Louis called today and said he won't come at all. This was great news because I have a lesson with Robert. I spent some time memorizing the routine then went to meet him at the studio, This was a different lesson but pretty good in that he showed me a few things about how to lead. I need to memorize more of the routine, especially part 3. Tonight I perfected wings!!!! I'm happy with the simple flavor of garlic, pepper, onion and salt. I found that SIP, formerly OSPi, has a plugin to use relays instead of the Open Sprinkler hardware. I started wiring a cable for my 8 relay Chinese board I bought a while back. After blowing up 2 hardware boards I'm going to carefully wire the relays to the Pi. I also got NCID configured correctly. The alias file is case sensitive, I saw the errors in the log which helped me debug the file and get it working.

Louis came today about noon and started caulking the porch. Not sure what he was caulking but he spent the day doing that. He left at 5 and said he had another job somewhere to finish up tomorrow morning. I'm used to this behavior. I need to next focus on the outdoor sprinkler. Both Open Sprinkler boards are shot. Will probably have to order another one but I'll try some more. The roll of black mesh fencing arrived but I'll wait for Libbie before dealing with this large unwieldy roll. I made wings with cumin and ginger this evening for dinner. I'm not happy with the results. Will try a basic recipe tomorrow. The wings were crispy but I'm unsure of the cumin and ginger flavor. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I spent the morning finishing the K-1s for our taxes. I had 4 K-1s from Breitburn to enter. This completed the federal return. Pushed some buttons and did the state return. I also had to enter some credit union numbers and Libbie's Scottrade numbers. When done I electronically filed the federal taxes and then printed the forms to mail to the state. I oculd have done both electronically but they wanted $25 to do this so I chose to use 2 stamps. Marinated my first batch of wings this morning using the baking powder and a seasoned salt and pepper mixture. They came out way too hot to be edible. I like hot food but these had too much cayenne. The crispiness was ideal. Will do again but I will modify the pepper content a little. Dinner was the wings with a batch of homemade slaw.

Libbie left this morning a little after nine. She texted me around 11:30 that she arrived while I was on the phone with Anne. Anne spoke for over an hour talking about her younger brother who passed away. I found out about the education fund for her brother's kids which we will contribute to. Dinner tonight was a hamburger on a bun with a salad. I built the housing for a second LED display I'm building and spackled the nail holes. When the spackle dries I'll sand and paint it black like the first one.

I did a little tax work today. Got so involved I forgot the Saturday Opera was on. Joined it later at 1:30 while we sat on the porch and had lunch. Got ready for Esquires and took some pics of Libbie's new dress and me in my tux in the driveway before we went. Also took pictures at Esquires but it was too dark. We really enjoyed the dance. It wasn't very crowded. I had the fried catfish with a salad and the squash casserole. Very good. We left a little after 10 in a very nice evening of dance.

Louis called this morning. He said it will be tomorrow or next week for the porch. I told him next week would be better. Libbie helped as we shredded the pork which was done at 7 AM after cooking all night. We started at 9 AM and finished by 9:20. We packed it in 2 one gallon bags for the beach and one 1 quart bag for tonight.
We had the pork bbq for dinner with a glass of leftover Rodney Strong and homemade slaw. Dance at the studio was a black light party which was funny. Mary taught me West Coast Swing. Fun!!!! Afterwards we went over to McGregor Tavern where I had a glass of Samm Adams and shared a plate of Quesadilla's with Libbie.

As mentioned yesterday I was woke this morning by the loud howl from the computer. I managed to stop the updates at 47% which stopped the howling. Plugged headphones in and let it finish the updates then found the control to turn off the microphone which stopped the howling. The update took about an hour which I didn't really want but had no choice. Luis didn't show up, maybe tomorrow to paint the porch. We went out at noon looking for night stands and found some at Peterson Consignment after visiting the one in the old Cary News. Returned at 3 and bought the tables in Petersons. Stopped to get 2 blue lamps we saw in the Piece Shop consignment but they were sold. The tables work perfectly next to the bed since it matches the bed frame. I rubbed down the pork shoulder I bought Tuesday and wrapped it in plastic and put it in the refrigerator to steep in the rub spices. For dinner I "cooked the cover" of Cooking Light and made a chicken salad which was spinach with a balsamic strawberry vinaigrette and grilled chicken and strawberries. Half the strawberries were marinated in the balsamic, the other half as is. It was delicious. I found our Beecher Hill House for sale. They installed hardwood floors, rebuilt the kitchen and added a bedroom and a pond. The price is amazingly low at 244K. After enjoying the pictures and listing I put the roast into a pan, made a criss cross pattern in the fat on top, covered it with foil and put it into the oven at 225. It will take 8 hours to cook, I started at 11 PM. No additional liquids were added. It will be done at 7 AM.

I was home alone today so I built the LED display partially, mounting the modules on aluminum rails and also worked on the software to run in the NCID display. This thing is shaping up. Left for dance at 3:15 and met Libbie there. We continued to practice our waltz routine. Dinner was spaghetti with Marinara sauce and cheese. Very good. Afterwards i did some more study of preferred issues and also looked at bonds. I was woke up at 4 AM the next morning by a loud screeching downstairs. I got dressed and took the flashlight outside and looked under the house but didn't see anything. I looked on the porch and also turned power off downstairs but nothing. Eventually i found that the laptop had gone into a feedback cycle while doing an update, the speakers were howling very loudly.

I finished the threshold for the bedroom by drilling it and screwing it down then patching the holes with wood filler. It looks great. I also mounted the remote control on the wall. Dinner was salad and lima beans. I got the NCID running again and also managed to switch the MQTT server over to the same Pi running NCID. It works fine on here and I was able to get a Huzzah talking to it OK. Louis called about the back porch. He will be here either Thursday or Friday depending upon when he finishes his other job. We did quite a bit of practice of our waltz routine today. Libbie won't be home tomorrow thanks to a commitment of taking Lori to the therapist.

I continued working on the taxes and also tried to talk to the MQTT server I put on the YUN. I had no luck doing this. All my sensors will talk to MQTT for display on Openhab and also the LED display. I had to rebuild the NCID caller ID pi because it stopped working after a power failure. This thing needs a battery backup. The Adafruit LED modules arrived for a second display which I will use to debug an MQTT version. I made quite a few purchases on Scottrade investing a lot of money in preferreds. The account is down quite a bit thanks to the MLP meltdown that occurred. Dinner tonight was lima beans and a salad.

I spent a lot of time today looking for the files from our old computer for the tax returns. I need the old Turbo files to make the job easier. Ended up manually starting the tax returns instead of transferring everything over. Wheat a pain. I also spent a lot of time studying investments to make for getting started putting the land money to work. Libbie made her delicious pizza for dinner tonight. I was hungry and it was good.

WE left at 6 am to drive to Richmond for judging at 9. One stop at exit 4 in VA for biscuits and bathroom for Libbie. We arrived around 9 at the arboretum. It was a cold and windy day. The violet show was pretty small. I enjoyed judging designs with Pat Knight and Sue Hoffmann. Afterwards we had a salad and crab soup in the cafe. We then walked the garden in the 46 degree cold windy weather before getting in the car around 2 for the drive back. Had to get gas on State Hwy 64 in NC about 60 miles from home. Once home we took the banana pudding over to the Oyster Roast at the Rumleys. There was quite a large crowd there. The food was yummy. I had lots of Oysters as well as the veggies indoors. The pudding went over well, it was all eaten. We drank a bottle of 3 buck chuck while there that we brought to the party. Left at 8 PM after a nice party. Our clothes smelled like smoke because we stood around the firepit to get warm for a while. It was fun anyway and I didn't mind.

Today i sanded the spackle and Libbie cleaned the floor then painting over the spackle. This concludes rebuilding the downstairs bedroom. Yeah!
For dinner we had tuna sandwiches but with banana pudding desert. We spent the later afternoon making the Paula Dean recipe for banana pudding which includes cream cheese and evaporated milk. It wasn't too bad. We went to dance at 8 and had the usual fun time. We went to Spirits afterward but Paul and Ann couldn;t be there because Atlanta heard noises in the house. She is staying in their place. We went home instead and got to bed relatively early because we have to drive tomorrow morning at 5:30 to judge the Richmond Violet show. I finally got a Pi up and running with NCID. It has been a struggle but I'm there!

Had my physical today. My weigh in was 220 which isn't too bad. My clothes weighed 4.5 pounds which really means I was at 215.5. After this I went on an eating binge but not too badly. Dinner tonight was a tuna sandwich. I spent the afternoon crawling around on the floor spackling the nail holes from the cove moulding installation. I'm happy with the progress.

It's very cold this morning, 30 degrees. We covered the irises last night and uncovered them today. They seemed to make it OK but more freezing weather is coming this weekend. Libbie took her car out to get a flat tire looked at. While the garage was empty I set up to paint the cove mouldings for the bedroom. i laid down the drop cloth and got the saw horses out of the shed and arranged the cove mouldings and also turned the heater on in the garage. Libbie painted the wood. We had a good dance lesson this afternoon, fine tuning some of our steps for the choreography. I was able to load the videos onto the Android tablet to use for learning. i installed NCid again on the Pi thanks to Jack's hints via email. It is setup now but I can't get the Huzzah in the display running correctly. There always seems to be something wrong! Dinner was lobster ravioli with sundried tomatoes we had sampled in Trader Joe's after dance today. Wellness physical tomorrow! I missed my weight goal by about 1.5 pounds. Currently I'm around 216.5 which probably translates to 223 with clothes on. I as going for under 222 which was last year's result.

Libbie's plane was on time this morning. I put the last of the boards down in the downstairs bedroom then left at 9:15 to pick up Libbie from her 9:20 arrival. She left RI at 6 AM this morning. Later in the morning we both went out to the grocery store for the Tuesday groceries then a few hours later after getting some measurements of the baseboard we went to Lowes and picked up 8 sticks of 3/4 inch quarter round and a box of nails. I may not need the nails because I have a brad stapler for the air compressor. For dinner Libbie made chicken Curry which was chicken with green beans and curry. We had this accompanied by a salad.

Up at 5:30 and after my shower and bath routine I went downstairs and checked Libbie in for her 6 AM flight tomorrow morning. I put out a big push on the floor today and finished it except for the last row that needs to be ripped to make 3 inch wide boards instead of 4 inch. There was a power glitch today and the cameras are out as well as the NCiD server - both the Pi and the Huzzah ssem to be reset. On the good news side I managed to get the Mosquitto MQTT server running on the YUN. YUN runs DD-Wrt and there is a version of Mosquitto from the repository to install on the YUN. I did it and got the broker running. I ave not flashed the Huzzah to try it yet. The Huzzah is the MQTT client that failed when I tried to run it against the RSMB server from IBM. Hopefully Mosquitto is more up to date. Dinner tonight was a salad and Lima Beans.

The floor is really going well although slowly. I have mastered click lock flooring and want to do my office this year. Went to change the oil on the Corolla this afternoon and found that the jug I thought I had is short about a quart. I do have 5w30 and debated mixing this with the 0w20 but online forums recommended against this so I went to Walmart and bought a jug of oil. Also picked up some mandarin oranges and bananas. I tried Kelloggs Crave cereal as a sanck. It has double milk chocolate in it and is sinfully good, not great if you're trying to keep the weight off. After my hamburger and salad dinner I decided to do more siding, this time cutting away the closet door jamb bottom and fitting a board in under the jamb. It looks great! Libbie requested a check in for tomorrow morning at 6. I told her I'm up anyway so will do it. I tried getting the IBM RSMB broker for MQTT but it doesn't like the version of the MQTT broker, either the pubsub one or the Adafruit version. I stumbled upon a version of Mosquitto that runs on the yun. This is a good use for the flawed Arduino architecture. It basically runs on DD-Wrt router firmware which is Linux based. Since the YUN has a Linux based image someone created a version of the Mosquitto broker for it. I'll try an install on my YUN.

Today is better. I feel less depressed than yesterday and seem to be alive again! It's sprinkling outside so I can't set the saw up but the great news is I have a clue on the flooring. the first 3 rows I put down look great. The secret is to use the mallet to tap the grooves into place and to not worry about the curl in the first few rows. This will flatten as the floor progresses. Weight was just a hair under 218 this morning. My goal is around 215 on Thursday morning when I visit the doctor. It will be a struggle.
I chose not to go to Butterfly in HD this afternoon. Glad I did since the sound went out on both Sirius and WCPE during the first act. I made a hamburger for dinner once again to have with a salad. It's a good protein meal and provided I don't junk it up with other stuff, it's low calorie.

This is a depressing day. I'm not happy with our stock account balances, they are quite low. In addition, the flooring job is not going well. I pretty much stopped the progress on the floor and ended up with tearing it all up. I wasted probably one or two boxes of flooring in scrapping the job. I'm going to try to do better. Checked into the Frontier account, our new ISP in Florida and they got none of the changes removing the sports and downgrading the service. I'm not happy with them. Dinner was a hamburger on a bun. I also had a bowl of Gnocchi from Trader Joe because I was still hungry. In addition to my crummy day, I found i left the BBQ grill on all day since dinner last night. At least it was clean when I went to use it. What an awful April 1. The weather wasn't so great either. It was warm, windy, rainy and cloudy. Yuck. While I'm miserating over the shitty day one more i can add is my order for 3 size XL shirts came from King Size. Wouldn't you know it, two polo shirts were XL and the other was 2XL. Crap!

Blood work early this morning with a 7:30 appointment. I met Bill over there from our dance friends. Logged onto Verizon this morning and saw I can make all the changes to the account without involving a person on the phone. Will do that tonight. Worked on the floor some more. this isn't going too well - the boards are not clicking together and I have large gaps in some of the boards. What a nightmare. I started reviewing Openhab for my home automation system because it interfaces with everything on the market. Much to learn about the terminology. I finally logged into Scott and retrieved a 1099 form as well as made a funds transfer to checking in order to avoid account non activity which i got an eMail for. Weight is promising at 218 this morning. Dinner was a hamburger on a bun cooked on the grill. i decided i needed some protein even though it was red meat. Changed the Verizon account. Tomorrow it transitions over to Frontier. Wanted the changes logged before the transition.

Wired up the fan today in the downstairs bedroom and got the Moteino working cycling the thing. It's not functioning exactly as planned, the disable timer is not working. The fan still cycles. Need to fix that. I have a new saw blade and a multi cutting tool to cut the door jambs. I'm ready to start the flooring. I watched some YouTube installation videos on click and drop flooring. It looks easy but I know better. Dinner was a salad and a bowl of lima beans. i have blood work tomorrow and proudly i have hardly had any meat this week. Can't wait to see the results.

Left at 6 AM to drop Libbie off for her 7:30 flight. I finished up wiring the fan and think that it works. The timer cycles the fan but the timer off mode doesn't seem to be working. I laid out the padding and taped it down at the seams. It fit fine using up the rolls exactly. I put the starter course down after ripping down the first course making them 3 inches each. The click and lock isn't as easy as it sounds. It's not going well on the first 3 courses. I checked online and found the rest of the floor will weigh down the initial courses so it won't buckle as bad. I'll see how this works. I've been studying OpenHab and interfacing to it through MQTT. I can see my home automation system eventually including the big LED display into an OpenHab environment along with NCIDD. This will be fun. Took a spring drive to Sanford. It's a beautiful usnny day with the spring flowers on many of the trees. Dinner was a salad with Lima beans. I was still hungry so later on I had a bowl of cereal.

We practiced our waltz some more this morning. Libbie touched up the paint job and I changed all the outlets in the bedroom to the new white ones. We had a good lesson with Robert. He worked on fine tuning our steps. After dance we went to Kohls where I dropped Libbie off and went to Home Depot. I picked up the wood for the floor in the Corolla. Eleven boxes just fit into the trunk with the seat down. Libbie helped unload it at home into the back foyer. Dinner was a salad with Julienned ham slices over the top. It was a light dinner night. Weight is around 220 or 221. I need to get to 216 by next week to weigh in and be the same as last year. It's going to be a tough goal to meet.

This is easter Sunday. After the morning CBS Sunday Morning show we started the paint job in the back room. We have a light pink which is called Bermuda Shell. Libbie did the cut in work while I painted with the roller. It took about 1 1/3 gallons of paint which was what I calculated. It looks pretty nice. The push is to get this work completed before the flooring arrives this week. Dinner was Libbie's wonderful pizza. We tried practicing our waltz routine because we have a lesson tomorrow instead of Wednesday. Libbie is going to RI on Wednesday so can't be available.