morning shows I started making the truffle cookies with peanut butter and bacon. The cookies came OK. The bacon was not crisp enough but all else went well. It's not bad out today, temp in the 40's. We did the tree lights today and Libbie decorated the downstairs. I'm overly full of cookies and candy. Libbie made her homemade pizza from scratch which was excellent as usual.

Worked on getting VB6 to run on Windows 7. No luck. Left at 11:00 for a 12:30 Met HD performance of Don Carlo. Loved it. It was quite long on a cold rainy miserable day. We drove to North Hills for the opera. There was some awful fantom.com preshow which was pure noise. Libbie fixed our turkey again for dinner. We had Butternut squash, cranberry, stuffing and Shiraz for dinner.

worked on streaming for Manon to the Atom machine which I'm calling Cosi. I also did some Norton scans and cleanup of the machine. Dinner was a turkey that Libbie cooked with all the trimmings. We had it with Shiraz. The Kodak album came today for the Nicholas's. It's not bad but certainly not a professional photo album. I put a coat of spackle on the wall in the playroom where the shelves used ot be. We went to the library as well today. Libbie had a reserved book to pick up, I found a new author on the new release shelf.

Emptied some more of the bookshelves today. Did the first coat of spackle. Went to Graingers for fan belts. Stopped by Tiger direct for blank CD's. It's hard buying something there. Burned a Xmas CD for Libbie. Dinner was sausage, onions and pepper casserole from TJ's. It was yummy.

Went to the greenhouse and met Christine, our handicapped person. While there I stuffed the pipe insulation between the building and the greenhouse gutter. It's another cold day, it went down to 19 overnight. Moved the bookshelves from the playroom into the workshop. this job went well but I created quite a pile of throw away books. A lot of them were old travel books and pictorial books. Much stuff, not touched very much. If I haven't looked at it in the past 10 years it was time to pitch it out. I studied the Chumby literature somewhat trying to make the photoframe work. No luck so far. Dinner was Briyani. We listened to Boheme tonight live from the met on Sirius.

Did the grocery run this morning. Picked up food for making the turkey this weekend and also the ingredients for my peanut butter bacon truffles. Libbie wanted insulation for the greenhouse to shed gap. I went to Lowes and picked up a couple of pipe insulation tubes that I tried then went back to Home Depot and got a bunch more only cheaper because they didn't have a glue strip. I worked with the Chumby today, learning the apps and strategy. Got the bill for Stoneybrook today. $521 . I was initially shocked but then found it included the $162 Palmer Ranch payment. Next month the Stoneybrook streets bill will come. Our food minimum is down to $95 remaining. It's very cold out - overnight was 19, high for the day was only 36. They are stripping the trees from our neighbors lot across the street. I hope they don't clear cut. Dinner was pasta. After dinner we listened to the Met on Sirius broadcast of Don Carlo. We see Don Carlo this Saturday on HD.

Dentist appt this morning at 8:30. All went well. Talked to Dr Paul about Christmas lights. He sat down and chatted for a while about Disney lights and the back stage tour. He said he and his wife spend 10 days putting all their lights up, the boys then come over and wire everything together. He also mentioned Judy Howells huge house and the lighting on Olive Chapel. After the dentist I went to Jerry's for notecards and then Best Buy for an infocast. I like the infocast screen very much. My Chumby is due today as well. In the PM Libbie and I took a light tour of the Howells and then up to Dr Beavers on High House Rd. Next stop was La Cocina where we had a couple of Margaritas and Quasadilla L Cocina. It was cold and the greenhouse was reporting 52 so we went over to check it out. Inflation was low and the Fan Jet belt was thin. I decided to replace the belt which involved a trip home to get the belt and tools. I'll deal with inflation issues tomorrow. The belt was cracked and would likely not have made it through the night. The Walgreens prints I submitted today were a mixed bag. The Violets seem dark to me. The family picture came out OK. Temps are predicted to be 19 tonight but I think we got the heating situation under control.

After reading the paper this morning I configured Gallery 3 on the new server software. Started loading a few albums and a black theme. I like it. Next up was painting. Started with ceiling white but eventually found the correct white and painted the area behind where the shelves will be located. When done Libbie took our Sourdough baguette and sliced it like a Hoagy bun and put the BBQ chicken leftovers on with BBQ sauce. I found a movie on Usenet called Ghost Hunters, Amaragosa Opera House. It was terrible and laughable but I enjoyed the background photos of Death Valley Junction. Libbie made her outstanding pizza once again this evening. She's really good at this. Gallery 3 keeps crashing PHP when loading some albums all at once.

Finally got Gallery 3 running on a new version of Uniform Server on my desktop. The problem is that the extract program needs to find the real target drive since it hard codes the drive in the conf file. It's starting to snow today when we went to Fresh market to forage for food. We got chicken, squash and sourdough baguette. stopped at Foodlion and cleaned them out of Progresso 10/$1 soup. Libbie got 10 cans earlier and we bought 8 more which is all they had. Dinner was BBQ chicken, Chardonnay, butternut squash. For desert I had a thawed Canolli. I tried unpacking a new Uniform Server on Traviata and had success. I also successfully moved all my apps to the new server, including this one. It did snow this evening, we got dusted on the grassy areas. The ground is too warm to stick there.

This is First Friday but we chose not to go out tonight. Went to Home Depot for trim paint, white. On the way home stopped at Goodwill with extra bedding then the Credit union for Libbie. It's cold today. I'm not used to this. Tried all day to get Gallery 3 running and/or a new version of Uniform Server. My old version uses Apache 2.0, I need to upgrade to Apache 2.2
Dinner was Salmon with broccoli and steam fresh green beans and Shiraz.

I'm getting confused spending IRA money for taxes. My spending so far: 2173.40 to Wake from Scott, 3256.40 to Wake from Scott, 936.34 to FIA from Scott, $1100 to CU from Scott. In addition, I purchased 200 shares of BAC-W on Scott for 4877. Total Scott spending = 11406.80. On the CU I took 1030 from savings for total deposits of 2130 which includes the previously mentioned 1100 from Scott. I spent 2374.33 on Sarasota taxes from CU. Transferred 1500 of pension from CU to FIA. Total FIA payments so far = 936.34 + 1500 = 2436.34 Still need 1000 to FIA for payoff. Today I went online to figure all this out. For Scott the IRA deposit was 12000, 2 divvys of 546.88 and 241.67, spending of 11406. Net is 1382 left. The Kodak album came today. Not bad, lesser than photo quality. Some pics are chopped at the edge. Dinner was bean burger and salad.

I went to Tiger Direct today and looked at laptops. Nothing grabbed me. Bought a case for my 1T porno drive. Best Buy had a Dell for 399 which is the same as mine except it only has 2 gigs of memory. I went home and then back to Best Buy with Libbie to buy the thing. I spent several hours setting it up. Win 7 doesn't network well for file sharing. It takes a few tricks to get to the goal. The new Onkyo came while fooling with the computer. The old Onkyo doesn't appear to be bad, it was the speakers which have crumbling woofers. I'll get the Cerwin's from upstairs and swap them for down. Tried the Sirius boombox with the antenna laying on the floor in the porch. It works. We listened to Don Pasquale tonight.

I spent some time online with stocks. My purchase of EPD in the IRA and BAC-W in personal accounts both executed this morning. In the meantime, I need to use the money in Scott from the IRA to pay taxes and crdit card bill. Lots of juggling. Went to Trader Joes and Kroger's today then came home surfed some websites. Paid the property taxes this afternoon using routing numbers to my Scottrade personal account. Lets see if this works. Dinner tonight was pasta in Marinara sauce. It's been a while.

Went to Scottrade with my IRA withdrawal form prepared. I may be able to get away with no withholding. This afternoon the money was in the account so I took a check and went to the Credit Union and deposited 1100.00 This was the amount I used from the personal checking to cover some of the Sarasota tax bill. The rest came from savings which contained the microwave project money. I paid the Sarasota tax bill online today debiting the amount from the checking account. Lots of juggling of funds to get all this done. Dinner was chicken tenders and veggies. Very good. Libbie is trying to get us to eat less. She also called Sue and called off the New Years invite. Thank you Libbie, it is really appreciated.

Woke up at 5 but didn't get out of bed until 6. We're at the comfort Suites on Rt 17 in Richmond Hill, exit 87 of I-95 just south of Savannah. Had the hotel breakfast which was just cereal and hard boiled eggs. I had the waffle which I didn't like and also a plain refrigerated bagel with cream cheese. We tried to get going at 7 but the car was frosted over. Libbie used a credit card to scrape the windows and we waited 5 minutes with the motor running to get some visibility. withing 10 minutes of cruising down I-95 everything cleared. Traffic was heavy. One McDonald's we stopped at was so busy there were lines for food at 8 AM. We went another half hour down the road and got coffee in McDonald's and topped off the tank at 2.71. Made it home by 12:30. Hard to believe but there were also lines of trucks on I-95 which clogged up the traffic as well. Libbie decided to ask Sue and Bruce not to come on New Years. This is good and bad. I'm glad they're not coming to watch football. I really don't want to see Bruce at all anyway.

I didn't get up till 6:43. Wow, that's amazing. We got up and started cleaning and packing. Libbie did most of the cleaning, I carried our stuff to the car. We got going at 11:53. Traffic was very heavy on I-75 and finally it was stopped at Leesburg where the Turnpike cuts in. We used the detour function of the GPS to get off at exit 329 and go parallel to 75. We decided not to get back on because 10 miles later we could see it was still stop and go. Made our way through Ocala to 301 and took 301 all the way to 10. Had a Wendy's Baja salad in Ocala and needed gas in Baldwin. We kept moving on a very heavily trafficked 301 and nice i-10 and i-295. Had no problems until the 2 lane section in Darian, GA then it was stop and go for a while. Got off at exit 87 in Savannah at our Comfort Inn. Found the Italian place, Gianna's, that we were in a few years ago. They had a sign on the door that they moved down a few doors "next to the cleaner". We found them and ordered a Margherita pizza. It was OK.

I didn't get up till 6:43. Wow, that's amazing. We got up and started cleaning and packing. Libbie did most of the cleaning, I carried our stuff to the car. We got going at 11:53. Traffic was very heavy on I-75 and finally it was stopped at Leesburg where the Turnpike cuts in. We used the detour function of the GPS to get off at exit 329 and go parallel to 75. We decided not to get back on because 10 miles later we could see it was still stop and go. Made our way through Ocala to 301 and took 301 all the way to 10. Had a Wendy's Baja salad in Ocala and needed gas in Baldwin. We kept moving on a very heavily trafficked 301 and nice i-10 and i-295. Had no problems until the 2 lane section in Darian, GA then it was stop and go for a while. Got off at exit 87 in Savannah at our Comfort Inn. Found the Italian place, Gianna's, that we were in a few years ago. They had a sign on the door that they moved down a few doors "next to the cleaner". We found them and ordered a Margherita pizza. It was OK.

I chose not to get Jan 1 theater tickets. I'm not going to Sarasota for New Years. I refuse to watch any football that day and would feel bad if they didn't watch it because I was there so my solution is to not go. I submitted a Kodak album for the Black Friday special and also bought an Onkyo Receiver which was a good price but not a Black Friday special. Our old receiver is dead. Took a short neighborhood bike ride then put the bike in the car and returned it to Venice. After Venice we went to the beach to watch the sunset. They were all Families with no bikinis. Disappointment but I enjoyed the sunset. Went to the club for Osso Bucco which to me was like a chuck steak stew with veggies. It was very tender and good. I finished the meal with a Canolli and berry sauce. Wow, was that good.

Thanksgiving. The paper was 1.50 and I didn't have enough quarters so I went to Dunkin Donuts and also picked up 4 donuts. Afterward we went for a bike ride through all the neighborhoods in the other side of Stoneybrook. At 4:30 we went for the Thanksgiving dinner. I had turkey and prime rib with potatoes, gravy nad 3 pies for desert. The pies were cocunut creme, chocolate tropical and pumpkin cheesecake.

This morning I got up early, before 6 AM. The Haverty furniture truck came on time at 8:30 as per the plan. The love seat fit on the elevator but the big sofa would not fit so they carried it up the stairs. It's pretty heavy. The furniture looks great, the old sofa was in pretty bad shape. It was badly stained and had a torn base under the cushions. Some of the cushions were irretrievably stained underneath with large brown stains. After the furniture we watched the Dancing with the Stars finalists on GMA. Jennifer Gray won last night and was in NY this morning doing a demo dance with Derek Hough, her partner. We took the long ride today to Venice and back. We had an Apple at the train station in Venice. It was a 20 mile ride!!! For dinner tonight we went over to the club for Pub night. It was pretty full. I had the Salmon with two glasses of wine.

This was a busy day. I went over to the board meeting at 9 AM. The bottom line is we don't have enough reserve to replace the roof. Will raise the quarterly about $20 to address this issue. The Salvation Army came around 11 AM after I talked to Anne about the price of the album and some details for the story I'm writing about her. Next the new refrigerator arrived. The old one started to leak water all over the floor. It was nice to get rid of that thing although the filtered water will be missed. We took a bike ride North on the Legacy trail. Probably did a total of 5 miles today. Next order of business after doing some writing was to go to Target for shopping. We needed some rugs and an ironing board cover. We then went straight over to Siesta Beach for the Sunset. There still were a fair amount of bikini's around. My favorite was a young mother in the surf with her little girl. She looked young and what an incredible body in her light blue bikini. After the beach we found the Thai place I googled. It's called Bangock at the corner of Swift and Proctor. Very nice decor. The ladies were very thin and elegantly dressed. We had an appetizer sampler then I had hot Pad Thai beef. Libbie had mild chicken pad thai. Both were excellent. It was happy hour so we had a house Shiraz for 3.50. total bill was $51 including 18% tip. It was incredibly nice. Came back to the condo and the refrigerator is now off meaning it reached operating temperature.

This morning we went to Havertys to find what to do with the old sofa. Habitat couldn't take them. After a few calls we got the Salvation Army to take the furniture tomorrow. Good deal. The refrigerator is supposed to come tomorrow. We then went to Selby for a walk through the houses and gardens. The Woman's art guild was having an art show in the mansion. It was mostly watercolors by woman painters but it was very good. We had lunch there in the cafe. We split a turkey cranberry sandwich. Our next stop was the Ringling because it's Monday and the Ringling is free on Monday. We both were tired but latched onto a docent led tour of the Rubens and painters of the early centuries. It was educational. Went home after this and had dinner in the clubhouse. The menu was very limited burgers and sandwiches. It was not very crowded. We left there at 7:30 and went to Publix for Moose Tracks Ice Cream. I like the raspberry better.

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.