While tying the tomatoes it started to sprinkle. We ended up getting .24 inches is this sprinkle. It was fun watching the weather station record the precipitation. I also did the soldering and heat shrink of the wires for the newest solenoid, the one that waters the Geranium garden. We did a trip to Walmsrt, mainly to get socks and underwear for me and some shorts for Libbie. We spent $85 which was surprising. I managed to find a Class 4 SanDisk SD card for my Nook Color and some cable ties which turned out to be indoors only as well as a 6 gang outlet for the porch. I purchased an Android for Nook image for my Nook Color and installed it. It makes the Nook Color more responsive since it is running Android 4.1, Jelly Bean. I like it. It's still not as responsive as the Nexus 7. Dinner was Lobster tails with peas and a super salad consisting of lettuce, carrots, cucumber, snow peas and Vidalia. We had this with the rest of the French Merlot-Cabernet blend, about 1 1/3 glass.

I worked on the sprinklers today. Picked up some glue at Lowes as well as a new UV tube for the fish pond. Tried changing that first but no go. The light flashed briefly but did not come on. Will remove the UV assembly and check the contacts. Wired up the geranium garden and manually turned the sprinklers on to check the aiming. It wasn't too bad but needs a little adjustment. I need some 6 inch long cable ties. I'm using the cable numbers from Home Depot. I used these to label all the solenoids which was great. We picked up a salmon at Krogers and while there we noticed that Lobster tail was on sale so I picked up 2 of those as well. On this Kroger run we took both cars and filled up on gas using our points. It turns out both cards are really linked so our purchases are counting towards gas. Dinner was salmon and a nice salad with onion, lettuce, carrots, cucumber, snow peas and sunflower seeds. We went to dance at 8 PM and were both tired but had fun. It's amazing how many steps we have forgotten. Repetition and practice is the answer. We stayed under almost 9 before heading home.

Worked in the garden running a water line for the geraniums. Ran to Home Depot for sprinkler parts and another solenoid which we need for the geranium zone. I also bought some cable markers so we could identify the various wires in the timer box. this is a mess. Today is a fast day so I ate lightly for lunch, an Avocado, tomato sandwich and then a big salad with tuna in it for the protein. We went to the group foundations class to learn swing with Erica. The class was great since we learned quite a few new patterns for the swing.

Spread the other bag of bark around the geraniums. The weather station continues to work well. Tried to water the flower garden since it's so hot today. Had some problems figuring out the timer wiring. This needs a complete rework and labeling. Went to our dance class at 3:30 which was excellent. Robert practiced the Foxtrot with us giving us tips on form. We also worked on our twinkles and bigger steps for the foxtrot but still keeping in time with the music. We thought this was a very good lesson. After dance we went to Trader Joes for some supplies. Dinner was chicken, pasta and curry sauce. We also had a very nice salad with the meal.

Sheila gets up at 4:40. We don't get up until 6. We left for New Bern just before 9 and arrived around 11. It was a pleasant day for a drive. BArb taught us about Streps and showed us her plant room. We had a very nice lunch of homemade bread, chicken salad and fruit salad. Desert was a cookie. We got back home around 5:15. For dinner we went out to La Cosina where we had Quesadilla La Cosina with a Yuengling draft. Very good. We did our Tuesday groceries after dinner which worked well.

We did a little cleanup today. I bought two more bags of bark and spread them around the geraniums. I also tightened the shade cloth on the greenhouse. Sheila came over at 5:00 today. We enjoyed her company for dinner which was BB chicken, mixed veggies, salad and strawberry shortcake for desert. Even though it was a fast day I had the full dinner since we had guests.

This was an easy day. The weather station continues to function well. Libbie and I fertilized the garden with Miracle Grow liquid. As usual, I mixed a whole replacement bag of fertilizer into the liquid container. We did the entire flower garden but not the geraniums. Libbie hit the geraniums with Osmocote then we watered them in.
I spent a lot of time on the computer reading about weather software. My favorite is WeeWx but it's Linux based so I may employ a Raspberry Pi to do the job. I also did a lot of Oregon trip planning. Staying at the airport and not renting a car looks like the best way to go. I reserved a room at the Country Suites Airport but found a better hotel for $100 more. The Marriott residence Inn is $100 more for 2 nights but has a train platform in their parking lot. Libbie made her great pizza again. this time it was extra good because she put all the leftover tomato pieces in from the week. This afternoon we took a late afternoon walk through Seagrove Farms. It's a gorgeous spring day with the temperature in the seventies and very low humidity.

Weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised at 224.5
This morning I got the weather console successfully uploading to Wunderground. Went outside this morning and tilled the new garden next to the sidewalk. Libbie planted geraniums in this one inside the new fence. Last year a rabbit ate all our geraniums so this year we installed the fence to keep rabbits out. Next I went on the roof and caulked the new cornice boards and painted it all with the Historic Tan house paint. this went extremely well. It's a clear sunny day today. I noticed the wind speed is a little lower than the one at Surrey Point. This very likely is due to the shielding effect we get from the surrounding trees. After painting and tilling I was wiped out today. Took a long nap after the last opera of the season, Gotterdamerung. We went to Kroger in the afternoon during the opera and found a large wine tasting party going on. We got full plates of ribs, beans, horsdoeuvres and cake. Wow, what a surprise. We picked up some Sockeye Salmon which we had with Broccoli and Shiraz.

The Weather Station will arrive today. I found the cornice boards where I want to mount it are rotted. Removed the boards and picked up a PVC 1x4 from Home Depot as a replacement. The 1x4's went up without much trouble but involved many trips up and down to the roof which was tiring. I mounted a 1.5 inch PVC pipe as the mast. Late in the PM the Weather Station arrived. I assembled it on the back porch and went back on the roof one more time to mount it on the PVC pipe. I setup the console on the back porch and was pleasantly surprised at how good the communication link is to the instrument suite. I eventually put the console in my office and mounted the usb logger inside. I also had to run to Kroger to get 3 C cell batteries for the console. The AC power cube will power the thing but it needs the C Cells for backuppower. I'm having trouble getting the logger to work. Dinner was chicken with roasted veggies and a single glass of Shuiraz.

I put connectors on all the hoses and bought an additional manifold for the new grow boxes. All is now hooked up. I bought 4 bags of bark and spread 3 of them around where I dug up trenches for drainage pipes. We had a really heavy rain last night and the good news is the new drain swallowed it all. After a dinner of salad with chicken breast in it we went to a Foxtrot progressive class. Erica was the instructor. We had not seen her in 2 weeks and so thought she was gone. The class was quite good and we learned quite a bit stringing patterns together.

This was a pretty good day as most of the work I did for the Android version of First Class is now working including the addition of several thousand pictures to the tablet via FTP. I still don't have a reliable FTP program working so I sued one from the marketplace. Robert was sick so dance lesson was canceled for today. Dinner was salmon, broccoli and a glass of Shiraz.

Got FTP working on my Android so I used it to download 100 violet pictures from Traviata for display in the Violet Viewer program. In the afternoon I worked in the garden transplanting the squash and cucumbers and running the garden hose to the new boxes but I still need to build a header to combine the hoses and hook them to a source of water. Dinner was angel hair pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan over the top. Very nice.

Worked the whole day on the Violet viewer software. This was great, Libbie was occupied downstairs with packing violets with Jack and Joy while I listened to Opera in my office and learned quite a bit about how Basic for android works. I got a rudimentary system up and running from an SQL database, retrieving data and displaying pictures. Yeah!!!!!
Dinner was leftover Bok Choy which was great since this is a fast day. My weight is at 226 and holding which is around 10 down from my physical on Feb 7.

It's still cold today. We worked in the yard planting 3 new bush Lantana next to the sidewalk and also the two remaining Lavenders. I also put down some more landscape cloth around the new grow boxes. short and sweet, that summarized our outdoor activity today. I got a second Raspberry Pi running the Squeezeplug software with the new C-Media USB sound cards that arrived from Amazon yesterday. This one will be in my office hooked to the stereo. I'm pretty happy with the system. Libbie wants one now but I'm running out of Raspberry Pis. I probably need to order some more from Element 14. I worked some more on the violet viewer software for Android. I had to remember how this is done. I learned about sdcard memory in the emulator and how to preload jpg images. This is for the storage for First Class. Dinner was Libbies super pizza. I put some shitake mushrooms on mine which were excellent.

I did some research on weather stations. I have decided to add a Raspberry Pi with WeeWx to my mix of web based electronics. Not sure of what instrument package to use. I may go the homebrew route and write an interface to WeeWx but the easiest thing may be to get a Davis and a weatherlink interface. At noon we we went to Crabtree to see the Iris show. It's been a while since we visited crabtree. Bought a microplane in Williams Sonoma. I was amazed at the number of high end restaurants outside the mall. I finished up the fence today and planted the Lavender along the outside. Dinner was Bok Choy with a bottle of Shiraz and strawberry shortcake. Yummy.

After yesterdays fast but with a healthy fish dinner last night I was pleasantly surprised by the scale this morning. I weighed in at 226.5
Woo Hoo!
We did a huge shopping trip today. From AgriSupply we got a rain gauge. Next stop was Wyatt Quarles for bird food and potting soil. Then we went to the Farmers Market. After purchasing tomatoes and strawberries we went to the end for Dwarf Lantana and Lavender in one gallon pots.
Next stop was the Asian Market for mushrooms, Bok choy and sprouts then Staples to use a $10 gift card they sent us. We purchased envelopes and multi colored pens at Staples. Stopped in next door to Trader Joes for wine and fruit then home. I mixed up 2 gallons of roundup and did the grass along the new fence as well as the path through the woods to the back. Wow, I was tired.
We had a nice dinner of pork chops, broccoli, apple sauce and salad. This went with a glass of Shiraz.
In the evening we went over to Carolina Ballroom and danced for an hour. We were in bad shape, had trouble with a lot of dances.

I got on the scale this morning and was pleasantly surprised that my weight was down to 227. I didn't think it possible after a dinner of pork chops, wine and assorted veggies last night. This is a good deal!!! It's darn cold this morning. I went to Lowes and picked up the last piece of fencing and a couple of posts to mount it. I'm still not happy with the gate, it seems to be flimsy. I picked up a piece of u channel fence post to try to stiffen it. The other option is a length of greenhouse pipe driven into the ground, possibly even cemented. In the PM I planted the Morning Glories while Libbie put in the package of sunflower seeds that we bought a while back. I picked up some catfish from Kroger on sale for 4.99. It was one pound exactly for 2 filets. We had the catfish with a Panko bread coating baked in the oven using a Cooking Light recipe and also a salad. This is another fast day.

This is a busy day. I started by working on the grow boxes in the mud. Spread out a landscape cloth and retrieved some cinder blocks from the woods to level the boxes on the hillside. Next job was to work on the fencing endwall and the gate. I'm not happy with the stability of the gate. It's pretty shaky and holding it shut is a crappy plastic catch. Need to do better. I left this job unfinished. We went to dance at 3:30 where we had a fantastic lesson adding sparkle to the waltz. We added a single sparkle and a triple sparkle which was fun. We kept practicing this until we almost got it. Robert was good tonight. Dinner was pork chops with a single glass of Shiraz, broccoli, and apple sauce. I previously had a bowl of salad but Libbie didn't want one. I love lettuce and carrots!!!! Rigoletto is live tonight. It's the final live broadcast of the season. Too bad!!!

It was too yucky to work on the fence and grow boxes today so I mowed the lawn instead. Did the normal grocery run this morning. Dinner was angel hair pasta with chicken and Curry sauce. After dinner I messed around with the AVSA presentation again. I wanted to finish by May 1 but it doesn't look like it will happen.

Another cloudy rainy day. I spent the morning indoors but in the afternoon I laid out the new fence even though the grass was incredibly wet. There is an issue with the gate and where the walk is that I need a solution for. today is fast day monday so for dinner I had a salad and a piece of Sockeye Salmon from Kroger. The Salmon was .6 pounds which was around 4 ounces each. This is 192 calories. The web says about 48 calories per ounce. This is happiness. Breakfast was the usual 200 calorie cereal and milk while lunch was a 200 calorie bowl of soup. I'm guessing my calorie total was 700 which is my upper limit. I finally got the Panasonic wireless cam going. Thanks to an app on Android I'm able to look at the cam on the tablet.

It was a rainy day but in spite of the rain Libbie and I went to Lowes and purchased $300 worth of fencing to repel rabbits around the new bed along the walkway. I'm still not sure if this is going to be stable enough with the DIY pound in the ground sleeves they provide. The posts then go into the sleeve. To me it doesn't look deep enough. I laid out a mason string to get a straight line and lined up the first fence which still may need more adjusting to account for the slope of the ground. Dinner was a Libbie pizza which she made from scratch because the dough in the freezer was frozen and she didn't remember to take it out earlier.

It's a perfect day outside. Blue sky and mild temperatures. I smoothed out the last of the sand, then cut some tarpaper and placed the remainder of the brick sidewalk. Libbie helped. She and I then went to Lowes to look at fencing to thwart the rabbit. There is a nice short fence which will block the critter and is attractive. We bought a 4 foot section with posts for $20. It looks like it will do the job so we will go back to get more. Next task was to shovel several wheel barrows of compost onto the new bed next to the sidewalk and till it in. this was where I left the job for the day. We had a nice dinner at 6:30 at Tony's Oyster Bar in McGregor Village. Libbie was paying ($251 with tip). The dinner party consisted of Coleman and Nancy, Joy and Rick, Jack and Barbara and us. Eight people, all volunteers in some way or another at Bluebird. I had blackened Tilapia which was topped with Oysters. Accompanying the meal was mashed potatoes and veggies.

This was a tiring day. I laid down the rest of the bricks then got out the rototiller and finished the path to the garden gate. Next I dug a trench next to the gate for two drainage pipes. The four inch pipes will drain rain water as well as serve as a conduit to carry power and water for the garden. I was extremely tired. We did a trip to the Farmers Market for tomatoes and strawberries. We also picked up some perennials for the garden which included Begonias. The perennial garden is looking great. Libbie planted the purchases while I took a nap. I needed the rest since I was having trouble catching my breath. I woke up refreshed. Today's blood pressure reading was 102 over 73 using the new device sent by Aetna. I was concerned by low blood pressure but the systolic number has to be less than 90 to be considered HypoTension which is low blood pressure. Dinner was leftover lemon chicken. We went to dance today. the group lesson was very basic essentials and was taught by Atlanta. We stayed for the dance party which was fun but pretty tiring. I think we're improving but compared to others in the room, not so good.

Moved the remaining bricks from under the house onto the sidewalk and put them down. Next I got out the chainsaw and moved a lot of logs and cut down saplings to clear a path to the brick pile in the woods. Libbie filled my cart and I moved it to the sidewalk and dumped it. We took two cart loads of bricks out of the woods. This was a fast day so dinner was a salad with a chicken breast split between the two bowls. I surprisingly was OK with the fast although a tiny bit hungry.

I spread the sand today, leveled it nicely and with Libbie's help cut a piece of tarpaper which went over the sand. I moved about 50 bricks from under the house to hold the tarpaper down. We had a very good lesson with Robert today. We missed last week because he had to pick up his daughter. We met his daughter Atlanta who is a very nice High School girl. Today we added embellishments to our Foxtrot including a box step and various right/left turns. This is the last Wednesday of the month so it's Mariachi night at La Cosina. We enjoyed dinner around 6:30 at the restaurant. The Mariachi band included a female vocalist and was dressed in white with gold bullets down the side. We both ordered the Quesadilla La Cosina. I had two Yuengling drafts with mine. It was a very nice satisfying day.