Went into the attic this morning to diagnose the blower which is not working on the AC. I swapped the old blower for the new one I installed 5 years ago. It didn't seem to work. Checked the web and found the RE Michel closes at noon on Saturday. It was 11:05. I cleaned up and jumped into the car and drove down Tryon to Garner and got there in about 20 minutes. I picked up 2 caps - one for the old blower and one for the new. While it was out I tested the blower in my shop by hooking up a line cord to the leads. It started immediately. In the middle of the afternoon I went into the attic wearing only jockey shorts and swapped the blower yet again. It was pretty hot and I dripped all over the floor. After about an hour I got it all wired up again and sealed up. The blower worked with the new starting cap! yeah. I took a shower to cool down then lay on the bed while the AC cooled the upstairs which had only gotten up to 82. Inn a while it was cold while I continued laying on the bed nude and reading a book on the iPad. Libbie had a great plan for dinner. I had previously purchased Shiraz at Trader Joes. She suggested we have Chinese takeout. We picked up Szechuan 3 flavor and 2 eggrolls from the Chinese takeout next to Kroger. After dinner I went to bed early with the AC upstairs working nicely, it was pretty comfortable!

I painted all the trim boards with 2 coats of paint then left them be. Got my new PC back on line and decided to look at the interviews Marjorie sent me. The audio is pretty low and not too discernible. Went out to dance tonight for the 8 PM party after having a sausage split in two with corn on the cob, Dance attendance was light this evening. We went out to the Italian restaurant in Waverly place with Paul and Ann after dance. Libbie and I shared a pizza with a beer. When we came home we found that the upstairs AC wouldn't turn on. Uh oh. We slept in an 81 degree room all night long which wasn't too bad.

Nancy came over today to help Libbie. I worked outdoors and installed the missing hinges as well as all the screws in the corners of the doors which serves to hold the underlying frame together. This was a lot of screws and bolts but I finished the job. It is pretty humid outside. I got totally soaked. Now I have to paint all the trim boards. Will leave that until tomorrow in the morning in the shade. Dinner tonight was sausage with peppers and onions and corn. Libbie had gone to the Farmers Market after her afternoon quilting group to get corn and melons.

Went outside and built another shed door but did not have a hinge to install it. Apparently I only bought 2 hinges this week. Need to go back and get more. We resumed our ballroom lessons with a wonderful Tango tuneup with melanie. We showed her all we know and she critiqued us and gave us pointers to improve. It really was a worthwhile class. We had the leftover Pasta and Sausage from yesterday. After dinner I went to Home Depot and got the missing hinges and a bag full of screws to finish the job. Anne called today about the DVD. She also requested a second DVD, this time one with the Mary Corondan Cimera presentation.

Did not feel like doing much today. I had difficulty breathing and was listless all day long. Libbie blamed it on being out last night. I picked up the Tuesday groceries including sausage and ingredients to make the Italian sausage and Penne Pasta with cheese. The credit card closed out yesterday. Our total is over 8,000 and includes all the European trip expenses.

Went to Home Depot today and picked up the siding for the two shed doors. I got particle board and am still debating whether that was a good choice vs compressed board. In order to seal it I painted both sides of the boards as well as the Hardi siding which was installed yesterday. I also purchased new hinges and screws but forgot to get the few screws that need nuts and washers. These are the ones that do not have a 2x4 backer. Possibly I can put some wood behind the hinges in those spots. I did a little more blog work, this time working on Wagner but did not complete it. Libbie started packing plants again today after a month off. She shipped around 100 plants which took all day. We left at 5:45 to go to the Roadhouse in Pittsboro. Tables are available starting at 6:15. We didn't see the parking lot across the street from the Roadhouse and parked down the street in front of an ABC store. Next time we'll know better. We ordered dinner which was pulled pork and slaw for me. Our friend Bill said he is partial to the catfish nuggets so we ordered a plate of those to share. They were incredibly good. The NC Revelers had 18 musicians and a vocalist and were quite good. We danced quite a few foxtrots, a Rumba or two, one swing and 2 waltzes. Ken and Lana also joined us at the Roadhouse. It was a delightful evening. It went on until 9:30 then we had a pleasant drive home. I only had one beer and drank water the rest of the evening.

I put the Hardi siding onto the shed today in two phases. It really ran me down. Now I need to purchase the material for the doors. I had trouble with the printer on my new PC. I'm once again blaming Win 8.1 since it only allows me to have something called a home group and the upstairs PC is using a work group but upstairs is win 7 pro. Libbie made her pizza again. The Bluebird website is getting orders since I put it online yesterday. Dinner was homemade pizza and home made peach pie which Libbie made earlier today.

I changed the front page of Bluebird to reflect the new pages I put up this week. The site is now live. Libbie wants to sell down the violets until they're gone. Work continues on my travel blog but it's a slow process. I managed to get all the old siding off the front side of the shed today. Now I get to reside the building. Of course we had 1 inch of rain after i took the siding off. I read in the WSJ yesterday that the Holly Madison book about the playboy mansion is the surprise best seller of the summer so I found it on a torrent and downloaded it. I also found the USA Today top 20 and added them to Calibre. Calibre nicely tells me which ones it already has and adds the missing ones. I ran over to Kroger today and picked up ribs which we had for dinner along with some small potatoes that Lib picked up in the Farmers Market. We had this with a bottle of Shiraz and I had watermelon for dessert.

Today's task is to get the new Bluebird inventory online as well as several other changes such as removing books and memberships and events from the menu, This is not straightforward and may involve program changes. I set up the old Manon2 computer, moving the monitor, keyboard and mouse over from Manon3 to compile the website using VB6 which doesn't run on Win 7. I may permanently set up the new computer in the back shop using one of the old 19 inch CRT monitors laying around. I want to get started on the shed but held off until the website is finished. I finally got it all figured out and installed a site for review but changed the index page so you have to use new.htm to access it all. We went to the Farmers Market today. Wow was it crowded. We got watermelon, canteloupe, corn and tomatoes. Dinner tonight was the leftover Italian Hot sausage on buns. I took 3 peppers out of the garden and sliced them up with onion and stir fried them on the stove in Olive oil. Buy was this good. Accompanying this was some Farmers Market corn which was not very good. It's still too early for corn, the ears are not fully filled out. We had this with a bottle of Shiraz which came from Trader Joe today on the way home from the Farmers Market.

I hooked up the trailer and picked up the Hardi siding at Lowes. They didn't have the Masonite for the doors but I have enough to get started with the Hardi Boards and the trim boards. I tried installing VB6 on my new Win 7 desktop but it wasn't happy. I couldn't get the compiler to run so I switched to the old Manon2 computer which has Windows XP. The database compiled smoothly. I also tried copying some of the Manon2 files to my flash drive but after copying all day something failed and I got nothing on the drive. I will probably set up Manon2 in the back workshop for use like this. I have an old keyboard and mouse and I could use one of the old monitors laying on the floor back there. It may not have an Internet connection back there. Dinner was leftover sausage and Penne pasta along with a salad. It rained pretty good this evening while we had dinner on the back porch. Total was 1/2 inch this evening.

Carolina Ballroom is closed today so our Wednesday lesson is canceled. I used the time to continue configuring the new laptop. I also started my travel blog which is pretty slow going. Cooking Light sent an email recipe with Italian Sausage and Penne pasta. I purchased the ingredients at Kroger including Pecoreno Romano cheese which is a sheep cheese. We both worked on this in the evening. I purchased Hot Italian sausage with Libbie's OK. This meal was delicious. I only wish we had wine to go along with it. The BBQ grill parts arrived today but I won't be able to work on them because tomorrow I committed to work on the BB website after I pick up some Hardi Board siding.

Last day of the month! Where did June go? Libbie has been working the garden while I spent most of the day configuring my new PC which arrived today. It's a Dell convertible with a 500 Gb hard drive and touch screen. The keyboard is wonderful, I love it. The jury's still out on using this thing as a tablet.
For dinner we had the Zucchini again along with a salad. The Zucchini this time came out pretty good.

Replaced the faucet in our bathroom today. It's been leaking for about 2 months so it was nice to get it done. I'm not thrilled that the drain is plastic but at least it went it pretty easily. They have it all set up for DIY installation - easy as pie. Did a Farmers Market run today and on the way back picked up a cooling rack in Whisk, the Cary Kitchen store. I'm going to roast some Zucchini using a recipe I saw on Facebook today.
This round of Zucchini had an overwhelmingly pepper taste. Need to try again. Our dinner was Farmers Market corn with the Zucchini spears.

It's a gorgeous day today. After the morning shows I went out and weeded along the fence then mowed along the fence and around the creek with the hand mower before switching to the tractor to do both the front and back yards. There is no humidity and the temp is only about 80. Rested up a little then grabbed the blower and did the garage and driveway from the months worth of accumulation of pine cones and pine needles. Dinner was Libbie's wonderful pizza. Copied the trip pics onto an external drive so that I could put them onto Libbie's laptop. It only took 15 minutes to copy 20 gigs onto her machine.

Today was a pretty rainy day. Spent time organizing photos and files and watched the remainder of Sound of Music with Libie. It;s a nice movie and fun to see all the Salzburg stuff that we saw last week in Austria. Dinner was shrimp. cprn and a bottle of Rodney Strong's Cabernet. Good day but very wet. We had around 2 inches of rain.

Still recovering from our trip and a cold or sore throat or something. Worked a little in the garden today but in general didn't do much. Got the tomato and peppers tied up. Weeded a little. Took a nap. I set the fan up under the house to get rid of the musty smell and it seems to be making a difference. Dinner was hamburgers on buns with onion and corn on the cob which was too young to be sold. Only half the ears were any good. We had this with Ravenswood Zinfandel. We watched the first half of the Sound of Music tonight which I copied onto a flash drive. It's in HD and occupies 10 gigabytes.

I used the chrome book a lot last night and this morning because of issues with the Acer laptop. This morning I pulled the Hard Drive and looked at the interface to match it up with 2 older hard drives that I have. Unfortunately, the older drives are IDE and laptop uses a SATA drive which is not compatible. I put it all back together and surprise! The PC problems have gone away. I don't know why. I hope it lasts. I have a sore throat today and am not feeling very well, especially with a stiff neck. I researched laptops a little more and was very impressed with a Dell 11 inch touch which is a tablet and laptop. I found one on Newegg refurbished and ordered it while cashing in the 1300 points I earned with my desktop purchase. Bottom line was $275 which I thought was excellent. I went to Walmart to look at PC's and the Dell touch was what I liked. I tried to buy an oil filter at Walmart but they were out of them so I ordered 2 Toyota oil filters online from eBay. Dinner was a salad with tuna over the top.

Did a lot of waking last night, finally got up pretty early around 5:30 and did my shower and morning routine. My PC has a problem, the screen keeps jumping around. Did a virus scan and uninstalled a number of programs but could find no problem I started researching PC replacements. Ordered 4 tee shirts from King Store and had trouble selecting the Tall size. I accidentally selected big. Had to call and get them to change the order. I couldn't make a paypal payment because the amount window kept jumping around. There is something wrong and it helped me do a complete PC cleanup including virus scan. No trouble found. I'm in trouble! I didn't touch any of the pictures yet since I'm still a little spacey and the PC is broken. Libbie made spaghetti for dinner with tomato sauce and cheese.

Woke this morning at 4 and started getting ready. Went down to the buffet breakfast in the Holiday Inn at 4:30. It was a disappointment. The roll were cold, there was no hot entree' so I had cereal and coffee. Even the fruit was some kind of stuff out of a can. The 5:15 shuttle was on time, we made our way to the British Air check in and sailed smoothly through security. My bag made it without additional screening. British Air served a cold croissant with ham and cheese and pepper ketchup inside. Not great, I didn't finish but the juice was good. Did the Heathrow bus between terminal 5 and 3 and sat next to a lovely girl from Shelby working for the World Health organization in Zimbabwae. Lovely young lady, getting married next week. Lots of screening to get into our gate area for the flight to Raleigh. We had a total of 5 glasses of wine. First meal was cheese ravioli, second round was vanilla ice cream and the final was a mergerita wrap which I liked. The ravioli came with salad, cherry crumb cake, cheese and cracker and a pretzel roll.We got in early at 1:30. We had to wait quite a while to get through customs. Not sure why they are so slow, this is the only International flight into Raleigh. Got home, rested a few hours, then went to Kroger for groceries. We weren't very hungry so had some watermelon and a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. We should stay up until at least 9 or 10 but I was so tired I went to bed at 7 PM. This is considered not a good idea to reset your biological timezone.

We waited until a little after 8 when the buffet started in the hotel. It was a very nice spread. 4 people seemed to be celebrating a birthday with a chocolate cake and 4 candles and glasses of champagne. We noticed this to be a normal occurrence in Europe, champagne for breakfast. Next we walked along the Danube enjoying the river and started seeing some of the cruise vessels passing. We found a stairs in the wall which we climbed to above the road. Up there was another small village with cute streets and buildings and once again, many flower baskets. This is so scenic and beautiful. We found the Domaine Wachau winery as well as some small scenic wineries. I really like this Valley and would like a return visit, possibly to take day trips via bicycle to explore. I noticed eBike rental signs in addition to traditional rentals. It would be fun. We also enjoyed the artwork in our hotel. It's decorated with original watercolors of the surrounding villages and flowers. Nice. Checked out around 10:30 and drove to the Vienna airport which took almost 2 hours. We had one false attempt at finding Hertz in parking garage P4 but were successful on the second attempt. Dropped the car and checked into Niki Air. The stewardesses on this airline are all young and pretty. Today they all had tight jeans on for their uniform. The flight was incredibly smooth into Zurich. We waited a while for the Holiday Inn shuttle which only ran once in this hour, at 16:45. The hotel seems to be brand new. It even uses the room card to activate the room lighting. Fortunately, the outlet was independent so we could go out but the outlet still recharged our devices. We walked next door to Valentinos for dinner and ordered a Margerita pizza and 2 beers, 1/2 liter size. Very nice and it was the perfect amount. We had Swiss chocolate ice cream bars in the hotel lobby when we got back. At first they couldn't find the key to the ice cream case and just as were about to go to the grocery store next door, the manager found a key and sold us 2 ice cream bars. Up in the room we got the Republic Wireless phone onto Wifi where Lib was able to make a phone call to Sue about George's broken leg. He will have surgery today to repair a bone where it plugs into the hip socket. The only concern is his age. Libbie also called her Mom and got Barbara on the phone who was staying there. Eventually she spoke with her Mother to chat for a while. We went to bed at 9 PM because we have to take a 5:15 shuttle to the airport in the morning for a 7 AM flight to London. I lowered the electric blind in our room - this seems to be a Swiss thing, electric blinds.

First day of summer. We had the buffet including the delicious croissants at the Hotel Winkler. The sun is shining on the lake and it's a beautiful morning. We left around 10 and started the drive on the autobahn to the Wachau Valley. We stopped at a McDonalds in Wallersee for coffee. Wow, the cakes and cookies were out of this world for a McDonalds. The autobahn trip to the Wachau was on and off rain but nothing too bad. The automatic wipers on our Renault Captur rental car are pretty amazing. I wonder how they work. The Wachau is truly beautiful. Our hostess at the Hotel Donauhof was charming and friendly. She suggested the Restaurant Heinzle and even called to check on a table. We walked across the street and found a nice table along the river. We each had fish but different kinds. They were delicious. Mine was smoked trout, Libbie had the Sieberling which I think is a Pike/Perch. Later we walked the little town which was lovely. IT started raining on our walk but we were OK. We ducked into a little hotel cafe area which was trellis covered by grape vines on the side of the hill overlooking a vineyard. It was nice. We ordered a Reisling and had our wine in the vineyard. After wine we walked down to the train station in Weissenkirchen where it started raining again. We sat on the bench under cover in the train station and waited for it to let up a little before resuming our walk. This village is wonderful! It's so scenic. Rested in the room a little before going back out for dinner. Our hostess gave us the name of a winery and a wine bar where we could get a traditional cold plate and some wine. We chose the one next door called Haus Mange which was next door. We saw a large tour group get dropped off here earlier. There is a large sweeping lawn to the Danube in front of this place. I originally thought it was a garden. Inside our english speaking waitress helped us with the menu which was in German. I ordered a meat plate and Libbie ordered a cheese plate. We also ordered 2 rolls and ended uo with 2 glasses of wine. My first was a Reisling and the second was a xxxx. My plate had some mustard and a slice of swiss which I combined with the ham on a roll and made a little sandwich. The meat plate was good but it was too much food for a surprisingly small amount of money, about 6 Euros. After dinner we went back and found there is a self serve wine bar which also had Apricot Schnapps which I wanted to try. We went in there and had a single bottle which we split into 2 shot glasses. Wow, powerful stuff. It was good.

We had breakfast at 8 with Christa and Peter. They made us eggs and coffee which I had with croissants and a fresh warm bread. Wow, it was good. It is pouring rain outside. We said our goodbys and then drove to Salzburg in a driving rain that was so loud I couldn't hear the GPS. We ended up at the parking garage in Old Town carved into a mountain. I bought an umbrella at the first gift shop we found, a bright orange one for 3.90 euros. We walked blindly in the rain looking for the info center. We finally found it and got a map and sat down in a coffee shop and had coffee and a Linz while figuring out the maps. It was a nice quiet time. We next headed out down a few narrow alleys, past city hall and across the bridge over the Danube. We found the beautiful Mirabell Gardens. We saw a bride having photos then a few weddings which were going on in the palace. Men in lederhosen and women in Heidi dresses. IT was very pretty. We found another shopping street that was picturesque to wander up so we took a hike. Toured an art gallery that a nice owner invited us in to. Libbie loved the sculpture. On the way down the hill we found a little piza place that we had a mergerita pizz and beer for lunch. It was incredibly good and fairly inexpensive. We made our way back down through throngs of tourists and found Mozart's birth place before making our way back to the car. We had no trouble bailing out the car but it was $20 Euros which was high considering we also had the ticket validated by a restaurant. Total time in Salzburg was probably around 6 hours. I filled up the tank on the way back which cost 34 euros for around 26 liters of gas. When we got back the sun was out again and it was beautiful but an hour later it was pouring rain.
We had a lovely fish dinner at the hotel Winker. This time it was a perch-pike for 2. Included were the salad, carrots and potatoes. We had a bottle of Austrian red with dinner and I had a raspberry parfait for dessert. Libbie had the Apricot crepes. Very nice dinner!

This morning we had a lovely buffet breakfast at the Muhlhof then took a drive into town and walked around the village. Then we went back to the hotel check out. We saw a guy fishing with a fly rod off the dam behind the hotel. He was wearing waders and it was scenic. The road crew started working on the bridge next to the hotel with their loud equipment which spoils the ambiance a little. Up to Peter and Christa's where Libbie went with Christa and Peter went with me. We took the back way to the Winkler hotel in Strandbad Wallersee. There were a lot of scenic little towns we drove through before arriving. It's a little chilly and sprinkling rain. Peter and Christa seem to know everyone here. We had a lovely lunch which included lots of wine and a raw fish appetizer marinated with with a mound of julianed veggies. Excellent. Then we had the fish dinner for 4. The fish were grilled and served from a tray at the table. After lunch we did a small lake walk, got caught up on some journalling and fixed the IP address at dyndns. Apparently there was a big storm in Raleigh. We showed over one inch of rain. I don't have an updater client running so I went to the Panasonic camera which displays the IP address. I manually updated DYNDNS so that I could get to traviata again. I need to install an update client when I get back. The thermostats and the camera work fine, everything based on dyndns does not such as caliber, the sprinklers, blue iris, etc.
We joined Christa and Peter for a 3 hour dinner which was a large Pike for 4. It was fantastic, complete with 2 different deserts. An Austrian knuckle and an apricot filled crepe. I left there totally drunk because we had so much wine but it was a fun evening.

Thurs June 18
WE chose to take the CAT train to the airport. We checked out and skipped breakfast going straight to the Karlsplatsz train station. The issue was my 2 suitcases and Libbie’s big one. They are difficult to manage on escalators, stairs, etc. We took the elevator down to the platform and noticed there was no line at the McDonalds so we each had an Egg McMuffin and coffee. Then it was 2 stops on the U4 line to the station that has the CAT. We had a little trouble with the ticket machine since it was in German but a nice lady helped us. Two tickets were $12 euros each. The train is clean, smooth and fast. We hit the airport in 16 minutes then the fin began. We had miles of walking to the rental cars then even after getting the car paperwork, we had some difficulty finding the parking deck with our car. Eventually we got to a quirky Renault with GPS in the dashboard. It was a standard which was a little challenging at first but we eventually got going onto the autobahn without much trouble. Stopped at a beautiful rest area called Rosenburgers. The food there was laid out in unbelievable displays and looked delicious but I only got a coffee “take away” as the Europeans call it. When exiting the autobahn into the rest area, I forgot we had a manual transmission and needed to downshift. The car started bucking and stalled in the parking lot but it restarts itself which is nice.
The rest of the journey was uneventful and we arrived in Neufelden without trouble. We had to call Peter and Christa since we couldn’t find their house but eventually all was well. There was a bicycle and baby toys laying around so we thought we had the wrong house. They have a condo type house where they own the upstairs. We had a glass of wine then had a nice lunch with them of cheese, fruit and sliced prime rib. It was delicious. We went to the hotel Muhl on the river where I took a nap. They then came down to the hotel and took us on a tour of town and an old church. Beautiful. We learned they were married on Aug 5, 1966 which is 49 years ago. Their 50th will be next summer. They had to get married in a hurry since Peter got a 3 year assignment teaching Math at Michigan State and Christa could only come if they were married. IT was the silly Visa system at work. We had a lovely and elegant meal at the Hotel Mulholf. There were outstanding breads. I had a beef soup for appetizer then the main course was lamb chops with a lot of good veggies, etc. We had many bottles of nice wine with dinner. Luckily we didn't have to drive since we were staying here.

We had the hotel buffet then went to the train station where we missed the 9 am train. Got onto another pair of trains that took us to Melk anyway. We initially were in First Class then got kicked out and went to second class. At the Abbey we walked around the town then walked up to the Abby where we latched onto an English speaking tour. The history of the Abbey was interesting. We learned of a WW2 work camp in town with 10,000 prisoners and an underground factory still in existence. Our guide pointed to a field. After the Abbey walk we sat down to lunch where I had a beer and a vegetable strudel. We had trouble finding the boat and approached it the long way. We got underway and had a loud bunch of teenage boys in front of us so we changed seats. Met a very nice young student who wanted to be a classicist. Wow, is he not in reality. He is studying German and French and currently is in the summer program. It was cold for the short boat ride from Melk to Krems. I'm not sure I would recommend it as something to do. We found the train in Krems after a very very long walk. We met some people from Wales who were lost but we had the map. At the station we bought granola and chocolate then met 2 nice girls who helped with our train and scheduling. One of them was from TN. We got back without any further troubles after getting off a few stations before the Franz Josef terminus so we could pick up the U4 line to Karlsplatz. At Karlsplatz we got a little disoriented and had trouble finding the direction for the hotel but the phone helped us out since it knew where we were. For dinner we found the restaurant Peter and Christa usually visit. I had the spicy shrimp, Libbie had sea bass which was fantastic. We had a nice bottle of recommended white wine. What a nice final night in Vienna. After dinner we went up to the Opera where Rigoletto was already in progress. We found seats and stayed until the end. The sirens, people and traffic was great atmosphere for an outdoor opera viewing of the stuff going on inside the opera. What a night.