Libbie is down to only 40 minutes left in the cell phone plan. This morning I read about resetting a cable modem if connectivity is lost. I set up a Raspberry Pi to perform this job and had somewhat success doing this. I woke up this morning to thunder and lightening which was bizarre. Libbie's flight was early. I had to hustle to get to the airport in time. She had her suitcase in hand by the time I was getting off 40 at the airport exit. On the way home we picked up a rotisserie chicken and potato salad for dinner. It's a surprisingly warm day, it was 72 on our way home from the airport. We had a nice dance lesson with Robert. Today we concentrated on Foxtrot and Rhumba. Bill called late in the evening after Libbie had gone to bed. He is making his way North and wants to stop in on Friday night. This will mean no dance party for us Friday which is too bad.

Up early and into the garage this morning to change the tire on the bike. This went reasonably well. The new tube has slime in it which is a sealant so it was a little bulky to deal with. I especially had trouble getting the valve stem to stick out far enough. I ended up taking the tire off the rim again to push the valve stem up then clamped it with vice grips while I re-assembled the tire. After I got everything back to normal I took the bike out on a trip all around Buckingham. It's quite smooth riding now, especially since I oiled the steering bearings which seemed to be my biggest problem. They were pretty dry and hard to turn. I poured motor oil liberally onto the bearings. I had one problem when I hit a bump by the church - the battery pack luggage carrier slid down and rubbed the tire. I had trouble getting it tightened back up at home and ended up drilling a hole into the seat shaft to secure it. Dinner was Trader Joes Spinach Lasagna. I watched Last Vegas tonight - what a fun film of old geezers.

Dentist this morning at 8:30. I noticed the front tire was flat on the bike. Had a good checkup. Talked to Libbie this afternoon - Bill has cancer and is going to have a kidney removed. Things are not looking good for him. I took the flat tire off and noticed a tiny pin hole leak. I inspected the rim tape and didn't notice any problems. The tube is pretty old. Visited Walmart, Target and Dicks looking for a replacement tire. A 26 inch balloon tire is hard to find. Dinner was a Chile Rejeno. After dinner I went to REI after finding they have a bike department. Do they ever! It's the biggest bike department I've ever seen. Bought a Continental tire cruiser tire. I also stopped at Trader Joes expecting it to be empty but it was amazingly crowded. This evening I watched Last Vegas and was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

I got the connectors installed on the battery pack. Went to Kroger for duck tape, taped up the battery and mounted it in the luggage carrier bag. Tried a test run of the bike up Downing Place. The bike feels a little funny. The hub motor has some nice power but not as much as I would have expected. Surprisingly I got a Sunday paper on the driveway today. That's two weeks in a row. Dinner was a self rising crust pizza. I ate too much today.

I spent the day working on installing the luggage rack, the battery bag and then wiring up the bike. The battery charger and the test probes came today. The probes are a perfect fit for my digital meter. I'm pretty happy with them. I fired up the battery charger and started charging the battery pack. I monitored the charger voltage while it was charging and was happy to see it start at around 37 volts and slowly climb a tenth at a time. In the later evening I unhooked it all when the voltage reached 42 volts. The nice part is the LED on the charger which starts red and then turns green at full charge. I really like this charger, it was a good ebay find. I also ordered a Honeywell WiFi thermostat for $149 from eBay. List price was lowered to $224 at Lowes and home Depot from $249. This is better looking than the Nest and a more reliable thermostat company. dinner tonight was leftover Fried chciken from yesterday along with a salad.

The roads are nicely cleared after a morning of black ice. melting is happening rapidly. I ran around to the auto store for trailer lighting connectors then Walmart for a luggage carrier and a luggage bag. I had to return to Walmart because the bag was marked $7 but they charged me $17. To get the other $10 back I had to go with a customer service guy to the bike department, note the $7 price, then go back to the customer service department where they gave me $10.68 cash. I really wanted the credit back to my card. Oh well. Dinner tonight was fried chicken and potato salad from Kroger.

What a difference a day makes. The greenhouse roof is totally clear. For some reason I still can't use the balance function on my smart charger. I'll skip that and continue charging the cells I took out of laptop packs. I'll build these into a parallel pack for the 36 volt pack I currently have from Greenworks. The sleet and rain compacted our snow to less than an inch or two. The driveway is actually showing this morning and during the night a snow plow went down Downing Place.

There was no snow this morning. I ended up ordering a 3 amp 36 volt charger from a Calif company. The snow started falling at noon. I ran over to Kroger to look for D cell batteries for my Kerosene heater and what a zoo. Tons of people. The drive home on Old Raleigh Rd was unbelievable. I was in a line of cars creeping along. I shouldn't have done this. The snow came remarkably fast and heavy. We accumulated 6 inches in just few hours. I turned the greenhouse heat up in order to speed up snow melting because it's supposed to be freezing rain later today. It sleeted instead which kept the rain down. The snow slid off the greenhouse roof without any problems. Dinner was a can of Progresso Chicken Gumbo soup. The Pi upstairs crashed which kept one of the relays on. I turned the water off and began the cleanup. Had to get the shop vac to vacuum up the water and transferred the plants to the shelf above. They were sitting in about 2 inches of water. I vacuumed about 20 gallons of water out of the tray. Thank goodness it was lined with 6 mil poly.

We may get winter weather today. I worked on reading about balancing Lithium cells and studied schematics for DIY balancers and discharge monitors. I decided to order a Chinese version for my needs. At the last minute Libbie decided to fly to Providence today instead of Thursday. She got a ticket for this afternoonn at 5:20. I took her to the airport at 3:20 and there was no snow but a little bit of flurry activity. Dinner was BBQ on a bun. Stopped by Trader Joe on the way home from the airport and picked up BBQ sauce for my carrots. Libbie's plane was delayed on the ground for one hour in baltimore for no reason at all since there was no weather yet. She made it to PVD at 9:20 instead of 8:30 which wasn't too bad. No snow at all today.

I visited the Hobby Shop in Beaver Creek this morning and bought a balance connector. I also wired up a dShell connector to the battery pack and started half of the pack in a balance charge mode. When this is done I'll wire the other half up. The second 40V battery pack came today. Dinner tonight was Salmon with salad and broccoli.

Weighed in this morning and I was down to 219, a few pounds lower than the 222 when we came home from. Good. Tried various techniques to use the cruiser bars. Noluck. I charged and discharged a parallel pair of the Greenworks cells and was pleased to see it got over 4000 mahr. This battery is going to work fine. Went out to Radio Shack to get dShell connectors and wire. They didn't have wire! What a bunch of turkeys! This store has lost it's way. Picked up some #12 stranded wire at Home Depot. This will be the primary wire. I probably need a locking switch or at least a switch or maybe a high current battery disconnect. I wired up a dshell to the battery. it's going to take two to use the iMax as a balancer. I found mating balance connectors on Digikey. Hooray. Dinner was Libbie pizza, the crust came out a little limp but the pizza was delicious. In the Life Bits under Projects I documented the dShell wiring. This morning I spent some time importing Sue's latest photo indices - 2008, 1998 and 1999.

I did some clean activities this morning since we're going to the theater for Rusalka this afternoon. I studied some more You Tube videos about charging Lithium batteries. Left at 12:20 for Rusalka. The theater parking lot was crowded - lots of families going to the Legos movie we think. Rusalka is not my favorite opera but the cast was magnificent and we enjoyed the afternoon, Libbie brought tuna fish sandwiches which we had during one of the intermissions. Act 1 popcorn munchers were annoying. I don't know why the guy behind me crinkled his popcorn bag throughout the Renee Fleming Moon Aria. This is one of the disadvantages of the HD performances. We stopped into Krogers on the way home and picked up some shrimp and cocktail sauce. Dinner was shrimp, broccoli and shiraz. Pretty good! When we came home from the theater there were 2 packages on the front porch - the Greenworks battery and my handlebars. The cables don't reach the new handlebars so this isn't going to be easy.

This is another light eating day. Did a lot of reading about batteries. I probably need 10s4p to get a battery pack for my bike. I'm also looking at Chinese BMS chargers. Need a convenient way to charge the battery after it's in use. The drawer roller came in from Home Depot - went down to pick it up and installed it when I got back. This afternoon I reviewed the cuban walk, foxtrot cuddle and Rhumba cross body with Libbie. After a bowl of chili for dinner we went to the ballroom dance party. We did a lot of Rhumba, cha cha, salsa and Foxtrot and got to try our new Foxtrot moves which went well. I still need to learn the waltz.

Today was a serious light eating day. One bowl of soup for lunch and only one bowl of chili for dinner, no wine. We gathered all our scrap materials and copper from around the house and brought it to the scrap yard. We got $176 for computers, copper pipes, the old sink from downstairs, old household wire we haven't used in 30 years and other misc junk. I did some more battery charge and discharge experiments while waiting for the Greenworks batteries to arrive.

Mounted the hub to the front fork this morning and then bought a comfort seat at Walmart. It mounted OK on the bike frame. The bike screws are allen screws of the metric variety. Discovered that I have a set of metric allens in my tool set from Sears. This was their first use. We went to dance with Robert at 3:30. This was a good session. Robert fine tuned our foxtrot session from last night and also reviewed Rhumba fifth position and cross body leads. Came home and Libbie made chili. It was so good I had 2 bowls with corn bread and a glass of wine. Not good. Weight is now up to 122. Need to seriously lose 10 pounds before my physical.

Started the day with a trip for groceries and also Cary Walmart for a filter and generator oil.
It has been 24 hours since the countertop install so I installed the faucets, supply lines and drain. Once this was done I was ready to do other stuff. Headed out to Walmart to pick up a bicycle but stopped in the Apex Bike Shop first on 1010. Looked at a used $200 frame but ended up buying something from the back room which was a Nashiki American made mountain bike in rough shape. I need a seat and luggage rack for the thing. Managed to take the front wheel off and remove the tire and tube and re-install it on the electric hub wheel. I researched batteries on the web and found a Greenworks 40V at 4 amp battery. I ordered one for $79 which is outstanding. I want a second one. These batteries were made to run electric appliances such as a Greenworks lawnmower or Greenworks blower. Two of them will give me 8 amp hours for an eBike which may be enough for now. The laptop batteries are so far disappointing. After a spaghetti dinner we went out to dance. It was Foxtrot Amalgamations and Mitzi taught the class. I learned a lot. After a good dance session we went to Trader Joes for supplies. Wow, what a good time to go there since it was empty.

The installer came a little late this morning. He was supposed to be here at 9 but showed up a little after 11 in the pouring rain. He would not mount my faucets, said I had to do this after the glue sets up which would be 24 hours. The cabinet and the Silestone top looks great. It's a crappy day, I was going to pick up a bike at Walmart but stayed home instead. Dinner was Panko breaded Tilapia with veggies and a salad.

Watched the morning shows and then got out the torch, turned the water off and began installing the faucets. The first faucets were sweat fittings. When I was done they leaked along the shaft. This was probably because of too much heat. I went to Home Depot and picked up some male thread adapters and 2 more faucets that screw on. Did the soldering then attached the faucets. This worked a lot better and did not leak. The Super Bowl is tonight but I'm not a viewer. Libbie made her excellent pizza once again. I really need to lose some weight. My clothes are a little tight than before Christmas.

I did not do the plumbing today as planned. I guess I'm just lazy. Did some work on the LSAVC convention page and tried to get a standalone CKFinder working for avsa.org but no luck. Dinner tonight was chicken pad thai from a box from Whole foods along with a Paul Newman Cabernet and a small salad. I worked on my computer most of the night organizing files and synching to the server.

Last day of the month. I was contacted by our only Bridezilla for her album and also by a guy wanting some AVR consulting work. We got a lot of snow melt today but the road is still snow covered. The FedEx guy walked my electric bike motor up the driveway. He parked his truck at the corner of Downing and Buckingham. He didn't want to drive down Downing Place. The battery also came but not the battery charger. This is disappointing. I need the charger more than anything. We had a dinner of Salmon, rice and salad with one glass of the leftover Merlot from Florida. We skipped dancing tonight even though we were in town.

We finished cleanup this morning then loaded the car to go. It's cold and rainy this morning. Saw both Peter and Mark in the hallway and chatted a little. We got going at 9:12 and had light rain all the way to Gainesville. Traffic was moderate or average. The new wipers worked well in the rain. Rest stop just before Gainesville then lunch and gas in Baldwin. It was 44 degrees and the McDonalds was not heated. Brrr. We got on 10 then 295 and all was well. Did the next stop in the middle of SC where we got gas for 2.99 and dinner. Started seeing ice on trees just before Florence then snow covered ground all the way to Raleigh but the roads were mostly dry. We arrived at around 8:30 pm, Buckingham Way and Downing Place were awful, the driveway was snow covered but we made it into the garage and closed the door and unloaded the car. It was a pretty decent drive home except for the cold and the light rain at the beginning.

FedEx tracking says the motor will arrive in Apex pn Friday. We'll see how that goes. The charger is already here. Started cleaning the condo in earnest today. It's rainy and cold out today, only in the fifties. The snow wasn't too bad in Raleigh - 1.4 inches at the airport. Oh well, they predicted more. Florence also got well under prediction. We'll leave Thursday (tomorrow) for our trip back. Finished most of the cleaning, ready to go in the morning. Pub night tonight was turkey with potatoes and cranberries. Coastal Ridge Cabernet rounded out the dinner. Listened to L'elixir live on Sirius tonight.

I replaced the screen today, not too happy with the flat splines that I tried to put into the grooves. Google said to use silicon lubricant and a wide roller. I didn't have the roller or the lubricant. I ordered a 36 Volt 500 W motor today. We may delay our drive home because snow is predicted for Tuesday night into Wednesday. The forecast for the South looks pretty bad. We went to dinner at the clubhouse tonight. I had horseradish crusted COD which was very good. We had the Coastal Ridge cabernet again. Very good. Came home very hung over. Too much wine.

The winter storm for the Southeast has caused us to delay our departure by one day. We took the time to take a walk out to the front wetland area. For lunch we decided to go to the Spanish Point Pub out on the dock. We had Fish and chips with a Yuengling. It was truly a beautiful day. Our waitress was a delightful young girl named Vanda. We only had wine and cheese for our sunset celebration and didn't do anything else for dinner. In the evening I listened to Rusalka which I like very much. It's going to be hard leaving here the weather is so nice. We heard from anne nicholas that richard is going to retire May 1. Wow, it's about time.

I went out to Publix this morning for donuts and the paper. We need some paper for the painting. Libbie volunteered to paint the bathroom molding while I untangled the furnace closet. I tidied up the wiring and removed the extras including the slingbox. I'm going to sell the sling box on ebay, it may be worth as much as $100. We watched the Woody Allen movie "Blue Jasmine" this afternoon. It was interesting, I can see why Kate Blanchett has most acting awards for her performance. We ordered a pizza from Valentinos for dinner and then settled down to watch the Grammys. Nice. Loved all the performances. Perhaps it's because we've been exposed to this music at the dance studio.