Libbie made eggs and ham on english muffins for everyone this morning. Sue and Bruce left first at 9:30 followed by Bill and Barb at 10. We decided to try to make the drive even though it's the Sunday after Christmas, Christmas weekend. We left at 11 and got stopped right away in Dunn. Fortunately it was only an accident so we got going again in pretty heavy traffic but maintained the speed limit. We stopped for gas in Florence and got going all the way till Lake Marion where the phone was shopping red ahead. We got off onto 15 right after the lake and stayed off 95 all the way till Ridgeland using a combination of 15 and 17 alt. W got back onto 95 and went stop and go all the way to the GA border. Once we hit GA we got going at 70 MPH again although there was light rain on and off. We got gas in St Marys, GA and stopped for dinner at Wendys. I had a single which was very good. It's been a while, the onions, tomato and lettuce in the burger were quite good. We got going again and only slowed down a little around the Disney complex although traffic was unbelievably heavy. We got in to the Condo at 11:35 PM. We only took one carry on inside plus the food and left everything else for the morning.

Libbie ran around vacuuming and cleaning in general. I did outside raking of the pine straw off the mondo grass and off the deck. I also blew out the garage and the turnaround. The driveway wasn't too bad so I let it go. I ended up taking down the cam I installed in back porch since I couldn't get it to reliably work. I was able to get a camera installed in the plant room using the old wireless cam from Stoneybrook. I'm using it in wired mode. It has tilt and pan which is useful for monitoring the room. We kept getting updates during the day from both Bill and Sue. Bill left RI at 5 am to get through the NY area but was stuck first at the bridge in DE and then stop and go in VA. They ended up arriving at 8:30 PM after almost 16 hours of driving. Sue and Bruce took 8 hours to get from DC. They arrived at 8 PM. We had wine with chip and dip. I made the dip using the mexican dip mix I got from judging at Plano. Libbie said it was too hot for her family. They loved it!!!!! Afterwards we had bean soup, corn bread and salad. Bruce brought lots of wine which we drank. We had almost a bottle each. Bed at 11 PM. Bill and Barb downstairs, Sue andBruce in Joe's room.

The day after Christmas. I went to the grocery store this morning to get wine and other foods for our guests tomorrow. Libbie's menu is going to be 15 bean soup with the ham bone, corn bread and salad. I found the wiring error in the porch sprinkler. One of the ethernet connectors has 2 wires swapped. It doesn't look like I will be able to get Meistersinger replaced before we leave for Sarasota. I made reservations for Savannah for Sunday night so we can get a head start. Libbie went away to her Mardi Gras party tonight. I stayed home and had a ham sandwich for dinner. Dessert was a nice piece of fruit cake.

Libbie and I opened the gift from Joe and Christa - it was their Family portrait and a smaller pic of Joe and Paige. I put both of them on the wall where a pic previously was located. The watercolor of a barn window then went into the Dining Room replacing a moldy pic of a Bob Timberlake mountain snow scene.
Libbie opened the box of Russel Stover that Santa brought. Libbie called Joe and christa. During this call we did a Facetime chat and luckily Paige was getting up. It was fun to see her, she had such a big smile on her face. She is one happy baby. Then it was time to get about our activities. I replaced the bad connector on the Porch sprinkler connector and also labeled most of the cables in the process. It tested good using the LAN tester which was a step forward.
Christmas dinner was slices of ham with Butternut squash, apple sauce and a glass of wine. Libbie invited Sue and Bruce to join us on Saturday night when Bill and Barb come through. They accepted.

I tried out the new wiring and no go. The sprinkler timer won't work. I suspected the card got corrupted so I spent a few hours preparing a new sprinkler but the new card wouldn't work either. I next put a battery in the LAN tester and found 2 wires were crossed in the line from the shop to the sprinkler control. It was dark when I found this, will deal with it tomorrow. Yesterday I sent Arlene a check for $800, her share of the Aunt Helen life insurance. We got a total of 1293 each which was the leftover amount after the funeral expenses and the grave marker. Arlene sent a pic of the stone, she went out to the cemetery with Ellie in the rain and took a picture for me. It poured here. We had 1.5 inches today and over an inch yesterday. Dinner was ham again with Yam, Apple Sauce and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

Picked up the normal Tuesday groceries. The store was packed and parking was difficult since tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Hopefully I got everything we need. I had to chat with the pharmacist since my prescription auto renews but I won't be here next week so I wanted it early. I told her I would be in later to pick it up. I spent the time at home running ethernet cables from the sprinkler control on the porch to the workshop. This line comes directly from downstairs. I'll put a switch in the shop and run the sprinkler off that as well as a web server on the shop switch to report greenhouse temperatures. Dinner was ham and sweet potato. Neither of us was hungry after the eggnog, cheese and triscuits before dinner. I set up my multimedia PC, Orlofsky, to record Meistersinger. This was a task since I needed cables, the receiver as well as the software which I downloaded. I stayed up past midnight when it ended an turned everything off before bed. Will edit the results tomorrow.

I had lots of success configuring the Alamode for my home automation server. I found that I can call a Flask task using a cron job. This will fix the problem of periodically reading the serial port so data can be put into a web page from global variables that are current. Woo Hoo. Next big task is physical in nature. I have to get ethernet up to the shop where XB Enviro is located. There are a number of options - locate the switch in the greenhouse or locate it in the workshop.
We went to the Post Office this afternoon then stopped by Kroger and got a Christmas ham early. Dinner tonight was the ham along with sweet potato and peas. Accompanying the meal was a single glass of Chardonnay.

After the morning shows I put the covers on the hot tub. it's ready to use! Libbie took advantage and jumped in. meanwhile I struggled with getting the YUN configured. By the end of the day I decided to abandon ship. Tomorrow I'll go back to the alamode since that platform uses a real raspberry pi and has built in tools to expand the SD card which I was struggling with on this platform. Libbie ended up with a soggy crust on the pizza today which was a shame. Meanwhile I bought a Pink Martini xmas album on Amazon and downloaded 5 other albums from the pirate torrents. I would have bought the CDs last night but they didn;t take plastic, it was cash only.

I spent most of the day reading about serial ports and Flask. I need a way to read the serial port periodically in a Flask structure. At noon I went to home Depot for RJ45 jacks and electrical tape. Marriage of Figaro was live on the Met matinee. Dinner was the left over chicken parmesan with a glass of Merlot and Fruit Cake for dessert.

After studying various options of seating at the met I ended up buying 2 more dress circle tix for the Saturday Matinee in late Feb with Juan Diego and Joyce DiDonato. Thats another $540 on top of the evening performance for $540. The Met sure has our money this year. Libbie cleaned up the hot tub and I hooked up the hose to fill it. Our base temp is 58 degrees, need to go up to 100. We made some chicken parmesan for dinner which we had with one glass of Merlot. After dinner I attached my LED string to the green sweatshirt to make an ugly Christmas sweater for the party tonight. I previously charged the USB battery in the afternoon using the cell phone charger. Around dinner time I also talked to John Glembock about what's going on in the family. We went to the party tonight where the time really went by fast. We danced almost every dance. Afterwards we tried to go out downtown to the pub next to the Cary theater but it was still under construction. Instead we went to Spirits. Jen and lana, Ken and Anita and the Cains with their daughter Alice all went. Alice is a cutey with a wonderful personality. We had onion rings, cheese sticks and 2 beers at the bar tonight.

Went outside and raked some more pinestraw from the roof into my cart and spread it around the azaleas. I did a Walmart trip and got a teddy bear to hack up for my Christmas Sweater. Libbie went to her quilting group today so I got to play with the Flask protocol uninterrupted. Dinner tonight was a quick and easy Chinese Takeout, our usual egg roll and Szechuan three meat entree. We had this with a glass of wine and a slice of fruit cake afterwards.

Finished up a lot of the framing for the hot tub but still no water since the inside needs cleaning. We went to Lowes to get stain to finish the job. Also went to the UPS store next to Lowes foods to return the terminal blue pay sent us that we didn't ask for. I also deposited the AVSA check for $99 for the Apple Developer account. Edna screwed me out of $6 since the bill was $105 not $99. In the meantime, Google made a payment of $504 to the AVSA checkbook from First Class for Android sales. We had a good dance session with Robert continuing our Foxtrot amalgamations. We concentrated on the open right and spins. We added to this zigzags and grapevines. We went to Meistersinger Encore performance this evening, bringing tuna sandwiches for intermission dinner. During the second intermission we bought a medium popcorn for $7.50 and also wanted some hot drinks but the machine was broken so no coffee, no hot chocolate. We got out of the theater at 12:35 midnight. I screwed up the start time. I thought it started at 6 so we left at 5:45. Unfortunately it didn't start until 6:30 PM. There was one other couple in the theater for the showing.

It rained pretty hard today, we registered .39 inches. I checked our rain gauge against several in the area, we are right in the ballpark, agreeing with almost all surrounding stations. I did a grocery run then handled a phone call with Blue Pay who said they sent me a terminal. I told them I never received a terminal. They had my address as 4821 Jessie which I changed with the lady on the line. Next step was to drive to the greenhouse and check out the mail. Sure enough we had a new credit card terminal in the mailbox. I called back and they sent a prepaid UPS sticker via eMail. I'm having toruble printing it so I rebooted the Traviata server. Dinner was spaghetti with pasta sauce and cheese.

I worked on framing the hot tub door and finishing up the PVC plumbing. Getting close to filling it with water. I did a little more raking today. I also played with Flask somewhat and understand a little more how that works. Cleaned up the sawdust on the sidewalk and vacuumed around the drill press. I didn't achieve quite what I wanted. Practiced a little more with the Foxtrot pattern. I had a dinner of Potato Salad and BBQ without bread. Left at a little before nine to pick up Libbie at the airport. She arrived early at 9:15. It was straight to the terminal then home without having to wait. We stayed up till 11:30 chatting before falling asleep.

Did a home Depot trip and got some lumber and a PVC cap and roofing tar. Got all my tools together to go on the roof. Decided at the last minute to bolt the dish to the roof using the roofing tar I bought. Since I had the power cord on the roof I decide to blow off both the front and the back roof. This is the first time the front roof has been blown off in about 10 years. The pine straw was thick on the front and the walk down the roof was scary. I think I will use a rope in the future, mostly for balance rather than to support me. I could probably attach the rope to a solar rail, they seem to be firmly anchored. After attaching the dish there was no signal on the TV. I dug up my dish meter and took the feed apart to insert it inline. I left the patch cable installed with a barrel connector and weatherproofed it with electrical tape. The aiming was good, I listened to Carmen from the Met, not live, then watched the Barbara Walters celebrity special. I was disappointed in her choice for most interesting person of the year. She chose George Clooneys wife. It should have been somebody like Elon Musk for Space X and Tesla. Dinner tonight was a Bojangles 2 piece dinner with dirty rice and iced tea.

I went on the roof this morning at 7 AM and unbolted the dish. Two guys showed up shortly afterwards to begin stripping the shingles. I went up there to see the job and pointed out to seal the fan hole and to replace some questionable plywood which looked pretty bad along the edge of the roof. I cut the new PVC fittings this morning and tried and retried the fit several times to get it correct. Next I applied the purple primer on all the mating parts.
I listened to Meistersinger on the Sat Met matinee while the roof work continues. They finally finished up around 3:30 PM. I'm pretty happy with the job although there are nails all over the greenhouse roof. Now I get to mount the dish again but not today.
Dinner was a Stouffer French bread pizza from Kroger. Also picked up some Potato Salad for the BBQ.

I cut the pipes out of the hot tub this morning, ready to install the new fittings. Downloaded the Foxtrot video and did some memorization practice of the pattern. I want to learn this stuff.
While reviewing videos on Youtube I looked at the time and it was 8:20. The dance party started at 8, oops. Scrambled quickly to put on nylon socks, grabbed my shoes and left. I got there pretty late but made the first drawing. We won a Martini Mixer kit. I would rather win dance lessons. It was beer and wine night, pretty enjoyable. Mitzi brought finger foods. I had a roast beef sandwich and a chicken wing. Danced with Anne, Jennifer and Anita. It was a fun evening.

Took Libbie to the airport this morning, left at 6:30 for her 8:10 flight. I picked up a bagel with cream cheese on the way home at Brueggers. Checked the hot tub and was dismayed to see the Tee fitting had a tub of water under it. It's leaking. Drained the hot tub and went to Lowes and bought plastic fittings to replace the Tee and the rain line. I'm planning to put a spigot in the line for future tub draining. This will require a door of sometype.
Spent a lot of time reading BP then built a view for AVSA that displays the BIS for past 15 years. Each BIS is a content type in a view. This allows me to set up the year column as a user sortable column to get forward or reverse chronological order.
The roofing contractor showed up today to look over the job. He may be able to get this done in half a day, possibly this Saturday. Meistersinger is Saturday so I hope not. Looked up the 8 count Lindy that Robert was teaching us. Would love to learn this for the swing. Dinner was BBQ pork on a bin with the leftover fixings like slaw, broccoli salad and cranberry salad. Listened to Traviata live tonight which was delayed 30 minutes since the tenor was ill. The cover took over.

This morning I installed the pressure switch in the hot tub and turned it on. There didn't seem to be any leaks. I put tupperware containers under all the likely spots and let it run all day. Meanwhile I started playing with Flask on a Raspberry Pi. Time Warner still didn't credit my account for the $18 they owe me. I may have call or visit them again. We had a nice lesson with Robert with Foxtrot. He is putting together an amalgamation for us. Dinner was light tonight, we had the rest of the shrimp and some cheese and crackers with our egg nog. We went to Cha cha styling at 7:15 with Andy. We learned hand holds and cross over breaks. Anita and Ken joined us then stayed for Robert's Swing lesson. in the swing we learned Lyndy timing with spot turns and bunny hops to the side. Very cool. Libbie has to pack tonight for RI tomorrow. The hot tub ran all day and did not leak.

Put the 7 pound shoulder in the oven last night at 11 PM. Set the temp at 275 and it was ready this morning. Took it out around 7:30 AM and let it rest. Went out to the grocery for normal Tuesday shopping and also bought a shrimp ring for hors d'oeuvres. Shredded the pork and prepared the buffet. We had a wonderful party, most of the group left a little after 2. The Home Depot guys arrived at 2 PM to estimate the garage roof. There are 660 square feet for a total of $2700 plus $56 a sheet for bad plywood. We ate so much today that for dinner we had a bun with shredded pork and some of the fixings such as cranberry and cole slaw.

Mixed up the rub this morning and rubbed the shoulder down pretty good. Went out looking for a wreath but no luck Bought a nice Ball Mason jar in Target for my BBQ sauce. It's big enough to add all the ingredients and shake it up before pouring it into the serving container. The pressure switch arrived today but I won't mess with it until Wednesday. Dinner was cheese and crackers and a bowl of soup.

Spent the morning on the Yun. After much trial and error, I found that I needed to partition and format the SD card. Next I loaded the treemeasure app into the Arduino and ran the Arduino code which uses bridge to do a simple webserver on the YUN. All html statements are printed out using client.print statements, including the changing water height variable. Some of the issues were I was using the wrong URL and I didn't know how to use API commands. BAsicaly any word you pass in at the end of the URL is your API ekyword. The client code looks for the key word you chose. My url is IP address/arduino/tree
and I look for the command "tree" and do print statements to send back the output. Cut the panel of the hottub to free up the drain into it's own panel. It looks like the tee is leaking. This is about a 1.5 inch pipe. I have some parts to buy. Went to Kroger and found a 7 pound Boston Butt, the only one again. Also picked up some Egg Nogg. Will marinate the park tomorrow in a rub then roast it overnight Monday night.

Went to the grocery store today before the Sat opera and met Terri in the produce dept. Looking at doing something more straightforward than the Flask web server on the Yun. Still reading how to do this. We got cleaned up and went to Ken and Anita's party at 6 in Lochmere Highlands. They went overboard with drinks, hors d'oeuvre plate and a sumptuous dinner of salad and two kinds of shells - ricotta and sausage. Very nice. We played some interesting games to see how well we knew each other. Dessert was a cannoli cake which was delicious. Anita got it from Fresh Market. We moved into the living room and had gifts and a card game where you could take a gift if your name was called or trade it from another person. I started with spoons but ended up with 3 whiskey bottles. We left at 10. It was an enjoyable night. Aty the party were Ken and Lana, Harry and Terri and Ken and Anita plus us. What a nice night.

Worked on setting up the Yun today. I have a lot to learn. I built a sensor circuit to measure the liquid level measure. It's just a pull up on one end with the A/D. The other end goes to ground. Tested it with a glass of water and got readings. Now i need to set up some kind of server. We had a bowl of soup at 6 PM before leaving for the studio at 7. This is our big night. We had a combination of performances and individual dancing. We were the last dance of the third act. Our performance went well. We probably made some mistakes but it seemed to go well anyway. We didn't stop but carried on to the end. I had the Teriyaki pork with slaw and noodle salad for dinner with a glass of wine. After our performance I had a Sam Adams Winter Lager which I enjoyed. We left around 10:30 but some of the hardcore were still dancing.

Tried to eat light today because of our evening tonight. I had trouble getting dressed. it takes a lot longer to dress formally. i ended up having to put all the studs and cuff links in and then didn't know hot to tie the bow tie. Cocktails were at 6:30 but we didn't leave the house until 6:12. Traffic was very heavy. We creeped and crawled along 64 with the traffic stopped still several times. Don't know if Old Raleigh Rd would be better next time. We got there late but at the end of cocktails and before dinner started so that was good. The evening was fabulous. I really enjoyed it, we danced quite a bit which is what I like about Esquires. It's roomy with room to dance. We stayed until 10:30, didn't get into bed until midnight. What a night! Totally enjoyable. We even were able to use some of the time to practice our spotlight routine. For dinner i had swordfish which was delicious and carved roast from the buffet. We each had a glass of wine.