I was a little sore this morning but soon got over it. We were out of milk so i made a morning run to Kroger to get milk, wine for tonight and carrots. It's nicer out today. I removed the covering from the Irises after Don Giovanni which was the live Saturday afternoon matinee.
We got ready for Shriners and left the house a little after 5:30, arriving there at 6 PM. We had a nice table, table 4, up by the band and the dance floor. The studio was at tables 19 and 20. The food was great, the band was really good. i especially the tall slim lead singer. She was good and we had a chance to talk with her during one of her breaks. We complemented her on the excellent choices in music. What a nice night. At our table were Steve and nancy, Harry and Terry and Ken and Anita. I'm finally starting to get the hang of the Waltz.
We got home after 11 PM. The thawing is finally taking place, Hooray.

We woke this morning and it was 7 degrees out. Brrr. Disappointingly, I did not lose any weight in the last few days. Holding at 230. I need to get very serious. It didn't get too far into the twenties today. It's a real cold one. Yesterday we covered the Irises with drop cloths to try to protect them. After only a salad for dinner we went to dance at 8 PM. The parking lot was an icy mess and pretty treacherous to walk on too. We met Lori from the studio all the way in the back lot and walked in together. We had fun at the party tonight. Afterwards we went too McGregor Tavern where Libbie and I shared a plate of wings and had 2 IPA beers. She had Yuengling. We sat with the Rumleys and Anne and Paul Cain. To pay for it all ($28) I used a $70 Michelin rebate card which came in the mail today. At the Studio we heard from Mitzi about why we don't want to sit with the studio at Shriners tomorrow night. We told her we made these plans months ago. Harry Rumley heard the same thing from Mitzi.

It was darned cold this morning! Overnight low was 13, tomorrow even colder. The only thing I did outdoors today was a Kroger trip for lettuce and Green tea and later in the day I took the garbage to the street and froze every part of my body. Libbie and I covered the Irises with the paint drop cloth and two sheets. I covered the corners with 8 bricks from the brick pile. They weren't easy to free up since they were frozen to each other. This is hard to believe in NC.
Dinner tonight was a nice salad but this time with Ranch chipotle then spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. The ranch chipotle is OK and with a hot aftertaste but it doesn't have the spicey taste of the spicey ceasar which I like a little better. This was worth a try and I'll finish it but I'mm going back to spicey ceasar. After dinner tonight we watched Birdman, another nominee for Best Picture this Sunday on the Oscars.

I called Cap One late last night to ask about some suspicious charges on Libbie's card. There was a $450 online purchase on the statement and they said there were 2 more online Walmart website purchases for over $250 each. They shut the card off and are issuing a new one priority since we are traveling next week to NYC. Weight was a little disappointing, still holding at around 229-230. I have a long way to go but will keep at it. I went out today to the Credit Union to deposit a check. This is their first day back in 4 days and it showed since they were so crowded. I waited a long time at the screen for a teller to appear. We went to a very good waltz lesson with Robert. One of my biggest problems was not turning enough in the line of dance. He tried to fix that and I think it was a successful lesson. I really killed my knee doing the turns this afternoon but I think it was worth it. Mitzi closed the studio shortly after our lesson since the fear was the melted snow on the roads would freeze in the evening leading to problems with black ice. Dinner tonight was a salad and a side of a leftover piece of chicken from the rotisserie chicken. It was kind of bland so I added some Tapatio sauce to it making it pretty spicy and good. We're going into an extended period of cold weather starting today with nights in the single digits for the next two days.

Woke this morning and went right to the window. Somehow the ice never happened. The trees look great but there is about an inch of white stuff on everything. Unbelievably a snow plow went down Downing Place, this after we got brined yesterday. Wow. We waited until after lunch then went to the grocery store. There was no problem with the roads. They were mostly wet where they were plowed. The worst was our driveway. We brought home a rotisserie chicken for dinner. I put it in the over with the light on to keep it warm. The walls of the oven were at 110F as measured by the IR thermometer. We had the chicken with a salad for dinner. I added a yogurt for dessert as we watched the 40th anniversary show of Saturday Night Live. It was quite funny and a great reminder of all the talent the show has gone through and spawned.

I tried calling Blue Pay this morning about the PCI fee they assessed us. They couldn't help me. Will try later. Meanwhile, I booked our European plane tickets, RDU to Zurich for June. I added travel insurance while I was at it. They are predicting 1/2" of ice tonight. This isn't good for the trees.
We had a salad with tuna over the top for dinner. I'm trying to get back in the swing of losing weight again after the weekend meals. It's sleeting as we went to bed. I tried recording La Donna Del Lago from Sirius using Mp3MyMp3 to record it but failed. At this point I'm not sure what's wrong.

After the morning shows I went out to deal with the generator. Of course the thing started right up as if there was nothing wrong with the battery. Because of the age of the battery, 5 years this summer, I decided to replace it. Went to Walmart and picked up a new Model 26-3 battery. The store was pretty busy. I had to stand in line twice - once to buy the battery and again to return the core to get my $12.82 back. I also picked up new post bolts and was glad I did since the old bolt on the positive terminal was in pretty bad shape. Put it all back together and ran a test cycle. Now we will have a test cycle every Sunday at around 5PM. I forgot to coat the terminals with Vaseline. I will do that tomorrow. It's incredibly cold outside, I worked on the generator while it was in the 20s. My feet and my fingers were numb. Today my knee feels pretty good. I attribute that to resting in the theater yesterday and keeping it taped the last few days, allowing it to heal. Libbie went to Mardi Gras practice today at the studio although the parade looks doubtful since we're supposed to get an ice or snow storm on Tuesday. We'll just have to see. We had Libbie's homemade pizza tonight.

This morning I looked at the generator since we had not heard it start and run a test cycle lately. I tried to manually initiate a test cycle and it just clicked like the battery was dead. Removed the battery but with it still attached and looked at the water levels. They were fine. The red charging light was on and the green charging light was blinking indicating the charge was between 80 and 100%. Tried another test cycle and surprisingly it started. The battery is 5 years old this year. I will replace it since it doesn't have much life left anyway even though it will start the generator. Put everything back together because the opera starts at 12:30 today.
The theater parking lot was full. This is the premier of 50 shades and they were running 4 screens with this. We were moved down the hall to the smaller screen 15 instead of our normal auditorium 20. This was a first time viewing of Iolanta and Bluebeard for us. Both Operas were surprisingly great. I couldn't believe I enjoyed Bluebeard as much as I did. Soprano Nadja Michael was terrific. Not only did she have a good voice but her physicality was wonderful. She threw herself to the floor, did all kinds of contortions with her body including getting totally nude then standing up and putting a white robe on. The next act her she had on a white slip which was soaking wet and clingy to her ample erect boobs. She has a nice body! The opera did not have a happy ending, she joined Bluebeards other dead wives in the end in the 7th room. After the opera Libbie dashed into JoAnns while i waited in the car. I had my knee all taped up and an Ibuprofen in my wallet just in case. It was fine throughout the day. We stopped by Kroger on the way home and picked up one pound of shrimp. dinner was shrimp, broccoli, salad and shiraz. It was a nice Valentine evening to celebrate.

It was a rough night last night. Lots of knee pain and I couldn't easily fall asleep. I seemed to be wired up, maybe from the diet hot chocolate. I couldn't figure it out. I weighed in at 230 today. Better but still not satisfactory from my weight last year or even last Fall. A long way to go.
I decided to get the tiller out of the shed. this was a major job since it was in the back and required moving the garden cart and the lawn tractor. The tractor battery was dead so I rolled it backwards and Libbie helped me push it uphill back into the shed. I topped off the battery and hooked up the charger. The tiller wouldn't start, even after a trip to Walmart for a spark plug and a trip to Kroger for fresh gas. I did some diagnosis and found there was no spark. This is an old Briggs engine with a points and condenser ignition. I found I could order a magneto with solid state ignition to replace the old points. The official Briggs part is $45 but I found an oem version for $17 on eBay. My knee is killing me today so I wrapped it tightly and took an Ibuprofen before leaving for Esquires at 5:30. We left early since it took 50 minutes to get there last time but it only took 30 tonight. We sat in the parking lot for a little time then went inside at 6:15 and claimed a table for our group in the corner. It was a very fun evening. I did not have any alcohol. dinner was a salad, roll, potatoes, chicken pepperocina and a piece of fish. Desert was a yummy cream cheese cherry tort and a piece of Key Lime pie. This was quite a bit of food compared to what I normally have been having. Libbie and I did quite well with our dancing, even Tango and swing. We got home around 11 PM.

Libbie and I went to the greenhouse with the chain saw and cut down the two sign timbers and brought them home in the trailer. This will be the base for the shed extension laid directly on the ground with a layer of rock salt under them to protect against termites. This went surprisingly well. Before I did this I went to Lowes and purchased some 12 foot 2x6's for the decking and to obtain a plastic red flag to nail onto the portion of the timbers hanging out the back of the trailer. Only about 2 to 3 feet was hanging off the end which was less than I thought. My knee really hurts today so I'm trying to take it easy. Went to Krogers for a 9V battery for the low temp alarm in my office. It peeped all night long letting me know the battery was low. While in Kroger I ran into Janet Covington in the Valentine candy aisle. She stayed in Lautterbrunnen when she was in SWZ only at the end of the valley. She said they walked to the train station to do their journeys around the Alps. Dinner tonight was spaghetti and salad. The salad was normal size but only lettuce and tomato with dressing while the spaghetti was smaller sized with tomato sauce and a sprinkling of cheese.

Libbie and I went to the greenhouse with the chain saw and cut down the two sign timbers and brought them home in the trailer. This will be the base for the shed extension laid directly on the ground with a layer of rock salt under them to protect against termites. This went surprisingly well. Before I did this I went to Lowes and purchased some 12 foot 2x6's for the decking and to obtain a plastic red flag to nail onto the portion of the timbers hanging out the back of the trailer. Only about 2 to 3 feet was hanging off the end which was less than I thought. My knee really hurts today so I'm trying to take it easy. Went to Krogers for a 9V battery for the low temp alarm in my office. It peeped all night long letting me know the battery was low. While in Kroger I ran into Janet Covington in the Valentine candy aisle. She stayed in Lautterbrunnen when she was in SWZ only at the end of the valley. She said they walked to the train station to do their journeys around the Alps. Dinner tonight was spaghetti and salad. The salad was normal size but only lettuce and tomato with dressing while the spaghetti was smaller sized with tomato sauce and a sprinkling of cheese.

This morning I worked on getting the updates ready for the Bluebird site. I needed to change prices on trays and delete the the 5 inch pots plus some misc updates. Messed with Manon to do this stuff then turned on my new server to do a little more configuration. I deposited some checks in the CU this morning as well and then went with Libbie to get gas at Krogers. I was really out and have a few trips to dance scheduled as well as the greenhouse tomorrow to get the timbers for the new shed extension. Robert was sick so Mitzi did a fantastic job in teaching us how to Cha Cha. We learned a few more patterns beyond the basic that we know. Went to Trader Joes then returned home for a dinner of salad with turkey sprinkled over it. This is still part of my eating light program which I think is excellent. Andy did both the Rumba and the Tango class tonight. We learned a lot today. My knee was killing me during the 8 oclock Tango class, i considered stopping part way through but made it to the end. I was really tired.

Went out this morning and purchased all the groceries as well as food for the violet club. It's a cold day after raining overnight. We had a nice meeting about soil recipes. We served turkey and cheese sandwiches with creamy cole slaw buffet style. After the meeting I studied transportation costs in Switzerland vs the various rail passes. I settled on a half fare card and ala carte paying as well as the Bernise Oberland Region card as the most cost effective. Dinner was a salad with a little shredded turkey cold cuts over the top and the leftover cold slaw on the side. I was hungry but resisted all day. I'm really determined to take this excess weight off. My knee bothered me all night. I woke several times with throbbing pain. I wish this would heal. After dinner I listened to Iolantha live as well as Bluebeards castle. I like Iolantha but not Bluebeard s so much. I listened to it all the way through until 11 PM. During this time I researched the Austrian portion of our trip. A taxi from the airport to the hotel looks like the best option for $30 to $40 Euros. An Austrian rail pass is $384. I haven't added up the costs of our journeys yet for the Austrian portion.

Libbie worked like crazy today packing her orders for shipping. It was mostly leaves though. The drive and memory came for the server today so I worked in my office getting that thing running which also included installing Windows 7. I have a long way to go with getting this machine running. I sure hope it has the performance I'm looking for. The price was certainly right. The doctor pushed up my appointment from late June to April 2. This means I have to get busy losing weight since I have a personal goal of weighing less than on my last physical where I was down to 222 with clothes on. The scale said 236 today. Too much good and bad eating. I want to see something around 210 and then eventually 200 pounds by the end of the year. Dinner was just a salad with tuna sprinkled on.

I managed to get all the hotels booked and am now fine tuning our trip with regards to transportation. This is going to be an expensive one. I came up with $3,000 in hotel bills alone. I canceled the Berne portion of the trip and substituted a 3 day trip to the Alps which I'm hoping is going to be pretty nice. Libbie made her fantastic pizza from scratch this evening after going to the studio for Mardi Gras practice. Great job.

I spent the day doing a lot of trip planning learning about rail passes and pricing flight options. I worked outdoors today blowing out the garage and the driveway. I also managed to change the oil, the oil filter as well as the cabin air filter and engine air filters that came from eBay. Dinner was shrimp with squash and the dry zinfindel from Ravenswood.

I did some serious trip planning today including a trip to Barnes and Noble in Cary for guide books about Austria and Switzerland. The trip is is finally coming together. We can't do everything so i limited the trip to Lucerne and Bern in Switzerland and Salzburg and Vienna in Austria. Side trips to the Alps, Glarus and Peter and Christa will round out the trip. Dinner tonight was the last of the chicken Parmesan along with a yummy salad. Out to the studio party at 8 for a nice evening of dancing. We did Brewstersv pub after dance until 11:45.

Did more planning today for Europe. I'm in a quandary with so much ground to cover. Did a Walmart trip for a heating pad which didn't help my knee. I also picked up coffee, cereal and salad dressing. In the PM Libbie made the Chicken Parmesan recipe from Cooking Light. Dinner was a salad with the Chicken parmesan.

I went and did it today. After studying the Opera and ballet choices yesterday I decided this morning to buy the tickets. We now have tickets to the ballet and Opera in Vienna. Now the real planning has to begin. In the afternoon we went to our first lesson since we've been back. Robert was great. We covered some more of the Foxtrot and also learned some amalgamations of grapevine and zigzag pairing it with a twinkle. We also did the open left turning combo with sway. Came home and had a nice salad with tuna then went back to the studio and learned some variations to the rumba as well as new Tango moves with Robert. We have a lot of content to practice.

Did the grocery trip this morning. The first in a while since we've been back from Florida. This afternoon I went to the greenhouse and took down the sign and cross piece. I want to use the 6x6 timbers for the foundation of a shed extension. The uprights seem to be cemented in the ground so I will chainsaw them flush to remove them. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese and sauce.

Finished up the hot tub today and carried 3 boxes of Christmas stuff to the attic. I hope this fixes the water leak on the hot tub. I ended up putting a glue ball valve inline and a straight hose fitting on the end of the pipe. We shall see if this is the problem. Started heating the water at 3:00 PM today.
I went out into the yard and measured a spot for the addition to our shed. By extending the back I can accommodate the lawn tractor and perhaps a few spreaders and misc stuff we don't use much. We ate light tonight with a salad covered with tuna fish. My knee is still hurting me, throbbing actually. I'm not sure what is wrong.

Worked on the hot tub today drained the water and removed the leaking spigot. I hope this was the problem. We also took down our Christmas tree today and put everything away. The silly bowl is on tonight we watched 60 minutes instead and then I listened to Rosenkavalier. Libbie made her yummy pizza from a dough ball she had in the freezer.

I worked on setting up the multimedia PC to record this afternoon's Hoffmann which we will attend. Ran over to Kroger for bread and also Salmon for tonight. Left for the theater at 12 for the 12:55 performance. surprisingly our theater has gotten pretty good at controlling the lighting. The lights went down and up at the appropriate times. We had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Came home and had salmon and broccoli for dinner. No wine since after a month of Florida we're both trying to cut back. I need it!!!

Installed Turbotax on my PC and also made an attempt to fix AVSA with no luck. We still can't delete content. I downloaded an old archive of the site and used Tartool to unpack it successfully. I copied over the old views module but it didn't help. We made the baked beans this afternoon for the party tonight. We left at 7 for the 7:30 party. It was really great to see everyone again, quite a few came over to ask where have we been. We had ham and some delicious side dishes including shrimp salad, squash casserole and other items. Birthday cake rounded out the evening. We brought a bottle of Barefoot Merlot for the evening. It was nice to see the dance team from ECU at the party, the youthful dancing was fun.

Up this morning and discovered the hot tub leaked all over the back porch. Not sure what is wrong. Went to the shed and got the wet vac which Libbie used to remove the water from the floor. It looks like the spigot threaded fitting is leaking. I'll have to dump the water to fix. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese.