Watched the snow woes of the NorthEast on GMA then started reading about weather stations. I'm going to implement something in conjunction with my greenhouse monitor stuff. Lib and I walked to the front wetland area in Stoneybrook then came back, got in the car and went to Publix for some supplies. Came back and listened to Il Trovotore on Sirius satellite. Went at 6 PM to pub night. There were no tables so we waited in the lobby. A couple sitting at a table for 6 offered to share their table with us. We met them after dinner, they were nice. Names were Penny and Rich. They have lived here for 2 years and love it. For dinner I had a cajun seafood souffe which was shrimp and cray fish with rice. Very nice. We had 2 glasses each of house Cabernet. Came back and read some more about weather instruments.

Wow, what a day. It started out very very cold (for Sarasota). It got down to 27. Our thermometer was showing 30. My first activity was to mix some epoxy and use the new bar clamp across the top of the refrigerator to attach the hook for the clock to the side of the refrigerator. It worked! The clock has stayed up all day. While the epoxy was setting I tackled the carbon filter under the sink. I also punched a one inch hole in the sink to mount the filtered water faucet. Got everything mounted and the filter working smoothly. Next task was to put the broken clock back together. It was in pieces from the last time it fell which was Thanksgiving. Took a trip to home Depot and bought an aluminum filter grill to replace the rusty one on the A/C input. The aluminum one was $75, the steel was $30. I bought the aluminum so that hopefully there won't be anymore rust. I had to cut one inch into the sides of the Sheetrock to change the filter size from 18x18 to 20x20. I'm very happy with how well it fit into the opening. There was a wood header at the top and bottom which allowed me to screw the new filter assembly into. The filter is solid and looks great. We went to the club and had dinner in the grill. It was pretty full but tables were available. I had a special, Tilapia with shrimp Rosetto. It was very tasty. We had 2 glasses of house Cabernet each. When we got home there was a call from Lorraine. We're going to get together this Saturday after our New Year bash on Friday night. This will be fun.

Libbie heard from Jennifer at the greenhouse. All is well back there. After 7 inches of snow yesterday, Jennifer was able to get to the greenhouse. She didn't drive down since she was afraid to get stuck but she reported all was well. There was some worry yesterday because it snowed yesterday and her power was out. We didn't know how things were. Temps inside were OK. We went South to the Venice rookery, saw some nesting Herons. Went to Racetrac to get gas at 3.04 per gal then went to Lowes looking for a new intake grill. the old one is rusted. Next stop was Yoders looking for fruit then JC Pennys for new pillows which were on sale. $17 for 2 King pillows. Next stop was Whole Foods in downtown Sarasota. We saw a Dr Oz show about metabolism. He recommended GG Bran Scandinavian bread and Oolong tea. We bought both in whole Foods and met a couple searching for the same thing. We briefly chatted about Dr Oz and how we'll live to 100. When I got my Lobster Bisque seafood I met a very nice woman who was disappointed that the Chiopini soup was out. She said this happened to her yesterday. I liked her, she was fun to talk to. After our soup at whole food we walked through Selby. They were preparing for freezing temperatures tonight. We stopped to visit with Peter and Christa and had wine and cookies. Watched a nice sunset then went out to dinner. The Grill only had a limited sandwich menu so we went out to Bangock Thai on Swift. I had Pad Thai Beef. Before that we had an appetizer of Sataya which was chicken on skewers that we grilled over a flaming hibachi on the table. The waitress talked like a 10 year old girl and was very tiny. She was definitely Thai. Very nice.

We awoke a little anxious this morning. it's snowing badly in Raleigh and we're down here. Jennifer reports that she has 12 inches of snow and it's still coming down and her power is out. Libbie checked with Nancy and she said there's only about 6 inches on her deck. Libbie was able to call the neighbors answer machine several times to ascertain that the power was indeed on. I need to fix the power and temperature reporting so that we know both variables. This is not rocket science!!!! We went to Publix for some Progresso soup for lunch. Also bought some frozen jambalaya for dinner, another bottle of Shiraz and a 750 ml bottle of rum from the liquor store for our eggnog. Took a walk around Stoneybrook. it was bitter. The temps are only in the 50's and the wind was blowing pretty had.

Got up at 5:45 today and left the home by 6:30. The snow may be worse than forecast. Traffic was fairly light until Orlando. Naturally everything was closed and only half the gas stations were open. Had to stop in exit 193 in SC because the gas light came on. Most of the time I try to get to Florence. We paid 2.76 per gallon. Next stop was in GA at the GA/FL border. Gas there was 2.92. We had peanut butter sandwiches in the car after this stop. I bought a coke to have with my sandwich for lunch. The Lake Buena Vista exit had 2 lines of traffic which slowed the interstate down but once we were past there we got back up to 75 again. We arrived at the condo at 4:47 after buying a bottle of wine at 7-11 to have with our Christmas dinner. We had frozen chicken Serenada for dinner with the Yellow Tail shiraz.

The dishwasher drain hose leaked water all over the floor. We think it's a mouse. Two trips to Home Depot for a new hose and then an adapter to fit the hose to the drain.
I cut the board for the silverware drawer in Sarasota and got two coats of paint on it. Packed all our stuff for the trip tomorrow. Dinner was tuna steak, veggies and rice. The grocery store was a disaster today. I needed last minute fruit for the trip. The place was packed with last minute grocery shoppers.

It's cold today. I went to Home Depot for the faucet for Sarasota. I also got ammonia reducer for the fish pond. We worked on getting the ammonia level down today. Dinner was creamed tuna and green peas over toast.

Did a trip to Petsmart to get our water tested. It's high in ammonia. I calculated the pond at 268 gals when it's at 10 inches. We drained it this low starting out at 13 inches. This should be a 25% water change. We bought an ammonia test kit which is showing the ammonia is still way high. Need to work at this. Dinner was crab cakes and butternut squash.

Groceries at both Trader Joes and Krogers today. I started the genealogy project again. I saw a post on Wired about best open source genealogy software. When I didn't like the choices I fired up Family Tree Maker and dove in. Found quite a bit of detail on the Chmielewski side by piecing together searches, cemetery grave markers and notes. Worked a little in the woods on moving logs. This is good exercise and is cleaning the woods. Dinner was Briyani which was very good. Listened to Xmas carols on Sirius downstairs. Quiet evening. I also found the password for Libbie's IRA and made some changes to better put the money to work. I also started fine tuning my Roth to maximize income.

The bill from Citi came today. I've been trying to get this from them since first payment is due Jan 4 and they sent the bill initially to the wrong address. This is for the Stoneybrook furniture. Dealing with them so far has not been fun. There doesn't seem to be an automatic payment option. Oh well, I'll use the CU bill pay service. Juggled some funds around and paid the bill. I also paid the condo maintenance and reserved some money for Joe and Christa's Christmas present. Cut some logs out in the yard and used the cart to move them to the brush pile. The cart needed air in the itres which were less than 10 psi. They require 40 psi.

Up late today, picked up the paper even later, 9 AM. Libbie started painting the trim upstairs but I worked on the MAAVS website. I got the AVSA 2010 section and the Williamsburg sections completed. Now it's time to turn towards the Fredericksburg 2008 data. This is going slow but forward. After lunch we went outside and took a walk around Seagrove out to 1010 and back through Surry. I need to map this to measure the mileage. 60 Minutes was good tonight. It's about people who can remember every day of their lives including actress Mary Lou Henner. I wish I had this gift. Th epeople are otherwise normal. They showed us Mary Lou was super organized as well with a tour of her closet with dresses sorted by color and shoes turned so you could see both the toe and heel.

This was a busy day. I went to Home Depot to get a plaster knife. I can't find mine but I think I gave it to Joe for his spackle job. I got a nice 4 inch knife with a taper on the tip for $7. I also bought more lights for under the counter. Put another coat on the seam on the outside wall in the playroom with the new knife. Started installing the under the counter light over the breadmaker. This meant taking all the glasses out of the cabinet. We ended up throwing out quite a few glasses that we no longer use, or never use such as my whiskey sour glasses from my apartment 40 years ago! Next I went upstairs and started rollering the wall along the stairs where the bookcases used to be. Libbie had painted the edges and was now ready for the roller job. When done I went downstairs and finished the light installation. This involved soldering a track light power tap onto the lighting wire. Still need to put the cover back on. All of this work was done while Don Carlo was playing live from the Met. It was the first Saturday broadcast. We were pretty tired from working so we ordered Szechuan from the Chinese place next to Krogers. Libbie picked up the takeout while I went next door and got a bottle of Ravenwood Zinfandel. Lots of mail today. A box of postcards came from Rich Follett for the convention, my VB 2010 book from Amazon and a bunch of Christmas cards.

Spoke with Citibank again today since the furniture statement still had not come. This is like speaking with Peggy in the commercials. I got nowhere. She said the statement was mailed the 13th. I had lots of luck running the XML sample from the VB 2010 book today. We left for the theater at 4:50. We're going to see Black Swan which opens today in theaters everywhere. After the very intense movie we went to Lonestar Steakhouse in the same parking lot. I had half rack of ribs, baked potato, salad and 2 glasses of Malbac wine. The service was outstanding and the food was good. We will return.

We woke to a white dusting on everything including the road surfaces which are too cold for melting. The snow eventually changed over to freezing rain before all rain. Some of the trees bent over under the freezing rain, especially the skinny pines down the driveway. Libbie had a doctors appointment but it was postponed due to slippery roads. I spent almost the whole day working on XML databases and am pretty happy with the results. Dinner was turkey vegetable soup.

I worked a little more on the Studio 2008 VB program doing the tutorial i printed from the book. Went to Home Depot to look at heatilators and ended up buying a new LED spotlight over the garbage can. I'm happy with how bright it is. Libbie and I went out after dark and evaluated it. It's only 7 watts but very bright. I like it. This afternoon we went to the Rockwell exhibit at the NC Museum of Art. The large oil paintings that were used for the Saturday Evening Post covers were pretty interesting. I enjoyed seeing them close up. A few surprises were that the black and white pics were actually painted with shades of black, gray and white paint. The art critic painting actually had large lumps of oil paint on the pallet of the guy in the pic. The civil rights painting had large oil paint blobs for the fruit thrown at the little girl. We met the Tully's in the museum. Traffic coming home was very heavy, stop and go but it was 5 PM in the afternoon. I fell asleep in the chair at home while surfing the web.
Dinner was turkey pieces over toast with gravy.

Did a quick grocery run then at 11:30 we left for JoAnn Raymer's house for the party. Very nice little Christmas party. JoAnn's house is nicely decorated. It's a very cold day. For dinner I went back to Krogers and bought pasta. I had a coupon but I left it home. They said if I bring it back to the service desk I'll get the dollar for the coupon.

I called Haverty's and then called Citibank about my bill. I have not received one to date. They had the wrong address which is what I suspected. I'm getting to dislike Citibank very much. I had a hard time understanding the foreigner I was talking to. He said I will get new billing info. I'm making good headway with visual Studio. so far I like what I see. I really need more reading material covering XML functions built into the Visual Studio product. Lots of comments about Libbie's Lemon Squares on Facebook. I brought the garbage cans to the street loaded with our discarded books from upstairs. Hopefully they will take them tomorrow despite the weight. Dinner was leftover squash, cranberry and turkey on sandwiches. Very nice.

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.