It's pouring rain today. Rain gauge shows 1.73 inches before it was all done. The sun came out later in the afternoon. It was another day off from scraping the ceiling. I worked a lot online and ended up downloading Saving Mr Banks with Tom Hanks. I stayed up until midnight watching it but thought it was about 30 minutes too long. I would rather see the movie about 90 minutes long instead of 120. I also had a hard time understanding the British accents, they tend to mumble to my ear. Dinner was another wonderful Libbie pizza. She used the parmesan garlic olive oil we received from the Benzigers for Christmas.

I took a day off from scraping the ceiling. I didn't feel like getting all dirty and covered with white powder from the ceiling. I added the photographic index to the AVSA website and heard from Terry, the person who now is doing the annual index. Went to the Cary mall around lunchtime to look at mattresses. We visited Macy's then bought a Serta Posturepedic in Sears. We got an additional 10% off from some promo they had going. We also get two pillows free with a mail in certificate. Cost was $840. Delivery in about a week. The mall was surprisingly easy to navigate. Dinner was a ham and pineapple stirfry with peppers and rice that Libbie found online. It was quite good. We had it with Shiraz.

I worked on getting the ceiling scraped around the edges. This is a messy job. Dinner was 15 bean soup with cornbread and shiraz. Libbie used the ham bone to make the soup. Very good.

I spent all morning loading spreadsheet files into the AVSA database for the annual magazine index. I got all the years loaded. After lunch we went over to Home Depot and ordered a countertop for the bathroom. It will be around $750. I also need to order a sink and faucets. I resumed scraping the foyer ceiling. Arlene called to tell me Ed Glembocki died which I knew. She heard from Dotsy Hughes. Also dead are Linda Cook, Joan Cook's daughter and Albert Stanski of Skillman. We made ham sandwiches for dinner but got delayed because Joe called about his Christmas.

Libbie went down first and made the coffee. We had ham and eggs for breakfast then opened presents later. It was a quiet Christmas Day. It was also cold but we went outside anyway for a walk around Seagrove Farm. Dinner was ham, sweet potato and Shiraz. After dinner we drove around the neighborhoods and even went up to Dr Pauls house on Green Level Church Rd. We parked the car and walked around the front yard admiring the hundreds of inflatables and spotlights everywhere. What a show. We tried driving out Olive Chapel later looking for Judy Howells place but never found it. She too has Christmas lights most years.

The UPS guy delivered the LED lights this morning for the garage fluorescent fixtures. I started working on the fixture after a Kroger trip for senior day on Christmas Eve. The first light went up easily but the next one had problems because the lamp holders are shunted instead of individual wires. I went to Lowes one hour before the early Christmas Eve closing and found non shunted lamp holders. Bought them and hooked everything up in the evening. While out today I also bought some Russell Stover to be from Santa. I stayed up pretty late working on the AVM indices for the AVSA website. Dinner was Spiral ham with sweet potato and Shiraz and broccoli.

I started working on removing the popcorn ceiling in the foyer. It seems to be going well. I had to run out to Home Depot to get another plastic tarp to cover the floor and also a sponge. It's pouring rain today but warm. A good day for indoor projects. I did some research today on the Infocast I bought a few years ago and how to replace the firmware to repurpose it. I want a digital picture frame with big numbers to represent greenhouse, plant room and outdoor temperatures and possibly a few other parameters. It may be more worthwhile to build a stand for a nook and tether it to a power cord instead of repurposing the Infocast. Dinner was leftover chicken and pasta casserole with rice mixed in. I picked up Spinach today to go in this mixture but Libbie forgot to put it in. We now have 2 bags of lettuce and a bag of spinach in the refrigerator.

This morning I got a copy of Saturday Night Live and we watched it over the Chromecast. It had quite a bit of stuttering. I plugged the drive into the router and tried streaming from there and all the stuttering was gone. I can only think the issue is between my laptop and the router. Too much stuff going on in the laptop. We did soome garden work, I worked on the FM antenna and managed to trip with the 20 foot pole and destroy the thing. I put it back up all mangled. Came back in and watched christmas Vacation streaming it from the router which worled very well. It never missed a beat despite being in high definition. Dinner was Libbie's wonderful pizza. I finished my Christmas cards after dinner. Sadly I found that ed Glembocki had died in March. I looked up his obituary when I had not received a card from him.

Went to Kroger for lawn mower gas and ingredients for Lemon Spinach chicken. It hit a high of 77 today, unusual for the first day of winter. I mowed the Jaoanese Iris down while Libbie worked on cleaning up the rest of the garden. It looks pretty nice. Dinner was salad, lemon spinach chicken and Shiraz. ginger Spice cake was the dessert. I really like the Raspberry Pi music player - it's spitting out non stop christmas music.

Another nice day. More outdoor garden work. We had a very light dinner of zesty beef and barley soup. Left at 7 for the 7:15 Ballroom Christmas party. We brought our Ham Delites which once again were a hit. It was nice seeing everyone dressed up. We're still having trouble dancing anything that's a little complicated. I guess it needs a little more practice. Not sure how to do this. There were quite a few pretty women there - Angela who said she followed Andrew from another studio and of course Nancy in a slinky white gown. Erica was there home from college for the holidays with a boyfriend who didn't know how to dance. It was a nice night. We won the third place prize and it was 2 free lessons. Nice. Our investment was $100, payback was worth $150 at regular rates, $128 at Festival Victory party rate.

Did a little garden work today folding the shade cloths and cleaning up the tomatoes, squash and cucumber grow boxes. Libbie raked and I spread the resulting pine needles around the azaleas in back. We did a Kroger trip for white fish and ingredients for our ham delights for tomorrows dance party. This afternoon I worked on getting the Google Chromecast to work. The secret ended up being installing it on Libbie's laptop and getting a button offering to update the firmware in the device. After the update it attached to the WiFi network and started accepting streams. I was disappointed in what could be streamed. It doesn't recognize some file types and only streams from a few apps. One of the apps is Google chrome but Chrome won't do MKV files. I purchased an app for the Tablet that works with Chromecast that makes it better. We had a dinner of leftover squash, brown rice and baked white fish with Panko crumbs. After dinner we went to Viennese Waltz at 7:15 with Andrew. We had a nice small group of 6 which included the ladies Jennifer, Libbie and Mary. I did a video tape at the end of Andrew and Mary waltzing the length of the ballroom. When we came home I tried listening to WCPE but the signal is very noisy. I successfully tuned into WCPE on the browser and then used Chromecast to send it to the TV. I need to work on the antenna some more.

This morning I played some more with the control program for a pi to learn php. In the afternoon we went to dance class where Robert set us straight on the Foxtrot and we also practiced turn on the waltz. We went to the Post Office with Christmas cards after dance then stopped by Trader Joes. Dinner was leftover Chicken Pot Pie.

Purchased all the ingredients for a pot pie today. Made the pot pie in the afternoon with the chicken leftovers. We had it with Pinot Grigio which went into the pie. We went to waltz amalgamations after dinner. I danced with the very attractive Mary as well as Libbie and Jennifer. I still didn't get the pattern we were doing. The Raspberry Pi is doing a great job at serving music to our stereo. I used it for Christmas Music.

Libbie worked at mail order while I went up on the greenhouse roof and removed the shade cloth. Today is a light eating day so we had a rotisserie chicken with squash for dinner. I'm planning to use the chicken leftovers to make s chicken pot pie tomorrow.

Today is Sunday. Didn't do much - worked on the computer a little, showed Libbie how to use the Pi program to water the violets. She watered the one shelf that was new for 22 additional seconds after we wet the empty mats down yesterday for 30 seconds. We also added the shelf to the watering program. In the evening Libbie made her excellent pizza while I studied some PHP programs to see if I can make it easier for someone to change the members section password.

It's supposed to be a rainy day today. We got going to Falstaff today at noon. We allowed a little more time so we wouldn't get stuck in Christmas shopping traffic. Took Tryon and had no problems getting to the theater. Traffic was heavy but we navigated it well and got to the theater a half hour early. The performance was wonderful, it was played campy. Falstaff is huge, the other two ladies are no dainty ones either. It's the 1,000 pound cast with all three of them. Totally enjoyable and wonderful performance. When we got out it was pouring big time. We made a run for the car. On the way home we decided we were not going to stop for groceries for dinner. We did a Chinese takeout consisting of rice, 3 meat Szechuan and egg rolls accompanied by a bottle of Shiraz. Very nice. My maglite came today. It's an incredibly nice flashlight. I'm going to hang it in my closet. I bought the hanging hooks with it also. I could probably have done just as well from Amazon.

Stayed indoors all day today until time to go out. Worked on reading about B4A projects and found a sample program to read a CSV file. Joe Bruns has given me his database in CSV format. Late afternoon I worked on putting the LEDs and fringing on my San Francisco sweatshirt for the tacky sweater contest. It was fun. We went over to Dance early and did a little bit of Samba with Andrew's group class. We enjoyed dancing very much. winner of the tacky sweater contest was Nancy, an attractive and laughing thin girl. She wore a skirt made of a tree bottom cover and had glitter and funny elf like shoes. She was cute. We sat with her last night at our table at the Esquires dinner. I posted the posed Christmas tree picture of Lib and I on Facebook. 21 people have liked it so far. Too cool. I'm still having trouble with the waltz and connecting turns going down the line of dance. Need to really concentrate on this.

I got back into B4A on the tablet. There is so much I forgot that today turned out to be a learning exercise. By late afternoon i was actually sleepy and rested on the bed while Libbie started getting ready for Esquires tonight. We left at 6 but traffic on 64 was stopped, then the beltline had several trouble spots. Six Forks Rd was even worse as we went to the country club. Wehn we reached 540 on 6 forks I realized that the country club mut not be on 6 forks. We pulled over, dug out the GPS and tried again. It took us nicely onto Falls of The Neuse Rd and then I found the clubhouse ignoring the GPS that wanted us to turn in a weird direction. The party was excellent. We arrived at 7 PM instead of the planned 6:30 but we were fine. We had a glass of wine before dinner. It was a buffet with salmon and prime rib carved. The food was excellent. Dessert was blueberry cobble and also a piece of chocolate sacre cake. We danced all night until 10:30 to a 12 piece orchestra. The other members of the Esquires are very very good dancers, some of them almost as good as Robert.

Back to eating light today. We went for our dance lesson at 3:30 which was very good. We did waltz back to back and front facing boxes. We need to practice this some more. The hard part is my twinkle and throw out before doing the front facing and back to back boxes. Fun. Dinner was left over BBQ with cole slaw and Baked beans.

This morning I turned the Brunswick Stew off. It was done and looked pretty good. After breakfast I went to Home Depot and bought materials to make a red bow for the wreaths. I built two wreaths from the greens I picked up yesterday at Home Depot. At 11 we turned everything back on for the noon party. Everything went well, I think everyone enjoyed the food. It was a very tiring day but I was pleasantly satisfied. In the evening we went to Carolina Ballroom and participated in the Waltz Amalgamation session. It was a big class and I had some difficulty remembering all the steps. I'm convinced Andrew is not a very good instructor but we go along with it. For dinner we had the BBQ and cole slaw.

I started at 6 AM today and put the pork roast in the oven at 275. Last night I put together the rub and worked it into the roast. Libbie took the roast out of the oven and switched it to the disposable aluminum pan. I want it to cook for 8 hours at this speed or until the interior temperature is 190 or better. At 190 the roast falls apart, at 180 it can be sliced and stays together. I want it to fall off the bone for pulled pork. I also started baking cookies - the lemon ones and the peanut butter chocolate and peppermint ones we previously practiced on. When the roast was done I let it rest and cool then tore into it with while wearing latex glove. Using a fork and sharp knife it was easy to pull all the meat off the bone and pull off the skin. This was good. For dinner we had the oulled pork and cole slaw that I made. We had a few cookies for dessert. It was a tiring day but good.

Libbie left Providence at 7 am which meant she got up even earlier to get to the airport. It's supposed to snow in Baltimore where she changes planes and ice in counties West and North of here. She got here on time without incident. We're having a cold rain. I spent the time this morning running the ethernet cable from Gilda to the office closet. Is topped to get Libbie at the airport then we went shopping in Kroger for all the ingredients to cook the party food. I bought a 9 pound pork shoulder and the ingredients to make the rub and baked beans and brunswick stew. In the late afternoon I put the connectors on the cable and tried it out and everything worked the first time. Hurray!!!! Libbie made her yummy pizza for us tonight.

This was raspberry pi day. I built up the Open Sprinkler hardware into an electrical box, the one used for the former tower timer. this all went well. Configured an image on the downstairs raspberry pi with the new open source pi and the latest Raspberry wheezy image. This went pretty well. I hooked it all up and was happy. I ran to home depot and got a 50 foot ethernet cable to water the towers. I initially did a 20 second watering but wasn't happy so I did an additional 15 seconds. On the way back from Home Depot I stopped into Bojangles and picked up a 3 piece dinner with dirty rice. They were giving away free iced tea for some reason. I watched Gigante Sabaado tonight. This program sure has the babes and is quite entertaining. I would like to figure out what they're saying.
The pi sprinkler is working perfectly. I named it gilda since this afternoon I listened to Rigoletto as the first Metropolitan opera broadcast of the season. Horestovsky as Rigoletto is quite good.

It's a beautiful day out. I worked outside today and picked up the pine straw from last week and spread it around in the back. While blowing off the garage, driveway and front porch I noticed the extreme buildup of moss on the front steps. Tried out the pressure washer and found it started quite easily although the gas can is empty. I decided to see how far it would go pressure washing the house. Cleaned the front steps, landing and door. It still was running so I moved it to the driveway and washed the garage door and molding. The dirt came off pretty easily and the door looks much better. I also cleared the workbench of "stuff" that has sat there too long. Dinner was a vegetable Lasagna from Trader joes. It's pretty good although it could have been better if I put it in the oven instead of the microwave. The microwave toughens the pasta. I did some more reading of "Travels with charlie". I like Steinbeck's writings. Will seek out more.

I started to look at the sprinkler controller. This thing needs an ethernet connection which I will drop into the laundry room and then over to the towers. I went to Home Depot and looked at electrical boxes but didn't buy one since I didn't feel the $20 was worth it. I could do as well by repurposing the existing box. I looked on eBay at refurbished Google Nexus 7 and found the lowest price at $125 but then found Walmart is selling them refurbished for $129. I tried with a different router and still couldn't get the Google chrome working. It's going back. I watched the Barbara Streisand movie "guilt trip" which I enjoyed. Not a great movie but it was enjoyable. I would give it 3 out of 5 stars. The credit card bill is ridiculous at over $5,000 because of dance lessons and dining room furniture in the condo. One more reason why I did not buy the electrical box. Dinner was a couple of bean burgers with onion and ketchup. I liked them. I caught the end of the Sound of Music which was live with Carrie Underwood. I'll check the bit torrents to see if I can get a recording.