Spent more of today catching up on the travel blog. it's slow going but I'm determined to finish. We went to the Long Beach Aquarium today which was a lot of fun. Didn't bring lunch so we had the leftover subs from yesterday for lunch. This made me pretty tired. I posted a pic of Libbie reading to Paige as well as some pics from the aquarium. Over 40 people like the pic on Facebook. We bought $48 worth of groceries in Albertsons which gave us a nice chicken dinner grilled which Joe did. It was chicken, black beans and beer for dinner. Appetizer was sausage and some veggies with ranch dressing or hickory BBQ.

Woke up pretty early this morning because we're in Calif but our body is still on East Coast rhythms. I had a bowl of raisin bran crunch for breakfast which was good but I found out afterwards it was laden with sugar, 19 grams compared to shredded wheat which is 0.
Had a nice relaxing day catching up on my travel blog from Europe. In the late afternoon we picked up some subs for a picnic at the library where there was a big band playing Gershwin, Sousa, Bernstein, etc. We sat in the shade with Christa's cousin Pam and her grandchild. Libbie and I split a Turkey, Bacon and Avocodo sub. The sub shop was closing but we got our order in after closing and they filled it. The bill was $31.

After breakfast we loaded the car and drove to the airport parking. All went well, we took the park and ride shuttle and had TSA Pre which should have been easy for check in but my digital SLR tripped up the x-ray person and I had to get a hand inspection which took a while. We had a very nice attractive lady from Cisco between us on the flight. She was going to Las Vegas for a conference. She talked about her her kids, married early and then divorced and married again. She was pretty but Libbie said she talked too much. We had an Einstein bagel with cream cheese at the Denver airport then boarded the flight to Orange County. We scored with the exit row, yes! I started reading the Harper Lee book, Go Set a Watchmen, and am really enjoying it. Strangely I finished Part 1 and started Part 2. The strange part is what is Part 1, Part 2, etc all about? The story doesn't seem to change course or era or shift in any discernible way. Anyway, I'm enjoying it. Joe and Paige picked us up at the airport. We arrived 30 minutes early and then stopped at Cafe Rio on the way home and picked up $40 worth of pork salads which were a tortilla, beans, cheese and lettuce with a salad dressing topping. We had it much later for dinner and it was yummy. Would love to eat more beans and lettuce like this. I was really tired after dinner and laid down eventually passing out sound asleep.

After breakfast I started rubbing the ribs at 8:30 and then into the smoker at 10:30. I'm doing both a rack of baby backs and 7 of the country ribs. I smoked the ribs for 3 hours then wrapped the baby backs and put the country ribs into 2 pans, one with KC Classic sauce and the second with the XXX adults only sauce. The baby backs came out a little drier than I wanted and the country ribs were perfect but not as hot as the first time which was last week. We went over to the studio at 6:45 PM for the 7 PM party. I had to enter the ballroom kitchen wearing my Rib University apron. Unfortunately we did not win the cook off. It was a fun night anyway but we left early after the drawings because we leave in the morning for California.

Smoked some chicken today for dinner. Everything was running behind schedule but it came out OK anyway. I spent a total of 3.5 hours cooking time, 2 hours in smoke and the rest in a pan of sauce. Did not use the hot sauce this time but I will for the studio cooking tomorrow. Robert said he likes hot ribs. After the chicken we went out to Brewsters for ice cream. There were a few customers outside at a table a beautiful Porsche Red Targa convertible in front of the place. It sure looked nice. The pole dancers were live again. I showed them to Libbie. Their Mom was even in the broadcast and said a few words.

Took the cart out this morning and picked up sticks around the front yard and got a few full cart fulls of branches. it's mostly just a cursory pickup getting the biggest and most obvious stuff. We had a good dance lesson with Robert concentrating on parts of our Foxtrot routine and adding a pivot turn to the mix. I discovered an interesting family on YouNow. Three teenage girls and their mom with a fitness pole in their house. It was fun watching the girls and then Mom on the pole. There were lots of comments about that being inappropriate but it's alll in the mind of the viewer. The Mom even explained her girls are not doing anything sexual, it's just fun and good exercise. Libbie made pasta and tuna aka tuna noodle casserole for dinner.

Trimmed the bushes next to the front sidewalk and also down at the beginning of the driveway. Now I want to take the cart around and do a stick pickup but not today. I got all hot and sweaty so I did inside stuff today. I got the new computer, the Dell, compiling for the iPad. This took a bit since certificates needed to be set up. Did a grocery run and wanted Country ribs in Kroger but they didn't have any I could find. Will try Walmart next. Dinner was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on top.

The market opened down 1000 this morning and finished the day down 600. Wow, what a bloodbath. I'm too afraid to look at my accounts to see what happened. I'll leave it alone for a while. I spent a lot of time doing MAAVS stuff today from finding pics for Brenda to loading the new logo onto the website and adding the March Memo to the website, scanned the booklet covers then also uploaded the registration form for the convention. I also made the hotel reservations and filled out the online registration form. For dinner we had the leftover ribs from Saturday night. They are as yummy as ever.

Finished up the roundup in the sprayer by walking around the front yard zapping grapevines and poison ivy. Went to repair the generator thinking it was battery related. It turns out to be the Solenoid which I ordered from Amazon for Tuesday delivery. Spent $11 extra for the expedited shipping. Did some more scanning of the early Tom album, my early years from birth to 6 years old. Some of these I didn't know existed. Dinner was Libbie's good pizza.

Went outside with roundup and did all the weeds along the creek and around the stumps in the back. Earlier in the morning I rubbed down some ribs and left them out soaking up the rub. Put them into the smoker around 11. I did the 3-2-1 cooking which is 3 hours of smoke, 2 hours of wrapped cooking and 1 hour in BBQ sauce. they really came out good. Had them with Shiraz and lima beans. I have mastered ribs!

Spent the day scanning old albums. I'm color correcting as i go and using high resolution scanning. They're really coming out good, seeing detail not easily seen with the naked eye. Good stuff. We had soup for dinner then went dancing. We won a bottle of wine in the drawings then went out to the Cary Pub after dance. It was toga night but we didn't participate although quite a few people did.

I exchanged a few eMails with Joe about smoking meat then got busy scanning a few of Mom's albums and one of Libbies. The scans are coming out well. One album is Joe at 1 year old, the other is my Mother's and is mostly 1977, 1978 which was fun. The wireless Maverick temperature probe arrived today in the mail. It's not bad for the price and easily works into the house. I went to Kroger looking for chicken wings and ended up buying one package of thighs and one package of drumsticks. I used the Dadgum good rub recipe and also bought a bottle of Famous Daves BBQ sauce, XXX rated adults only. I mixed this 2:1 with honey, 2 parts honey to 1 part sauce. The wings were incredibly tender and good although a little too spicy for Libbie. We went out to Brewsters Ice cream next to Kroger after dinner to make up for some of the spice. I spent some time watching people on You Now. Some of these girls are pretty sophisticated.

We had a good dance lesson with Robert. He liked our costume proposal for the Pacman ghosts and a big yellow pacman running around. I tried again with the country style ribs. Picked up another package in Walmart but this time I went light on the rub and finished the ribs in a container of BBQ sauce, the KC Classic BBQ sauce. They came out a lot nicer. We made Lima beans to accompany the meal.

I rubbed down some country ribs from Walmart with the Smoking Gun rub and fired up the smoker for 5 hours. The thing has a meat probe which I plugged into the meat and used it to monitor the meat temperature. The smoker worked smoothly but the meat was way too salty. I was very disappointed. The BBQ sauce though was excellent. Something is very wrong. We had the meat with green beans and a bottle of shiraz which we probably should not have had. Went to the new Brewsters Ice Cream next to Kroger. The owner was outside and gave us some 75 cent off coupons. We went over to Kroger after dinner to get some ribs because Baby backs are on sale for 2.99 a pound then did the ice cream store. The waffles are made in store daily and are quite good. I had Mint chip ice cream.

I did the second application of Miracle Grow outside, this time I concentrated on the Irises and geraniums. In the morning I finally had a chance to work on my blog and finished up the Glarus and Mt Pilatus sections. Now it's to do Lauterbrunnen and then Austria. Much more to do. I really enjoy doing this. Received a call from Anne Nicholas in the evening that the DVD came and everything is OK, this will be the final copy. Dinner was spaghetti wth sauce and cheese. I went shopping today looking at ribs and selected some country ribs in Walmart as an experiment on the smoker. I also rounded out some needed spices by purchasing a few. Walmart pricing on Spices is better than Kroger.

Started wiring the new outlet I mounted on the deck yesterday. I tried to tie it into the existing outlet above the crawl space opening but the outlet screws were rusted and ended up breaking in the box. A quick trip to Home Depot and I had a new box as well as a concrete hammer drill bit for the tool that is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Once I got the new box the wiring went well. I even cleaned up the rats nest of TV cables in the doorway, removing the old ones and tying up the existing ones which are still in use. I finished the job by sealing the hole with hydraulic cement. The smoker plugs into the outlet which now has an in-use outlet cover, allowing the plugged in smoker to withstand weather. Libbie made a delicious pizza for dinner. On my half once again I chopped up some sweet pepper and onions but Libbie didn't cut it exact so I ended up with one slice plain and she got the one with the good stuff which she doesn't care for.

Late in the morning I went outside and started knocking a hole in the foundation for the new outlet on the side deck for the Smoker. I bought an outlet cover that covers an outlet with a plug in use, the cover encloses the plug, wire and outlet. Hopefully the foam gasket around the cover is making an adequate seal against moisture. This went well, now i need to tie the wiring into the house which means powering down the Family Room I think. Cleaned up and rested in the afternoon by scanning some our European receipts and brochures. This stuff has been piling up waiting and now that the AVSA DVD is done it's time to tackle the pile. An email came from Bill Spencer saying that drinks were free tonight. We left at 5:45 and arrived around 6:15 and got drinks and cocktail shrimp. I had a Mai Tai, Libbie had a Margarita then we switched to beer. There were 12 people from CBS there: Gary and Janet, Terry and Harry, Ken and Anita, Nancy and Steve and Anne and Paul. It was a fun evening with a live beach band. The music was OK but mostly a lot of swing and beach music. We were able to squeeze in a few Rumbas and Cha Chas but there was no opportunity for Foxtrot although Nancy and Harry did do a Foxtrot which was strange. We stayed until 10:45 then headed home. It was a fun evening.

The weather station is performing as expected. Very good. Finished assembling the smoker and wheeled it out to the porch. Plugged it into the house and did the sizing run for 3 hours to burn off oil. The last 45 minutes were with the hickory wood which really smoked the back porch so that I had to close the deck door slider shut. Temp control doesn't seem too bad. This will work well for us. I started mounting an electrical box on the rail post of the deck. Next chore is to drill a hole into the brick foundation wall to run the conduit. I ordered a hammer drill to assist with this and a few other holes I have to drill in the greenhouse foundation to run a garden water line and electricity to the fence charger.
After a dinner of salad and tuna we went to the 7:15 group class teaching Annie's Cha Cha. Erica was the teacher. I like her style. She was dressed as Lucille Ball and won the staff costume contest. We sort of learned Annie's Cha Cha but will paractice maybe tomorrow at Shriners and once again at her class next Friday. Ken and Anita didn't come so I was showing Anita a little about how Annie's cha Cha is done although i don't have it down pat.

Carried the new Davis sensor assembly up to the roof this morning. I didn't have any problems with carrying it or mounting it. It seems to be well made although the pole I have it mounted on does not seem very stable. It flexes too much with the weight of the sensor assembly but for now I'm going to leave it. If we were in a location with more wind it may be an issue. Next I compressed the newbie interview which resulted in a file size 10x smaller and added it to DVD Style with a button to select it. Made the image and tried to burn it but discovered my new PC does not have a burner and neither does the server. The small multi media PC I use for MP3 recording does have a burner so I transferred the image to a flash stick and burned a few DVDs for Marjorie, Anne and myself. Sent it all out priority mail but I missed the local mailman so I drove it to the post office. Tried to go to Lowes and buy a smoker but found thery were sold out except for the floor model which had a huge dent in the corner. The nice floor person looked it up on his smartphone and saw that Lowes in Garner had 2 of them. Lib and I used the Prius and went to Garner and picked up the smoker. While there we stopped at a dollar store in the same shopping center and bought a sheriffs badge for my Wyatt Earp costume and a hair band for Libbie's Janis Joplin outfit. Stopped at Smithfield BBQ on the way home and purchased chopped barbecue, slaw and hushpuppies. We ate a few of the very hot hush puppies on the way home, much later in the evening we had the BBQ on buns with slaw and baked beans from the other night. After dinner I went to work assembling the Smoker but didn't finish.

Talked to Anne this morning and we finally have her convinced that the second DVD is not a good idea. She was going to try to recall her article from Ruth at the magazine. Good deal since I didn't want to do the second DVD at this time. We have enough to do already. Continued working on the DVD while Libbie reviewed the resulting video files. We went to dance in the afternoon. I want help with the Foxtrot back turn. Robert was incredibly happy that Libbie told him we wanted to sign up for the Halloween showcase. We spent some time with Mitzi and gave her $750 for 11 lessons. That's on top of the $100 last week for sponsoring the festival. She said we had 5 lessons left on our previous bill. We're going to do Foxtrot for Halloween and so spent quite a bit of time selecting music and practicing Foxtrot routines. Stopped at Trader Joes and then Kroger on the way home. Dinner was spaghetti. I chopped up a sweet pepper and a Jalapeno for my bowl. I used a paper towel to protect my fingers. Richard sent the redo of the audio files which I stayed up late adding to the DVD. Amazingly, MS Movie Maker reduces the camera movie files by a factor 10x. I'm going to add the interview with the newbie to the DVD.
The new Davis weather station arrived late this afternoon. I'm amazed at how huge it is. It also needs assembly which I did before bed. I'll put it up tomorrow morning.

We moved the rest of the furniture out of the bedroom and the family room right after breakfast for the carpet cleaner. He was supposed to come between 11 and 2 but didn't get here until 2:15. We had Hank the owner of Chem Dry. He was very conscientious about getting spots out and did an incredibly good job. I'm happy with how good the carpet looks. It's pretty wet so we have to camp out a while without the furniture. For dinner we went to La Cocina where I had a Yuengling and a Quesadilla La Cocina. It was too much food but I enjoyed it. It was pouring rain when we left the restaurant. This is good since it hasn't rained in a while.

I spent all day on the AVSA DVD. I hate it that in other years when this one was done I was done with the DVD. Now Anne wants a second DVD which will be difficult because the walk through is split up over many sections. We decided to go out tonight to see Mr Wonderful in Pittsboro. We had dinner and beer, I had the fried flounder with slaw. It was fun dancing on a less crowded dance floor. We left early and when we got back we moved a little bit of the furniture for the carpet cleaners tomorrow.

Did the morning shows as usual then discovered I forgot about the squirrel we caught yesterday. He was still alive so I drove him to Kroger and let him go. The rest of the day was spent working on the new introduction section of the DVD. For dinner Libbie made her wonderful pizza and I chopped up an onion and pepper from the garden and dressed my half of it. Wow was it yummy.

I had a hard time getting up today after our dance last night. I worked outdoors and helped Libbie with the Iris transplanting by rototilling all along the fence. We mixed compost into the soil and mixed up pretty good. I will eventually put fence posts in along this garden to more permanently protect from deer. For dinner tonight I went to Kroger and got a pound of shrimp and a pound of green beans which we had with Chateau St Michelle Cabernet that I brought back from Florida.

Organized library pics. Didn't want to exert myself since we were going out tonight for dance. We went to the party and struggled with some of what I thought we knew in the cha cha and foxtrot. Couldn't remember the Tango routines. We had a salad beforehand and then went out to Brewsters and chips with queso and a craft beer.