Went to Lowes this morning and got rabbit repellent for the areas that are not fenced. Applied the stuff and then worked on installing the shelf in the laundry room that Libbie painted yesterday. It fit amazingly well. My only meals today were shredded wheat for breakfast and beef broth. I started the colon prep tonight. Uggh! Libbie had spaghetti and tomato sauce for dinner while I watched. No meal tonight for me.

I got some good news in that Andrea enlisted Joe Bruns to help with the video. This is going to be interesting!!! I bought some steel posts and pounded them into the ground around the Mondo Grass in front. Next I recycled the garden fence but it was 40 feet short. Went back to Lowes and got a 50 foot roll of fencing but have not installed it yet.
We had a pretty good ballroom session today with Robert. I learned how to do turns in the waltz and also we learned about under arm turns in the swing. Pretty successful. Dinner tonight was another lemon chicken recipe that Libbie found. Very good.

Started the Lyndon Lyons movie but Andrea doesn't want the movies. She said she will pick pictures and audio pieces to goo together. I don't think this is going to work. I'm willing to go along to see how this is going to work. Talked to Joy about Rick's colonoscopy. He's going to the same place I'm going to but on Monday instead of Friday. I picked up some chicken and beef broth at Kroger for my thursday meals. I was thinking that maybe this could be the start of a weight loss regimen? It's a rainy day out so we spent time indoors all day. Dinner was a nice chicken over angel hair pasta that Libbie found on Christa's pinterest board.

The hot tub now works!!!! Hooked up a meter and dynamically calibrated the pressure switch with the VOM. I found the switch sometimes stayed closed after the motor turned off so I turned the adjustment some more so it definitely turned off. It seems to be reliable now!!!! Yes! All seems to be well. Worked on another movie today and finished the Violet Barn as well as part 2 of Bluebird. The Violet Barn movie is 300 megs so uploading may be a problem. It's pretty cold out today. Libbie didn't ship into the Northeast because they are going to have a major snow storm up there. We're supposed to get rain. I updated the website today removing more of the Dandy Pots. We only have three colors of mini Dandy's left and none of the Regular size ones. Dinner was Pesto Pasta with tomato sauce and cheese sprinkled.

Worked on the hot tub on and off today. I can manually turn the pump on then the heater but if I turn the heat up with the pump off the thing goes into a lockout. I'm not sure what is going on. This will need more diagnosis. I also assembled some pics for the Bluebird portion of the tour. This is going to take quite a bit of time.
In order to make more room in the laundry room, Libbie and I went to Lowes and picked up another shelf board. It needs painting before we can proceed.
Dinner was Libbie's super pizza.

We have 6 hours of Parsifal in HD on the schedule for today. This morning I worked on ASSTR, creating a spotlight for the Burglars Part 2 and looking at reworking the web page. We left at 11:30 for the noon start of Parsifal in Crossroads. The Opera was transporting. It ended at 5:50, 6 hours of heavenly music and outstanding singing. I thought the production, even though it was modern, worked well. Of course it helped to have an outstanding cast to sing it. Dinner was the rest of the Meyer chicken with onion, potato and Shiraz. Andrea has been trying to call today for the commercial tour we're working on.

Went out to Labcorp for a 9:25 appt for blood testing. When I got back I mounted Jacks hard drive into one of my aluminum cases. I also tried to disassemble his laptop and diagnose the problem with the battery charging. His laptop won't charge the battery anymore. Best Buy said the power jack was bad. I found it was good but since wires from the jack go to the motherboard I surmised the motherboard circuitry is at fault. In the PM we had to repair one of the shelves on the tower which had sprung a leak. We went to the greenhouse and got some poly which we cut into a 4x8 and lined the shelf before putting down the mats. It seemed to work well. I need to purchase a 4x8 sheet of plywood and some 1x2s to coat another shelf with resin. After a yummy dinner of Meyer lemon chicken we went to the group class at 7:15. We lucked out since we were the only ones who showed up so we essentially had a private lesson with Erica learning a few more steps to the Salsa. I felt good about the lesson but we need some music at home to practice to. We did the dance party afterwards and lasted from 8:00 to 9:15. I'm not sure how long the party goes on. I'm pretty happy with our progress in ballroom techniques to date.

I had a 10 am Leith appt for the corolla for 25,000 service. This was my last prepaid visit. On the way back I stopped at Jerrys and got some graph paper, a bigger palette, hooker green paint and a watercolor book of landscape scenes. Also stopped into Trader Joes for oatmeal and then Kroger for 81 mg aspirin. I picked up the 500 count aspirin for 1.4 cents per tablet. Libbie and I then returned to Kroger for gas since it was the last day of the month for our points. We got 30 cents off per gallon making it 3.45. The total bill was $51, wow!!!1 I'm glad we don't have one of those bozomobiles that needs 16 gallons per fillup. We had a private lesson at 3:30 with Robert at Carolina Ballroom today. It was pretty good since we concentrated on the Foxtrot and did traveling in the foxtrot. There was where we kept taking steps forward and also did some of the change your mind step and turning counterclockwise.
For dinner today Libbie made a fantastic Meyer lemon chicken with shallots and garlic and roasted greenbeans for the veggie. We had Rodney Strong Sauvignon Blanc with the meal. Jack came over today to transplant geraniums. He also brought his laptop to get the hard drive out so he could salvage the data. I removed the drive and now I have to find an external case for it so it can plug into a desktop USB port.

Did some file work on Traviata backing up, moving files, etc. We got ready for dancing again and went to Carolina Ballroom for our 3:30 dance lesson. We learned quite a bit of the Foxtrot and the Rumba. After dancing we went over to Trader Joes for our other food stocks including wine. Dinner was the rest of the rotisserie chicken with macaroni and potato salad. Andrea called in the evening with the start of the DVD. She has quite a bit of work defined for only the intro. I stayed up late listening to Parsifal until 11:30 PM and reading online.

It was pouring rain all day today. Today was spent painting KOI. The painting is great but I'm not really into fish. I learned a lot about controlling the paint and feathering hard edges. This has been a good learning experience and Becky is very good because she keeps talking as she paints on the easel in front of the class. Lunch was pot luck. I brought my broccoli again. I had lasagna, pizza, curry chicken salad and my broccoli salad. JoAnn brought girl scout cookies for the class. She is making a very large version of what we are making in the small version. I also liked JoAnn's Christmas card idea. She took one of her winter scenes and had it made into Christmas cards last year. This is my idea of a Christmas Card! I was pretty tired by the end of the day. We had spent 8 hours painting! I drove home in the rain at 5:30, hwy 55 was pretty busy but moving along. When I got home Libbie and I took inventory then went out to Krogers because it was old geezer day. Dinner was rotisserie chicken with macaroni and potato salad. The Met tonight was Carmen live which I listened to until the end of the first act.

I left at 8 today for Watercolor at Carolina Preserve. Traffic on 55 wasn't bad. I arrived there at 8:20. Put the broccoli salad into the refrigerator in the kitchen and then picked a table. Met Becky and the rest of the class. She is a good teacher. I really learned a lot about mixing green and also about brushing out hard edges. This was helpful. Also helpful was the avoidance of long surfaces of solid color. Different colors are used to add interest and texture to a surface. The pot lunch was way over the top. JoAnn had a lot to do with the nice environment. Came home around 4:00 and started sorting through 2 weeks of mail. Wells Fargo is offering a 15% discount for the tax check. I quickly wrote a Scottrade check. I will mail it when I go to watercolor tomorrow. The Pi cases also arrived from Adafruit. I didn't spend much time with the Pi stuff since there was too much mail to go through. Dinner was spaghetti with tomato sauce and pizza cheese sprinkled over the top.

It's nice to be done with the driving and spend the day at home. Libbie has a huge pile of boxes already to go tomorrow while I worked on backing up pictures, etc. We had Lib's homemade pizza tonight while watching the Oscars. I started with the red carpet at 6 then the main show started at 8:30.

We got up normally and looked at the Radar. It's a good rain falling in Georgia and South Carolina. We watched GMA and took our time cleaning up the condo and packing the car. We got going around 10 AM. It was quite warm, I was hot from carrying all the items to the car. We ran the A/C up a notch to cool down. On our journey the temperature in FL peaked out at 86. We had the usual trouble in Orlando where it was stop and go around the outlet Mall East of Disney World. The jam ups began as we reached hwy 192 which is the Disney Main Gate and continued for the next few exits. Finally we go going again without incident. We hit heavy rain just South of Savannah for about 20 miles. We checked our tablet in the SC Visitors center to see what the radar looked like. I was pleasantly pleased by the fact that we finished traveling in the worst of the rain. Woo Hoo. We had stops for gas in Ormond Beach where Libbie bought Doritos, water and granola bars. We ate our turkey and cheese sandwiches on the road with the Doritos and water. Next stop was McDonalds in Florence for dinner. We had grilled chicken snack wraps. Gas light was on going into Florence where gas was 3.55 per gallon. We paid 3.79 in Ormond Beach. We got home at 9:35 which was good considering we didn't know if we were going all the way or not depending on the weather.

I used the whitewash stain and put a coat of stain on the inside of the bookcase to disguise the sloppy brush work. It sort of worked, the inside doesn't look too bad now. This was a last ditch effort before hauling the thing to Goodwill. We took a little bike ride around the neighborhood before stowing the bikes for the season and went back to cleaning up the condo. I finished the story "Burglars" and posted it to ASSTR. I'm now working on the sequel, "Alice Returns". It feels good to be writing again. We called Craig and Debbie to get Dsrshelle's address to send a Sympathy card for her Mother's death this week. The funeral is tomorrow. We drove to Target before the Michigan party and filled the card out in the Publix parking lot and mailed it at the mailbox conveniently in front of the Pack and Mail store. We went to the MI party at 6 PM where there were h'orsedeovres and drinks. The buffet was very nice, much better than the NY/NJ one last week. Doo Wop Denny was the entertainment. He is quite good and played some very nice dance music which is pretty popular. The couple we sat with was from Lancaster, PA. They have been Ballroom dancing for 10 years and were quite good. Travel tomorrow isn't looking too good. There is a huge rainstorm covering the SouthEast which we would drive into.

I spent a lot of time today on the SQL for the violet viewer. I created a large database of 10,000 items but it didn't seem to work. I get an IO error. The smaller 100 record database works better. I need to investigate this some more. The bookcase is a disaster. The paint job is pretty shitty, very careless application of paints and drips everywhere. I'm pissed at myself for not catching this sooner. I'm trying a last chance recovery by using the sanding sponge to sand off the finish on the outside and the stain to essentially paint the inside with stain to cover up the crappy brush work. This may be the best I can do. I didn't go out and do anything fun today, just a Lowes trip for furniture pads and to look at painting options.
We went to the Clubhouse for rib night. It was crowded because of the Dixieland Festival. We saw Peter and Christa there, Peter has a UK friend looking for a place next year. I had a half rack of ribs with baked potato, string beans and salad. Two glasses of Cabernet complemented the meal. I enjoyed watching a young European women in a slinky dress that showed off the outline of her thong and was low enough cut that every time she bent over to attend to her child she put on quite a display of flesh. Csme home to Parsifal live on Sirius XM.

I had a lot of luck today with B4A and accessing an SQLlite database. I sucessfully displayed the first 10 violet names from the database. Now I need to take it further so that search works, then the click on the listview item to retrieve a record. Around noon we hooked up the bikes and went to the celery fields. It was 81 degrees and very enjoyable. What a nice day. Came home, had lunch and worked on the database some more as well as started reading Linda Howard "Ice" in earnest. I really like the story so far. We had crackers and cheese for a lite dinner then went to Turandot. This was one of the best Operas I have seen by Sarasota. It was incredibly good. We were in aisle H against the wall. The seats were pretty good, I was surprised. All the principals and the chorus gave their all. The sound was fantastic. This is so much better than HD.

We went to the Celery Fields to do some birding today. On the way home we stopped at Yoders at the mall for lunch fixings. From the mall I picked up a clamp to finish the vinyl baseboard job in the bathroom. I also picked up a scrap of 2x4 so I could use one clamp and the 2x4 across 3 feet of base to secure it to the wall. I returned to Lowes because the glue we purchased said that it won't work on non porous surfaces. I picked up some silicon instead and finished the baseboard job. It takes 3 hours for the silicon to dry. We went out for dinner to the clubhouse where Bingo was going on. I never knew about Bingo but apparently it's $5 a card and hundreds of dollars per prize, basically splitting the proceeds among the winning cards. I had panko crusted amberjack which was still good even tough they overcooked it. It came with fries, cole slaw and white rolls. We also had a house salad.

It was a chilly morning so we stayed indoors. After our normal turkey sandwich lunch we went out to Ringling and did the galleries on the left side of the museum that we didn't do last week. Notables were a wall of Harlequin paintings featured because they purchased the 15th painting to complete the set. I noticed a room full of Rubens paintings, something I was not previously aware of. I knew the front room with the 4 huge paintings existed but not the room with smaller works. I also found a Greco of the crucifixion which reminded me of a blackboard painting I did and photographed in 7th grade. The other work of note was the lady strapped to a bull on the front lawn that I never noticed before. She is a Christian being punished for her faith. The story says her assistant saved her by killing the bull. The Romans let her go after this. I photographed the statue in multiple views. After the museum we walked Selby and made note of some Staghorn ferns we had noticed before. We went to the free dance lesson at 7 then paid $20 for the one hour class following. The free class was a circle of us doing various steps. The paid group class was great, we practiced the foxtrot for the entire hour including doing a turn as part of the second step of foxtrot.

It's cold today. High only in the 50s with some wind. We took a walk around the block but Libbie wanted to stop at every bird, I wanted to keep walking. I don't like standing still like this. We left for the ballet in Bradenton at 1 PM for a 2 PM performance. The ballet, La Baladeyre was the best ever. My favorite host, Katerina, wore a Lacy form fitting red dress. This girl is beautiful. The third act of the ballet was the best I've ever seen. The scene called the dance of the shades featured 32 ballerinas in white Tutus noving down a spiral ramp on a black stage. The only lighting was on the white Tutus. Exquisite!!! On the way back we stopped into Trader Joesand picked up some wine and cereal. Dinner was a pizza we picked up from Valentinos and ate at the condo with shiraz while watching 60 minutes.

This morning we took a walk then had an early lunch so we could go to the opera. The theater parking lot at the Sarasota mall was pretty full. We were there a half hour early and were told at the box office that Rigoletto was sold out. I inquired when was the encore. I was told that was sold out too!!!! Wow. We left disappointed and listened to the Opera on Sirius satellite radio in the condo. In the evening we left at 6 PM for the NY/NJ party. We had a table of 6 with one couple who lives in Paris for the summer and another from Buffalo. Both parties recently sold their Stoneybrook condos. We judged them as having aged out. Dinner was a buffet of beef on rolls, crab cakes, pierogi, spring rolls, wings and salads topped by cheesecake and canolis for desert. This wouldn't be my choice of a buffet, especially for $20 but it was OK. The DJ was terrible. Many people just sat there as he played non dance music such as the theme from Shaft and Saturday Night Fever but the people came out for dancable music. We had 2 glasses of wine with dinner for a total of $67 including tax and tip. Not bad for an evening party.

It looks dry but a little chilly out this morning. We have the outdoor fern class at 10 am. We went to Bill the fern guy's house on Trinidad near the Bangkok Thai The weather started out cool and cloudy but later the sun came out. Bill's house is very eclectic. The whole yard is covered in tropical plants with the backyard given over to all Staghorn Ferns. Amazing and junky at the same time. You have to have understanding neighbors to own a yard like this. After the fern class we went to Yoders for fruit and lunch fixins and then to Lowes for steel wool and wax for the bookcase. I went out with Libbie later in the day so she could get more fabric from Sew Right, the quilt store in Palmer Ranch. We went over to the clubhouse for dinner. I had panko crusted amberjack with french fries and cole slaw. For an appetizer I had New England Clam Chowder.

It's a cloudy misty day. We left for Dunedin to Rainbows End quilt shop. By the time we got there it was really raining. While Libbie fabric shopped I walked outside looking for the train station. We got in the car and drove downtown where I finally found it. I got out in the rain and took pics of the station. It looks like it wss turned into a cafe. On the way home it rained quite a bit. Stopped at the Outlet Mall in Ellenton then we did the quilt shop in Palmer Ranch. I got some black slacks for 10.99 in the VF Outlet store. I chose not to go into the Palmer Ranch quilt shop. Libbie bought a red fabric in there. In the evening we had a 6:45 PM Dining Room reservation. We had a very nice prime rib dinner with baked potato, rolls, veggies and a Yorkshire pudding thing. We shared a Key Lime pie for desert with coffee. Accompanying dinner we had 2 glasses of Cabernet. This was a nice Valentine dinner for us.

Another pretty day with a temp around 80. Nice. Libbie finished sealing the bookshelf out on the Lanai. We then drove to Yoders for Honeybells but they don't have any. Instead we purchased turkey, swixx and Amish bread and a tomato for a sandwich. It was an outstanding sandwich. Took a bike ride after lunch then a walk around the block (2 miles) before dinner. We went over to pub night which was very crowded. Bought raffle tickets from the Breast Cancer foundation fund raiser. Libbie spread the tickets around the prizes ($10 for 5 tickets). I had 2 glasses of Yuengling draft with Cajun spiced Amberjack and the family style salad with garlic bread toasted. Overall it was a nice night. During the day today I finished the first sample project for the B4A compiler. NExt I'm going to tackle a database.

Busy day. Libbie painted the bookshelves out on the Lanai. We got the bikes out, pumped up the tires and took a ride outside to the front wetlands then down McIntosh and home. We went over to Peter and Christa's for wine at 5 PM then to the clubhouse for dinner. I had a Veggie burger which was out of this world. We then went to the goup dance lesson and social at Sarasota Ballroom on Swift. Fun night!!!!! The dance was way over my head, it was a Rhumba.

Didn't wake this morning until 7:10, wow! After the morning shows we headed over to Ringling. Really enjoyed the Paolo Veronese exhibition. Paolo was a renaissance painter. One painting, the baptism of Christ, was from the NC Museum of Art. We had lunch of Italian Sausage with peppers and onions under the Banyans. Some folks from near Syracuse, NY joined us at a picnic table since the tables under the Banyans were full. We did half of the museum because we got tired after a while. Will come back for the rest another day. We went out for dinner to Bangock Thai where I had a Singha beer and Chicken Pad thai. Libbie had Scallops Pad Thai. The Westminster show was on. The judge was Dennis from Apex, judging the Toy group.