It's a cloudy rainy cold day. We left for New Bern at 8:52. Stopped for gas outside of Smithfield then did a bathroom break in Kinston. We arrived at the Doubletree around 11:15. We met Jan and went to the restaurant for a DoubleTree lunch. I had the chicken parmesan sandwich with fruit. Libbie had vegetable soup because she had pain overnight, possibly her liver. She needs to nurse it along until gall bladder surgery tomorrow. We met Sue Hoffmann and Carol Van there and toured the place. It's a very nice hotel but it's in 2 buildings. We left New Bern at 2:30. It's a pretty cute town. Arrived home at 5 after stopping at Kroger for a bottle of Cranberry Juice for Libbie tomorrow.
Dinner for me tonight was the leftover Pollo Chipotle from Monday night.

I worked on reading about MySQL software with PHP then it was time to dress up for the party. We had a wonderful party at JoAnn Raymers. Libbie made Lemon Squares and we had a bird tray and fruit cake basket for the gift exchange. JoAnn served meatloaf with an onion casserole and bean salad. It was wonderful. Dinner tonight was BBQ sandwiches with a salad and lemon squares for dessert.

Libbie found out she needs her gall bladder removed. They set up an appointment for Thursday for her surgery. I took the packages to the Post Office for her then did a Credit Union deposit and a Walmart trip to pick up a case for my Nexus 7. Last stop was the greenhouse where I put in an hour taking down the house 1 duct work and the rest of the sprinklers. Sprinklers only remain now on one bench where all the duct pipes are stored. For dinner we went out La Cosina where I ordered Pollo chipotle, my favorite there.

Libbie packed up quite a few of the packages for tomorrow since she has a few doctor appointments during the day. In the afternoon we went to Bear Creek, NC to the Fruit Cake bakery. It was an enjoyable trip and a nice place. I enjoyed it. The weather was warm in the 60s but the sky was everything from spotty blue to menacing black clouds. Dinner was Libbie's magnificent pizza once again.

Planted the daffodils. The ground is very dry, we may be in a drought. Worked on boxing the Meistersinger controller. Fired it up and noticed the Xbee is not powered up. Need to debug this. Left at 12:20 for the opera - I have something irritating my eye today which is not good. Loved the opera, Un Ballo at Crossroads this afternoon. Strong cast and good singing. Fantastic. Came home and took my contacts out since my eye was distressed so much. The router seems to have died this afternoon. I put the old Linksys in. It looks like I may be able to upgrade this to dd-wrt after a Linksys firmware update. Dinner was chili and shiraz with a salad before dinner. The oruter can't be upgraded since it doesn't have enough memory. It's a real pain in the ass.

We went to the greenhouse at 10 and did some more cleanup. I took down another air duct and removed sprinkler heads from several of the benches. We spent about an hour then loaded the car with garbage bags and went to the dump. Sunset Lake Road to the dump has been reconfigured. You can no longer cross the 55 bypass. We have to turn right, do a U Turn and come back. The same is true in the other direction. They closed the road to traffic crossing and only allow turns. It wasn't too much of an inconvenience. Finished editing the description for the Andrea DVD and sent it to Al and Kathy Lahti. Now we have to make the DVD which is going to be interesting. This is First Friday and we have reservations for Cafe Luna at 8 PM.
Left the house at 6:15 and found that 64 by Krogers was in a state of gridlock. Went to the Cary Pkway which was better but many many cycles of the light near Kildaire Farm Rd. Once we got by that, 440 was a little better. Started by stopping at Litmus Gallery, talked with Jim then went over to Artspace. We used the Moore Square parking garage but had to park on the 6th floor it was so busy. Downtown was really crowded which was surprising. We had a nice table for two in front of the window at Caffe Luna. I had the seafood pasta, Pescatore something or other. Parker gave us a glass of red wine while we waited which was nice. We ordered an additional glass of Strong merlot. It was a nice evening of art and dinner.

I finished the last of the pages on AVSA for the photo gallery. There are still another 1000 photos to go but at least each letter of the alphabet has a page of pictures. At 10 I left with Libbie's Prius and drove to Toyota of Apex to get an oil change. It took an hour but the great news was they ran it through the car wash and also took my online coupon for a $50 oil change. It's a nice place. I read the Wall Street Journal and drank coffee. Next stop was the Credit Union where I deposited the eye doctor check. Came home and found I missed an eye doctor follow up visit. I had it on my calendar as next week. Libbie got a call that her bilo levels were high so she went for an ultrasound this morning. She needs gall bladder surgery but will get a consultation with a surgeon Monday morning. My Bluetooth keyboard came. I hooked it up and it worked seemlessly with the Nexus 7. Pretty cool.

Early in the morning I continued to add photos to the AVSA website. This is a lot of work!!! Libbie and I left together at 10 to do some work at the greenhouse. We stopped by the Apex Toyota place to check on Express Lube at the dealership. We were amazed at the number of Prius's in the lot. I started cutting up the pipes in the greenhouse and bundling them while Libbie worked on the lead waterers. She called over to Fairview to see if they needed our web trays. Took one over there to show Carol. They decided they needed them and sent Santos over with the flat bed truck. JoAnn came over as well. She gave Libbie a Poinsettia, we helped Santos load the truck with trays and cool cells and a lot of other misc stuff. I was tired after this. Came home and continued working on photos. Dinner was salad and Lobster Ravioli with fruit cake for dessert. I finished the Mitch Albom book Timekeeper this evening while Don Giovanni was live on Sirius.

Libbie finished her backlog of orders while I continued to add photos to the website. Joy came over again to help her. I went over to the greenhouse and rolled up the center bench top in house 2. It went pretty easily. I also started piling up boards along the pipeline as a test to see if this is a viable place to put the benching. Dinner was on my own. Libbie made a corn and bean dish for Rex Pot luck. I got 2 bowls of the leftovers for dinner. It was excellent.

Libbie is backed up with orders. This is her first week of shipping all this stuff. My 3T hard drive arrived from New Egg. This will be the Traviata backup drive. It comes unformatted so I had to download the Disc Wizard software to make it into one big partition. The Cobian backup as well as Second Copy software bogged the machine down too much. I'll try an initial copy with Beyond Compare first then updates in the future with Second Copy. Dinner was whole wheat spaghetti with chicken pieces.

Libbie got started on all the back orders while I continued to work on the AVSA website. In the afternoon I went over to the greenhouse to continue taking down the pipes and conduit. This phase of the project is almost complete. For dinner Libbie made her excellent pizza once again. It's too bad we don't have anymore fresh basil.

Took it easy this morning working on the web stuff. We left at 12:20 for the theater, La Clemenza starts at 12:55. It was a few minutes late and didn't start until after 1. We enjoyed the performance, how could you go long with Mozart? It was a little long for me but enjoyable none the less. After the performance we went over to BJ's for dinner fixins. Picked up ribs for dinner and also renewed our membership which brought the bill to $120. The credit card is going to be out of this world this month. It has the TV purchases in Sarasota plus the Florida trip and other stuff. Dinner was Ribs with Broccoli and Shiraz.

We went early to the greenhouse because Libbie had an eye appointment this afternoon. The Corolla has a flat tire which I took off and put in the Prius for a trip to Fussel. They couldn't repair it because the screw went through the sidewall. Bought a new tire for $120 and also had the Prius tires rotated. At the greenhouse I took down most of the pipes in house 1. The pipes still remain in house 4. At home Libbie made a Lemon Meringue belated birthday pie with a Meyer Lemon. It was delicious as usual. The rest of dinner was parmesan tilapia and green beans with Shiraz. Yum

I started playing with B4A database utilities and also downloaded some software to create an SQL lite database on my PC. I need a VB program to convert First Class to SQL lite. We went out after Libbie had some blood work done and bought a Christmas Tree at Home Depot. Unfortunately I picked up a nail on this trip and a few hours later had a flat tire. While we were having lunch on the back porch UPS came and delivered my LL Bean Flannel shirt ordered on Monday. It's supposed to be shrink proof flannel. Next we went to the greenhouse and did more cleanup. I pulled down the remaining conduit run in house 1 and rolled up the wire. Afterwards went with Libbie to the Credit Union and Lowes foods. Picked up whole wheat spaghetti for dinner. We had the spaghetti with chicken and Curry sauce. Spoke with Richard and John Carter about the website. We will go with John Carter's password scheme.

This morning I worked on Droid B4A activities. I also mounted a speaker on the wall in my office and moved the plant stand into place. While Libbie and I were having lunch on the back porch we got a call from the delivery company or my hatch. He was at the corner of Buckingham and Downing and didn't want to drive down Downing Place with an 18 wheeler. I agreed. We took the Prius to the corner and got the hatch. It's huge and heavy but I like it. Next stop was the greenhouse. Libbie concentrated on filling plastic bags with trash while I concentrated on the conduit and water lines in house 1 and 2. I made good headway but didn't finish. We heard from Christa Gross in Sarasota that our package from the Nicholas's arrived. We told them to put it inside the condo.
I had to do a lot of catch up tonight in musings. For some reason there was no entries for the past several days. I guess I was too busy with greenhouse stuff, car maintenance and picking up Libbie in addition to the household chores. All seems to be settled now.
Dinner was Lobster pasta with cheese. Very nice. I had some of the peppermint tea I picked up in Kroger. It's very nice and caffeine free.

Left this morning at 9 to go to Leith for my 20k maintenance. Surprisingly it was done in an hour but they tried to sell me a Cabin Air filter which I ordered on Amazon for $10. I also bought one for the Prius. Spent the afternoon getting the MAAVS website up and running and did not go to the greenhouse today. Dinner was BBQ pork on a bun with refried beans. Found out Libbie's plane was delayed. Picked her up at 10 PM instead of 8:45 PM. There was snow up North, only a few inches but it did involve plane de-icing. I made Libbie a PBnJ sandwich and brought a banana and water for her since she will not have had dinner. We caught up on everything and didn't get to bed until midnight.

Loaded the car up with trash bags this morning and took the pipe pieces and plastic and trash to the dump. Now I have started on house 1 & 2, removing the waterlines and power conduit. I wound up the wire and brought it home to take to the scrap yard. Blew the leaves off the driveway when I got home. This was a 3 hour greenhouse day, it seems like an hour less every day but I'm making great progress on dis-assembly of the structure. The goal is to strip down the interior, then start removing bows. With the bows out of the way, the plastic tops can be removed from inside. At home I collected the garbage from around the house and arranged everything so it would fit the two cans - the recycling and the trash. I managed to put away a trash bag of greenhouse stuff and several cardboard boxes of junk. Dinner was a Brick Oven pizza. I ate the whole thing. Not great.

Worked some more on the B4A stuff. This is Sunday morning, I watched CBS This Morning which I enjoyed then I went to the greenhouse and did 4 hours today instead of the 5 hours of yesterday. Happily I have completed removed the waterers and conduit from houses 3 & 4. I took a seat and worked my cutter getting the waterline chopped to size to fit a trash bag. I need more trash bags. Dinner was the remainder of the Turkey breast and cranberry sauce and refried beans.

Did some reading about B4A today then went to the greenhouse to start the disassembly process. I removed all the drip waterers and started taking down conduit and waterlines in houses 3 & 4. Also did quite a bit of cleanup picking up trash and filling some garbage bags. Dinner was the turkey breast and cranberry and also some reried beans, Contadina by Bush's. I was surprised it was refried, I expected Mexican Baked beans. I put 5 hours in at the greenhouse this afternoon. It's a beautiful day.

It's a warm day. I worked outside and took down the Morning Glory on the fence. I also took several trips up the hill looking for good spots for a solar array. I can save considerable money by using greenhouse pipes and greenhouse wiring to trench a long conduit from the back. It's 300 feet. The house would be acceptable as well but I would have to purchase mounting rails, about a $1500 dollar expense and it would involve screwing the rails into the roof. This isn't good for roof replacement in 10 years. Dinner was more of the turkey breast with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Nice. I went to home Depot and picked up a metal shelf stand with wheels for a light stand in my ofice. Carried it upstairs and started assembling it. Aida is live tonight from the met.

I got up at 3:30 and started the coffee maker then started carrying stuff to the car. Stored the Sirius radio in the lockup this time and took the radio module itself and plugged it into the car for the trip home. I hit the road at 4:07 am. Today is Thanksgiving so I was wondering if McDonald's would be open for breakfast since it was too early to have breakfast at home. It was daylight when I reached the other side of the state at 7:00 am and pulled off in Ormond Beach. McDonalds was empty but open. I was their only customer!!! Traffic was incredibly light for I-95. There were a few speed traps along the way and one or two people pulled over. I used the cruise control and kept it at no more than 3 to 5 over the limit. Stopped by Kroger at 3:09 pm and picked up a turkey breast and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I went there for the Black Friday newspaper and OJ. Talked with Vicki in the evening and also heard from Rich that he got his hot tub fixed. It was the Oxygenator module. Weather here is not bad, around 60 degrees. This is good for Thanksgiving. Supposed to be even warmer tomorrow before the bottom falls out.

Cleaned the floors and did laundry then went to Walmart for trip food and the Nexus. This is a nice toy. It's very responsive and works well with all the Google Play apps. I like it so far. I even wrote the Hello World app and uploaded it to the droid and ran it. I picked up a frozen stir fry dinner from Lean Cuisine while in Walmart. Libbie called this afternoon. Remarkably the sun had gone down at 4:19 up there. We don't have sunset until 5:30. I had the eggroll and rice lean cuisine with the rest of the Merlot. Started packing the car and carrying stuff to the trash. Met Sally outside her condo and chatted about the holidays and the fact I'm driving tomorrow because that's the best day to do it. Tomorrow is thanksgiving. Sat down and played with the Nexus 7 some more, reading about developing Droid applications. I'm all set for tomorrow!!!

Spent some time reading about Google Apps on the Nexus 7. I have decided to get one at Walmart. They have the 32 Gb byte version for $249. I ordered a roof hatch online from a Graham, NC company. They claim no residential deliveries. We shall see. Bought a sandwich at Walmart for lunch and had a Publix Spicy Bourbon chicken for dinner. Had some wine and cheese while listening to Clemenza live on Sirius.

Woke this morning at 3:30 to take Libbie to the airport. We left at 4 and had no trouble with fog or traffic to the Tampa airport. Dropped Libbie off at 5:20 for her 6:30 flight and went back to Sarasota. Heard from her later that the Bsltimore to PVD leg was delayed for 6 hours because of mechanical difficulties. Libbie got a $200 voucher and her fight eventually left at 3:45 PM. I called Enterprise to make sure her car reservation was still good 6 hours later. She got a black Toyota Corolla which is a good color for Providence. It's a gorgeous day in Sarasota, temp in 70's and clear blue skies. Dinner was the leftover eggplant from the Italian dinner in Lake Mary.

In the morning after breakfast Libbie packed her suitcase for Providence. We left at 9:00 for Cynthia and Jack's in Lake Mary. We had a traffic problem around a mall near Disney World but once we cleared that it was clear sailing again. Arrived around 11:30. Cynthia
had a nice lunch of cold cuts and bread as well as a pumpkin beer cake ready for us. It was nice. Did a tour of her house and got a tour
of the development in Jack's electric GEM car. I like the thing. It's quiet economical transportation. Our next activity was the Longwood, FL arts and crafts fair. Nice afternoon talking with some painters then we got into Cynthia's Toyota Rav 4 and went to Fay's home in the Forest Club subdivision. We met Fay and went to dinner with her to an Italian restaurant. It was very nice, I had the eggplant Parmesan. Libbie did too.
Of course it was way too much food so we boxed up some to take home. We had desert at Cynthias then left for home. She is a dog lover, her house really smelled of dog. She has the Scottie and is watching a little chichaua called Taco. I don't like dogs. Stopped for gas in Lake Mary for the trip home and the airport trip tomorrow morning. We ended up getting home at 9:00 PM. Libbie did some last minute packing
while I messed with the computer. I had submitted a TER review and they granted me VIP membership for 2 weeks. It's fun to read the VIP
reviews.