I felt pretty lackadaisical today and basically didn't do much. I did some research on the hardware aspect of the Wifi thermostat interface in the plant room and sketched out a schematic but I was too lazy to do anything about it. Dinner tonight was tuna sandwiches and tomato soup because lib is nursing the beginning of a cold. I was pretty disappointed today since Sirius dropped the classical pops channel effective today. This sucks since it was one of their better channels.

Breakfast at the Captains Inn this morning was an egg and onion quiche with homemade sausage, potatoes, roasted tomatoes and toast. What an incredibly good meal. Right after breakfast we checked out and started the drive home. We had one stop in Williamston at Bojangles for blueberry biscuits and coffee. We got home shortly before noon in an incredibly pleasant drive. The enPhase cables were waiting for me on the front porch. This afternoon I bit the bullet and ordered the 4 solar panels from Renogy. I got the 300 watt ones which would be equal to 5 of the 240 watt panels. The difference is more cells per panel resulting in longer panels. Now it's a matter of waiting. I tried Home Depot and Lowes for a shingle ripper but had no luck. I ended up ordering one from Home Depot online.
I decided that for the electrical portion of the solar cells I will mount a disconnect on the roof with a waterproof conduit A/C type cable from the disconnect box to the enphase inverter cable. The surge supressor will mount on the box and a copper ground wire will go from the box down the house to a ground rod. I will probably have to drill through the roof to make this happen.
We had a very good dance lesson with Robert at 3:30 learning to fine tune our waltz. After dance we went to Kroger for our weekly groceries. They were out of cereal but we got everything else. We had spaghetti tonight for dinner sprinkled with some pizza cheese. I did a little research on smokers online but it was just research, nothing serious.

Coffe was out in the hallway at 7 as promised with a little piece of pound cake. We went down into the dining room at 8. Don served smoked bacon with blueberry pancakes and blueberry compot over the top. Super. We started with juice and a bowl of fresh fruit. We had our rub lesson at 10. We sampled a few rubs and chose "Smoking gun", a competition rub. We put vinegar on the ribs to start with. Libbie was the dry hands while I wore gloves and was the wet person, rubbing down the meat while she sprinkled the rub on. After all was done, we marked the ribs with 2 toothpicks since we were couple number 2. Don cooked the ribs. We walked downtown again and had dinner at 309 bistro. Libbie said she had the best grilled cheese sandwich she ever had. I had an absolutely delightful thai chicken wrap which was wrapped with red and green cabbage and infused with ginger and other spices. Absolutely yummy. My side was homemade chips. We wlaked back to the Inn and then got into our car at 1:15 to drive to the trolly. The $10 trolly ride was a histroic homes tour of edenton. We had previously walked most of it except for the old cotton mill which is now converted to condos. Edenton is surely a beautiful town. Back to dinner at 6 where we sampled each of the 3 couples ribs. I could hardly tell one from the other. Don accompanied the ribs with wine, cole slaw, bicsuits and baked beans. What a nice dinner. We polished it off by walking down the street to "Freeze" and had soft serve ice cream. When we got back we lay in bed reading and we could hear it raining outside again. We had a perfectly clear day until now which was lucky.

Packed our suitcases this morning and took care of all the plants. We left around noon in heavy rain. The rain continued on and off all the way to Edenton. We stopped in Tarboro for lunch at Bojangles. I had a single chicken breast with dirty rice and sweet iced tea and a biscuit. It's been a while and it was certainly good. Despite the rain which was incredibly heavy at times it was an easy drive to the coast. We were a little early so we did a drive of the town and waterfront before checking in at a little past 3 PM. Don our host was pleasant. I had to pay $27 cash for the tax on the groupon. Took care of business then in a light rain Libbie and I walked downtown. We had a tasting of sauces at 6 with a glass of wine and a few smoked ribs. It was yummy and we had a chance to meet theother couples in our group. After this we went downtown in search of dinner. 309 Bistro was closed so we went to Kristy's, an Italian restaurant. It was nothing fancy. I had a nice garden salad with a dish of Fruits of the Sea which was clams, oysters, scallops and shrimp over linguini. Another couple joined us, Stan and Ann from the Captains quarters. I had a beer with dinner then we walked back with the other couple.

Put all the ladders away today in prep for our trip tomorrow. Groomed my plants and then digitized another roll of slides using the projector and camera. I'm not happy with the results and may go back to the scanner for digitizing slides. The results are slow but possibly better that way.
After investigating several possibilities for roof mounts of solar panels I ended up going with aluminum rails and flashed roof mounts from Mile High Eco in Colorado. I also ordered a surge supressor with the rails since I'm a little worried about lightning hits. I will mount this on a disconnect panel on the roof.
Dinner was Libbie's excellent pizza of course.

Finished the AVSA horticulture pictures today and uploaded all to avsa.org for anne and Richard. I found the Windows 7 labeling in the explorer which i used to title the plant pictures. This will make it easier in the future I hope. Dinner tonight was homemade eggplnt casserole with a bottle of Shiraz. yumm!

Out on the roof early this morning and started painting the soffit and fascia over the porch. This angle of my feet is tough on my calves. I can really feel it. The weather is incredible. Temperatures are low for July and humidity is only 51%. Libbie made an eggplant casserole which was outstanding. She used garden eggplants and garden basil which was very flavorful. We had it for dinner with a glass of Shiraz. We left for 7 o'clock rock where we had a group shag lesson with Robert. He clearly is in his element doing this. There was quite a crowd tonight, they even now have alcohol. We bought 2 pints of beer from a new brewery on Chatham St. Libbie and I did quite a bit of shag which we found we're good at after Roberts lesson Wednesday and the review at the group lesson Friday night. The band was quite large and quite good. The theme was supposed to be beach music. It was good listening music and very dance-able. Earlier today I accepted a counter offer for enphase inverters and bought 4 of them for $720 with free shipping. Little by little my system is coming together. Next I need to order solar panels. I'm thinking of getting the Renogy 300 watt panels which work out to .78 per watt before shipping, 1.02 per watt after shipping.

this was a busy busy day. Ii cut the sheet of plywood for the soffitt and installed it. This concludes the carpentry. Next I brought the rake onto the roof and with the leaf blower managed to clean the pine needles off the garage and porch roofs. There were quite a few. In order to free up my cart I weeded the garden and then spread the pine bark that was parked in the cart. I fertilized the roses before mulching them with the bark Next I raked up the pine needles and used them as mulch around the fence near the butterfly bush in the corner. I had 2 loads of pine needles which I used to put down a nice thick coat. After the pine needle cleanup I fired up the pressure washer and washed the front of the house over the porch and then the sidewall over the garage. The side roof was filthy. Dinner tonight was hamburger and baked beans with garden tomato and Vidalia. Yummy. I ordered our Dallas Lonestar tickets tonight since today is the last day of the southwest sale. I got them for around the price of going to California which was $700 round trip bottom line. Not great but I'll use them as a place holder.

Hooked up the trailer and went to Lowes for a sheet of plywood as well as 1x4x12 PVC fascia boards and 3 pieces of drip edge. I got all the fascia boards up but not the soffit board. I need to cut the plywood and nail it up. Got cleaned up and ready for dance lesson at 3:30 with Robert. It's been almost a month with bad AC, Fourth of July and our trips. We had a good shag lesson learning natural and underarm turns, cuddle and belt loop turns.
This afternoon I ordered roundtrip tickets to John Wayne for Sept 3. Bottom line for 2 of us was $700 total which was outstanding.
We came home, laid down and fell asleep. I fell asleep for an hour. Dinner tonight was hamburger with baked beans, Vidallia onion and tomato from the garden.

Went to the airport at 9 to meet Libbies flight which was showing a 9:16 landing. My timing was good since I parked in the Sheetz gas station and sh called shortly after I arrived. I'm amazed at the number of dressed up workers in business clothes stopping in to get coffee and donuts on the way to work. Came home and got the soffitt 2x6 straightened out by shortening the patched up rafter with the Sawzall. It started raining at noon with about 1/4 inch then a huge rain at 5:30 where the sky got black as night and almost 3 inches fell. Our total for the day was 3.21 inches. The backyard was underwater. Talked to Joe about us getting plane tickets. He said Sept 3 would be better for he and Christa. The Southwest sale ends tomorrow so I'll order in the morning. Dinner was curry chicken over spaghetti.

Up at 5:20, checked the calendar for sure since I have to check Libbie in for her trip tomorrow. Had time to shower, shave and have breakfast before getting on and fetching the reservation number, etc for check in. Did the check in on time - she's in the A group with TSA-Pre. Nailed up the new treated 2x6 but it's not right. The underlying repaired rafter is sticking out too far. I chose not to fix it further. Today's agenda was to finish the Nashville convention accounting then uae the free coupon to get a photo book from mypublisher. I ended up with 22 pages and submitted it. I made an offer on an ethernet gateway which was accepted. I guess I'm on the way to a solar system. Found some 300 watt panels and enphase inverters on ebay. I'll wait until Saturday to order this stuff since we go to Edenton next week and won't be home. Dinner was a nice salad with a can of tuna on it.

After the sunday morning shows I went out onto the roof and ripped down the rest of the rotted wood including the wide fascia board. it's quite warm outside. Went to Lowes and picked up a 2x6 and a few PVC pieces. Will need new pieces of plywood to finish the job. Still haven't figure out how the water is getting in. Dinner was a bean burger with Vidalia. For lunch I had a Trader Joes Briyani casserole. It was pretty spicy and good. I have a lot to do - the AVSA accounting, the library photos and some web work.

Did the Iris sale at the arboretum today. Bought 9 Irises, 2 of them were free because it was buy 5 get one free and get a free one for joining the Iris society. I helped Barbara verify the website this morning. She was still having trouble but we now have an embedded file and an html meta tag for verification.
Went up on the porch roof and started the demolition of the rotted fascia and soffitt. It's a real mess. The underlying 2x6 is disintegrated completely. I didn't expect that. It means the whole 1x8 needs removal to get to the ends of the 2x6. Even the horizontals that support the plywood are rotted. Much destruction. I went into the backyard in the afternoon and did some chain saw work. Removed the big young Oak next to the apple tree and trimmed the oak that was touching the house in the corner. I had to remove a big branch of this tree. It's much better now. Hopefully this will bring more light into the garden. Dinner was a salad with thai pepper, lettuce and cuke as well as a yummy beanburger with vidalia and garden tomato. Always good! I finished reading the book "Finding Me" about the Cleveland kidnappings. It was fascinating and surprisingly an easy read.

I went out onto the ladder and finally finished the front of the house except for the section over the porch. Cleaned up the brushes and then went to HH Gregg and purchased another WNDR3700 router to use as a wireless repeater. Before I did this I struggled with some other routers to make a remote access point. I finally decided the best way is to replicate the current router but put the new one in repeater mode. The reason for doing this is because the Honeywell thermostat in the playroom keeps losing the wireless connection. I think the wireless signal strength is now much better upstairs. On the way home I stopped in Kroger and picked up a watermelon and carrots for dinners. Dinner tonight was a bean burger with cantaloupe for desert. I also had a peanut butter sandwich because I was still hungry. Elisir is on tonight as an encore presentation. It's a delight. Libbie called during the opera so I missed some of it. All is well in RI. I'm enjoying my time alone here. It's pretty productive.

Tried painting at 9 but it started raining. Got down, cleaned up the brushes and the sun came out. Crap. Worked in the garden tying tomatoes, weeding and general maintenance. We got a good dose of rain at 6 PM giving us .6 inches. Dinner tonight was a bean burger with vidalia, fresh garden tomato, spinach salad with garden cucumber and garden tomato slices. Yummy.

Left at 9:15 to take Lib to the airport. Back home and started painting by 10. Finished painting the side of the porch and the upper 2 bedroom windows. It's a hot day - high of 95 while I was painting. Finished at 2 and a little after 3 it started raining. The paint had plenty of time to dry although a little more time would be better. Saw on TV that Clyde Coopers was torn down today. That's the end of an era. It was built in 18 something. Dinner tonight was a lettuce and spinach salad with a can of tuna over the top.

Did some web work on AVSA transferring content to the new Shows and Judges page. Today is grocery day but since Libbie is leaving tomorrow for PVD I don't need much. Fired up the pressure washer and washed half of the house, upstairs. this included two bedroom windows, the side of the porch and the fascia and soffits. I got totally soaked. My foot is starting to act up like it did 3 years ago. I'm not sure what's going on there. I stopped by Lowes before dinner and picked up a new ballast for the violet towers. One of them apparently has quit, bought a new commercial one which is lower in power than the residential one. We coordinated the Lowes trip so I called Lib as I was leaving Lowes and she called in an order for Chinese takeout. I stopped back at home and picked up Libbie who went with me and picked up our dinner. We had eggrolls, 3 meat szechuan and a bottle of Merlot. I was done for the evening!

I worked this morning replacing a fascia board on the side of the porch. Next I caulked it all, it's ready for pressure washing when the caulk dries. I worked on genealogy stuff today, it's sadly out of date. After trying a few programs including the open source Gramps I ended up going with the copy of Family Tree Maker 2012 that I have. I registered it with ancestry.com and am using their online tree storage capability. this gives me web access from anywhere (I think) as well as edit ability from any computer that has Tree Maker. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with bits of fresh tomato and a sprinkling of cheese. Yummy.

Finished up the front door handles. The non locking door needed a 2 inch hole drilled to accommodate the new handle since it wasn't drilled before. The old handle was a dummy that didn't need a 2 inch hole. Libbie made her outstanding pizza again.

Libbie painted the 2 downstairs windows next to the porch this morning. I did some web updates but not much yard work. Spent more time than I thought I would replacing both front door handles and the deadbolt lock. The great news is I had the deadbolt keyed to match the other doors in the house. This is a big plus. I spent $300 on 2 door handles plus the deadbolt which I thought was a lot of money just to get a new door handle but that's life. Dinner tonight was hamburger on the grill with the rest of the corn. We had a bottle of Barefoot Merlot wine to complement the meal.

Did a little Nashville app work then got into my paint clothes and started painting outside. Finished the garage door and the porch ceiling. This was pretty tiring. The pond pump quit so we went to Home Depot to get a new one . I want about 600 GPM, they were out. We bought another gallon of paint then went to Lowes and found one. Bought a 560 GPM for $69 which may have been a little high but it works well. I also replaced the UV light to filter the algae in the pond. Hooked it all up before dinner. On the way back from Lowes we went over to Kroger to get wine for dinner. Sampled something called Midnight Passion by Manage a Trois winery in St Helena. It was OK but the barefoot was on sale for 2 for $10 and the Midnight Passion was $10.50. Dinner was hamburger with onion and tomato and corn on the cob. We accompanied dinner with Barefoot Merlot. After dinner we enjoyed sipping wine on the back porch and listening to Readers Digest Waltz compendium via the Traviata server and our stereo system.

I worked on the Nashville app, fixing a number of issues and moving menus around. Went to the Farmers market around lunch time where we picked up peaches, corn, tomatoes, lettuce and a small plant from Longwood, In the evening the hurricane was off the coast but we only got 1/4 inch of rain which was disappointing. Dinner tonight was farmers market corn with hamburger and Vidallia onion. We also had a bottle of Merlot.

I'm a little groggy today trying to get back onto EST. Sorted pictures out from our cameras today and backed things up. Managed to backup Libbie's cell phone to a free MS OneDrive account and download a zip file of the pictures. I also got out the slide projector and tried scanning a roll of Disney World pictures of Nov 1979. The pictures are of poor quality but the scans are relatively decent. It was disappointing in that while we were gone a deer got into the lower fence in the West garden and ate the vines, peppers and tomatoes. The eggplant looks great! Dinner was leftover chicken with the rest of the potato salad and some cole slaw. Good stuff.

We got up at 4:50 am Pacific time and got ready to go. checked out of the hotel and hit the road by 5:15 AM. Topped off the tank at Seal Beach for $4.25. Pricey but we only needed 5 gallons. The freeway was crowded as usual. We were glad it was between 5 and 6 in the morning. Rental car return and check in went smoothly. They rejected my printed boarding passes, claiming they were too big. We had to reprint them at the airport which was no big deal. Ii was TSA Pre but Libbie had to go through the full security search. I waited for her then we found breakfast at Woodies Wood Fired pizza. They had English muffins with egg and bacon for $9 each. Bottom line was $25 for 2 sandwiches with drinks. Ouch. They were OK however. The flight started out 15 minutes late but we landed 10 minutes early. We had no luggage so we went right out to the Park N Ride shuttle which was waiting for us. How convenient. We were home by 5. For dinner we had a Kroger rotisserie chicken with potato salad. Pretty good. Now we have to get used to EST.

We had a fun day today. Had a very nice hotel breakfast after getting up somewhat later then went over to Joe's. Hung around there for a while then after a lunch of Joe's leftover pizza, we went over to Laguna at the Montage. The flowers were not as spectacular this time, they replaced a lot of the annuals with succulents because of the drought. found a guy to take a picture of the four of us with Paige, then my cell phone alawrm went off at 3:30. We had an appointment with Hans at his assisted living in Dana Point. We had a very nice visit with him. He's amazing. Then we left at 5 to go back to Joes in heavy traffic which was manageable. Went out to dinner with the 5 of us to La Capilla. Paige was good for the first half of the meal, then Joe used his magic on her when she started fussing towards the end. I had the taco and enchilada combo with a blue moon. Very nice. We stopped briefly at Joe's to say our goodbys then went back to the hotel and fell right asleep. Up tomorrow at 5 to catch an 8:15 flight at LAX. fun.