I was happy that TER gave me a free 30 days for writing a fake review. It makes entertaining reading until I tire of it. I went under the house and now have the dehumidifier running on the humidistat which is set to 50%. I also propped open the furnace takeoff as recommended by Jason until Cesar can get it replaced. Took a Home Depot trip and bought a crawl space door handle as well as hinges for the garage closet doors. I'll use the old doors for the 3 foot wide closet but will have to buy 2 new 4 foot doors for the garden tool closet.
I have been on a serious weight reduction plan. I clocked in today at 232 which is lower than the 242 after New Orleans but not low enough. Would love to see another 15 pounds go away. Did a quick Kroger run for lettuce plus grapes and chicken for tomorrow's Waldorf Chicken salad. Dinner tonight was Greek chicken salad. It came out very good, same as last night. I was lazy and sliced the half turkey breast cold and put it on the salad. The baguette cubes toasted were once again delicious. I listened to Parsifal all the way through from 6 AM to 10:36 AM on all the Sonos speakers throughout the house.

Pretty happy with the dehumidifier under the house. I hooked it into the AC 3/4 inch drain pipe which allowed me to shorten the hose and remove it from the sump. Talked to Jason about the furnace tap. He will send Cesar out next week to replace the tap since the butterfly doors don't open. In the meantime the dehumidifier took the crawl space down into the high 40s percent humidity. Picked up a few items at Kroger and decided to make Greek chicken salad for dinner. I cooked a chicken breast on the grill using salt and peppercorn seasoning. It was delicious. I had it over lettuce with peppers, feta cheese and other ingredients. I'm beyond thrilled at how good this is. I have half a chicken breast left but will need to get more lettuce. Practiced the Clarinet after dinner.
Next agenda item is the garage door opener. I drilled some holes in an electrical box for the sonar sensor but have to order a relay for door activation since I don't have one.

Up this morning at 4:30. Got dressed and suitcase in the car, we were on the road by 5 AM. Got to PVD at 5:30 with no traffic. Southwest counter in the airport was empty as well as TSA. Saw the huge line at the crappy Dunkin Donuts and walked back to the terminal where I found a Starbucks with no line at all. Bought a medium coffee and went to gate 21 which is at the end of the concourse and waited. It was a very smooth flight to BWI. Picked up an egg McMuffin and coffee and ate it in the food court. Went to gate B02 and took a seat facing the main concourse where I could read my book and watch scantily clad women. It was nice to be back in the South with short shorts and tank tops. I'm really enjoying the Path between the Seas book about finding a path between the two oceans across Central America. Famous travel writers and explorers who have never been to Central America have more say in the path to take for a canal then cold scientific facts. Running the Panama Railroad was the first step since it revealed the vast amount of money available people and companies were willing to pay to cross the continent. The flight from BWI had some pretty rough bumps somewhere in VA then the whole descent into Raleigh was bumpy as we went through many layers of clouds. At the airport I was the only one in the Park N Relax van to the parking lot. I had to buy gas at Sheetz since my gas light was on. We dropped it off last week on empty. I stopped into Best Buy and got a price match on the Frigidaire Dehumidifier. When I got home I was a little disappointed there were no back issue of the WSJ on the driveway. Larry must have taken them. he did move the garbage cans which was a plus. I had to go out to home Depot to get a garden hose for the dehumidifier drain. I have it emptying into the sump which is where I found the first problem, the coupling on the Sump output was spraying water. This thing is not supposed to have more than 5 PSI. It was never meant for pressurized pipes. The humidity is doing a fabulous job in removing moisture. It dropped the humidity 20% in a few hours from 81 to 61. I'll leave it run on continuous for a few days. The next problem I found was the butterfly valve is damaged with caulk which is stopping the valve from opening and thus conditioned air is not going into the crawl space. Dinner and lunch today is the beginning of my reduced eating. I had a plum and some grapes for lunch. Dinner was the freebee Ramen noodles, a bag of Southwest peanuts and a bowl of shredded wheat with milk. I hope this can hold me until morning.

This morning Libbie was still pretty sad from yesterday. We went to Brookdale and Libbie put George's laundry in the washer then we drove to the Kitchenworks restaurant where we had breakfast. I ordered a western omelet which came with toast and coffee. We went back to Brookdale to put the clothes in the dryer then back to our apartment. Met at Brookdale for a Father's Day lunch which was very nice and consisted of wings as an appetizer, Beef Tenderloins with potato for the entree and Boston Creme pie for desert. Present were Sue and Bruce, Mary and John, David, Libbie and George. It was a nice special Father's Day meal. We went over to Barbs a while. The only ones left were Katy as well as Corrie & Shane with all the little ones. We stayed for a while there then back to Brookdale for dinner which was Chili, Corn Bread, tossed tomatoes and strawberry shortcake for desert. This was nice. After dinner we went back to the room and watched PBS which first featured Johnny Mathis then George switched to Lawrence Welk at super high volume. I needed earplugs.

After breakfast in the apartment we went early to the Memorial service for Bill. We got there at 9:30 for the 10:00 service. The tributes by his kids, siblings and friends was emotional, heart wrenching and beautiful. Mary wrote a poem, John talked about what a great friend he was, Libbie read the poem from Arlene's Mass card. After the service we went to Barbs for some sandwiches and drinks. There was a Champagne toast to Bill because he always started each vacation with his kids with a champagne toast. I talked some with Cort and Jacques. They were going back this evening. We had a 5PM dinner with George at the condo. At the table were Holly and Darryl, Steven and Lib and I. I had a salad, marinated pork with potatoes and Blueberry Cobbler. We stayed and chatted a while then took Steven over to his AirBnB which was a beautiful large carriage house. Our place is an apartment in a basement and smells a little musty when we enter it each time but then we get used to it. I won't be back in August if I don't have to.

We left home at 430 AM for our flight to RI today. The Park N Relax lot was pretty full which was surprising but this was just the tip of the iceberg. The line at Southwest went from the ticket counters to the escalators. We stood in line almost 30 minutes to check in. My bag was tagged late check in but it made it to RI. The flight was mostly smooth with a few moments of choppiness. At the Baltimore stop to change planes we picked up coffee and biscuits at mcDonalds in the one hour between flights. Baltimore has a very nice airport. In RI we had a long wait at the Enterprise counter. I think RI has the dumpiest of the airports.
We had lunch with George and Sue and Bruce at Brookdale. I had a turkey, avocado and bacon sandwich with corn chowder soup and chips. It was a lot of food. We went down and saw Barbara and the kids at Barb's house. They made some very nice poster boards for the funeral home.
We went to calling hours at 4 in a steady rain. The line to greet Barbara was long. Bil had many, many friends. We met the Naragansett chorus director, Bill's photo teacher, the Munks from Annapolis as well as Bill's partner Ken Rix and a host of other people. We left shortly before 6 to join Mary and John as well as Sue and Bruce and George in the private dining room at Brookdale for Pizza and beer. It was a nice party. After the party we drove down to Barbs to sit and chat for a while. It was a crazy place with all the grand children running around. We left there in a light rain and back to our apartment. I noticed that our home in Apex received over an inch of rain at 8 PM this evening. The crawl humidity is holding at 79%.

The sonar sensor started acting up on the Open Garage mounted in the garage. I tried taking it apart to replace the sensor but when I mounted the new sensor it went into a restart loop. I don't know what's going on. I may have to abandon this and go for an Adafruit Huzzah. Dinner tonight was the Waldorf Chicken salad again. The Town of Apex inspector came out this afternoon and looked over the job. It passed inspection. I was a little worried about using the upstairs air for makeup combustion air but he passed it. I packed a suitcase tonight to fly to RI in the morning for Bill's funeral.

I went outside this morning to mix up some Malathion to spray aphids that Libbie said we had on the Oleander. I didn't see any. While I was outside Jason from Crawl Space Tech came up the driveway to drop off the building permit sign off card. I spoke with him about the high humidity in the crawl space, 78%. He said the downstairs air is not running enough. I don't think so. Can't see how blowing cold air into the space is going to help anything. Will investigate a dehumidifier. Spent the morning assembling the garage door monitor froom Open Door. I broke the sonar sensor so I soldered in one I got from eBay. It works well. I mounted it on the ceiling and tried it but bricked the thing when I tried to update it with MQTT. Took it down and brought it into my office where I used the online tool to upload a boot loader and then upload the MQTT code.
It correctly sends out door status packets but does not respond to the button command to activate the door. I noticed there is no MQTT subscribe in the code so the callback never gets called.
We had an excellent Tango lesson with Robert. Our routine is quite fancy. He gave us the music and spent most of our lesson doing choreography. On the way home we stopped at Kroger and picked up the ingredients for Waldorf Chicken salad. It was delicious and was today's cooking light recipe.

I struggled with programming the Open Garage Hardware and finally achieved something working but I bricked the thing trying to do an over the air update. I finished painting the shelves this morning, now I'll put them into the garage cabinet for all my plastic tubs. We had hamburgers on buns tonight with Baked Beans, I also picked up 4 ears of pre shucked corn at Kroger. It was pretty good stuff. We had this with half a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon.

I went to Lowes and bought 3 shelf boards for $52. Thy were better quality then I wanted but I don't know where to get less than prime. I cut them up and painted one side with the Blue paint. Dinner tonight was Chinese takeout, the three meat food We had it with a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet.

It was a slow day. I worked on the OLED display pulling MQTT packets from the weather station and displaying them on the display. Dinner was Libbie's delicious pizza, a Sunday night tradition.

Good Clarinet lesson with Justin this morning. I still do not have the 1/8 notes correct. He said I'm making them too short. I need to practice harder. In addition, he had me try some improv on the scale of G. I tried it but did not know all the notes in the scale, i only know them in order.
When I came back I dragged out the power washer and put in fresh gas as well as 35 PSI in the tires. Dragged out all the hoses and got it running on the front walk. Libbie power washed the front porch, the steps, walk, garage door and driveway. The original purpose was to wash the mud from the construction
After lunch we went to Kroger and picked up steak, potatoes, green beans and Ravenwood Zinfindel wine for a nice dinner.

Cesar came this morning to clean up the last of the crawl job. He pointed out a pipe to me that's leaking under the kitchen sink. He also said that the outlet needs to be moved over the sump pump since the cord couldn't reach. The electrical is not a problem for me, the water pipe will be an issue since it's right against the foam. I would love to replace it with CPVC but I'll just put more copper in it's place.
i spent a few hours moving the outlet. I replaced the outlet with a junction box then put a new outlet in over the sump pump. The job was easy, a little long, but physically demanding because of the contortions for my body. i also hooked up a new DHT humidity sensor in the crawl. The old one was really bad. I bench tested it. I put the ESP2866 into a plastic electrical box and put the plastic cover on that I found for sale in Lowes. The crawl humidity is high around 75% but no higher than the outside air. It will be interesting to see what it will be when the outside humidity goes up.
I'm pretty happy with the job. For dinner we decided to get Chinese takeout which is the three meat szechuan along with an eggroll. We picked up a bottle of Mondavi Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon to have with dinner.

The insulation guys came at 9. I opened the downstairs bedroom window and also the front living room and put a fan in the window to draw air through the downstairs. While they sprayed the foam in the crawl space I loaded up my car with a surf board and the misc photo equipment and hauled it all to the dump to get it out of the garage. Next step is to build the garage shelves and patch up the hole in the sheetrock where the foundation vents were added by me. On the way back I stopped at Walmart for soup and cereal. When I got home the job was done and the guys were packing up the hoses and equipment. The house does not have an odor. i took advantage of both cars out of the garage and blew the garage out and then blew off the driveway. We got the funeral arrangements for Bill this morning. Two funerals on June 16 and June 17. I booked an Air BnB and also booked some plane tickets. Still need a rental car.
Dinner was the quick Taco recipe which is ground beef and salsa with green pepper over a bed of lettuce and covered with cheese and taco chips. We had this on the back porch with a bottle of wine. After dinner we released the package of 300 live lady bugs that came in the mail today. There are Lady Bugs everywhere.
The iPad cover also came today. It fits perfectly! I'm pretty happy with it so far. I put it on the iPad and used it to start reading "The Path Between the Seas".

The crawl is done except for the insulation. Cesar came this morning to remove the tool trailer. There may be an issue with the In-Forcer using conditioned air to supply combustion air. Jason said the inspector may not approve this. I told him I will argue with the inspector about this. It's a continued day of sadness around here over Bill's death. Vicki called so we spent some time on the phone with her talking about Bill. We postponed our dance lesson for today since Libbie is not in a mood for upbeat music. Maybe Friday. I bricked up the wall where the foundation Fan was located and instead installed a brick curtain wall with mortar I picked up in home Depot. The job came out pretty good, at least it's all covered instead of just foam to the outdoors. I also cleaned up some of the rocks tossed outside of the crawl. While making a spacer frame for the PVC vent I also cut up the supports for the shelves. Now i need to deal with the two holes in the sheetrock wall in the garage. I'm pretty happy with the progress so far. Dinner tonight was the Pork Torta sandwiches again. The baguette was older this time, i liked the fresher one two days ago. I spent the rest of the evening watching nonsense on YouTube which was a waste.

The work began today promptly at 7. They started shoveling gravel into the wheel barrows and putting down pipes into the trenches dug along the foundation walls. Libbie is pretty sad this morning. She got a text from Mary that Bill is a lot worse than they originally thought. We don't know what any of that means yet but she is pretty down. The gravel trailer is blocking the driveway so we're not going anywhere this morning. I got the account statement for NC Quick Pass. Libbie took Anne on a wild goose chase to the orlando airport last week and had to use the toll road which cost $1.09 twice. This is a discount over the $1.25 charge.
I went out to RE Michel and picked up the Fan capacitor for the outdoor AC upstairs unit. After I installed it I fired the system up and it happily worked . We don't need it though since the outdoor temp is in the 70s.
It's been a down and sad day, neither of us wanted to fix dinner so we went over to Ruckus Pizza near Costco for dinner around 7 PM. The place was surprisingly crowded. Libbie left her cell phone at home intentionally since she didn't want any bad news while we were having dinner. I had the chicken Parmesan with whole wheat penne, Marinara sauce and a Red Oak beer. Around 9:30 while in the Family Room we got the word that Bill had died. What a sad day. This is even sadder than when a parent dies since parents are much older and expected to die first. Bill was 71. I'm thinking that the last I saw him was shortly after Valentines Day when I brought the security bits back from our Apex trip to disassemble his battery charger. We lent him Libbie's charger and said we could look inside his charger to see if there's a fuse.

Cesar arrived at our door at 7:15 AM ready to begin the crawl space work. It was great that they are prompt and ready to begin working. They started by moving their giant tool trailer into place. The guys donned hazmat suits and masks and began pulling insulation down and bagging it into plastic garbage bags. These guys came ready to work. They next began washing mold off the joists. They worked like this all day until 4. In the late morning i disassembled the outside compressor unit for the upstairs air. I pulled the fan motor starting cap and went to RE Michel on Tryon Rd. They were out of stock but ordered it for me. It will be here tomorrow morning. I did some website updating during the afternoon then picked up some groceries at Kroger. For dinner we made a cooking light recipe of Pork Torta sandwiches. They were yummy and consisted of pork cutlets on a baguette with crushed beans and salasa, jack cheese and avocado with slices of tomato.

We got up early and left the hotel by 7 AM. We went next door to the WaWa and got a tank of gas. Next stop was across the street to the McDonald's drive through for coffee and a Bacon Egg and Cheese biscuit. The drive up I-95 was uneventful. We had a bathroom break at the GA visitor's center then got gas up in SC around exit 50 where we filled up at a Marathon and had snack wraps inside at a McDonalds. Our next stop was to top off the tank in Florence at the Pilot at exit 170. Wow was it jam packed. There was no parking space free so i had to leave my car at the pump. We got home around 4:30 PM in time for the rain to start. Lucky!!! Libbie had time to thaw a pizza crust for dinner while i went out to Kroger to pick up milk for our cereal tomorrow. After our dinner of Pizza and a Dos Equus I went upstairs to lay down and instantly fell asleep. I slept and slept and did not wake up until morning.

This morning we had the usual breakfast at McDonalds then went to breakfast across the street. I had a nice chat with Dave Kiesler and Amy about passwords and decided we don't really need a USer ID. The password is good enough and we should make it the AVSA number. People will have that on their magazine label and it won't change. Amy can dump the member list every Thursday afternoon. Candace has volunteered to update the website with the passwords. We then went to the Kurt Jablonski presentation which was excellent. Kurt is a good presenter. We had lunch at Popeyes. I wanted a Shrimp Po and had one with a cup of water. It was great. After that we went to the membership meeting. The banquet stuff started early. We went over shortly after 5 for fruit plates and wine. We sat at table 2 with Janet Reimer, Michael Jackson, two ladies - TN and FL, and the 4 Russians. Janet is going to send me the list she made of all the BIS back to 1946. We said hi to the Nicholas family- Laura, Brian and the two girls as well as Anne's sister and husband who were all there for the installation of Richard as President.

After a McDonalds breakfast we had an easy drive to Epcot where we paid the $20 parking fee and parked in Amaze row 32 which wasn't too far from the entrance. i bought the single day ticket to one park which was $253 with tax. After entering the park we walked right into the Epcot ball which was a very nice ride that showcased the development of man through the ages up to technology and computers. Of course it wa nicely done. We found a kiosk and put in for 3 Fast Passes. We wandered over to the Land and used the first Fast Pass and took the boat ride through the greenhouse. We stopped by the Soarin' desk and bought 2 tickets to the Behind the Seeds tour which began at 10:30, great timing since it was 10:20. Our host, Whitney, was a Disney intern and college horticulture student. We started in a room with Integrated Pest Management. Next stop was the tissue culture lab where we could peer into a window. After that we entered the greenhouse and studied many of the vegetable varieties being grown hydroponically. After the Seeds tour it was time for another Fast Pass into the Pixar experience for a mini 3D film festival. This was incredible. We saw Mickey jump out of the screen and onto a stage and then all kinds of antics. This was highly entertaining. We chose to have lunch at the Seasons restaurant in the Land pavilion. We split a turkey and cheese club sandwich with a bottle of water and Dorito chips. This was $19. Our next step was to cross into the World Showcase where we went to the O Canada 360 movie narrated by Martin Short. This has been updated since last time we saw it. It started getting windy while we enjoyed an English tea garden then listened to a performance of drummers at the Japanese pavilion. I was a little disappointed in the Japanese Garden. I thought they were better the last time I saw them. We picked up 2 craft beers, a light and a dark, and sat and listened to the American Music Machine, a group of 7 talented young singers reviewing American pop songs through the years. Since we were in front of the American pavilion we went inside and listened to an acapella group singing American folk songs in full 1700 costumes. We then attended the American experience movie which was about American history narrated through time with Mark Twain. When we walked outside it was pouring buckets. We made our way to an umbrella and stood there gathering a plan. A wine shop a short distance away was selling ponchos for $10 each, we bought 2. We plodded along through running water on the walks and made our way to the Mexico Pavilion. Surprisingly there was no line so we got on one of the boats and rode through what essentially is a Mexican version of Small World. In the rain we continued to the Mars Mission. What fun. We were teamed with two teenage girls who did it before. I was the pilot and had to deploy the shields and do a few other things. The "cockpit view" was amazing of our journey through meteorites, other satellites and the Mars landing. what fun. Meantime the seat vibrates and pitches and yaws. Next stop was the World of Energy which didn't even look open but it was. There was no one inside. We took the ride through time with Ellen and Bill Nye the Science guy. What fun, it was a little campy and had a smattering of history and science. When we exited we had a call from Mary telling us that Bill had a stroke during surgery. We made it back to our car in some light rain but fortunately the car was in row 32 which is relatively close. I-4 going back was an easy ride and we made it back to the hotel in 15 minutes. We immediately went across the street to Fishbones again. We were seated at a table near Linda Hall and Albert and chatted with them a while. We ordered a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignnon and also had a table side prepared dish of Shrimp Cocktail. Wow, good stuff. For dinner I had the Flounder which was huge and was flash glazed with a sweet sauce, I don't remember the name. We walked back across the street where it started raining again. It was a nice night.

I ordered the laptop disk drive again for my computer from NewEgg. This time I had it sent to Downing Place instead of Sarasota. It's a beautiful day outside, I want to walk somewhere again but walking opportunities are limited. We had breakfast at McDonalds across the street. The food was food, the coffee tasted like hot water.
I had a nice meeting with Amy and David Kiesler about passwords and the AVSA website. It was productive, we decided that login will be the AVSA number only.
At around 2 we went into the Showroom and did our photography of the show. I worked with a new photographer from Las Vegas, David and it was a nice time.
Of course I was incredibly tired. We had a beer and California Flatbread at BJs brewery for lunch. The evening was the banquet, we sat with Sue and Jeri Anderson, Leonard Rei, 2 ladies from Michigan and a lady from jacksonville. Kurt was the best in show winner.
After dinner i went to the Wyndham info desk where they sell Disney tickets. The guy tried to sell us discount tickets that came with a Wyndham vacation club tour. He was pushy and kept lowering the price. His Disney tickets were not the correct price either. We decided to pass and chose to buy our tickets at the ticket booth in Disney world.

Breakfast with Anne and Richard today in the hotel restaurant. The buffet for two with tip was $40. Ouch for breakfast but not bad for what we had. Coffee, eggs, bacon, French toast and juice.
We took a drive to Disney Springs and spent the morning walking around the lake. i don't know how many miles it was but I would guess it was around 3 miles.
When we got back it was almost 1 PM so we went to BJs brewery for lunch. We had a BJs Amber along with a shared California Flatbread which had chicken bacon, avocado on flat bread. Yummy.
We had an uneventful Internet meeting. The todo items for me include making the newsletter archive secure, adding the userid/password system from the office, adding a google custom search to the photo gallery.
For dinner we drove 2 miles to Cuba Libre, a pretty pricey Cuban restaurant. I had the Visit to Havana with a Mojito. The Visit to Havana was a Cuban with salad and black bean soup for $20. It was good. We had to pay $4 for the Parking garage,
When we got back we went to the Opening Night slide show by Nancy Hayes which was boring and did not stay for the growers forum.

We got going today at 7 AM and had an easy drive to AVSA Orlando. We had a McDonalds biscuit and gas stop at Florence then stopped again at Lake Mary for a Wendy's Single and tank of gas. The drive was easy, this was our first time on the new 6 lane I-4 which was nice but we hit a thunderstorm for about 10 minutes. We got to the Wyndham around 4:30 PM which was great timing.
We met up with Anne and Richard and were shocked at how deteriorated Anne was mentally. She has very limited mental abilities. What a shocker. She announced she is giving up the Library and Penny would be the new chair.
We went to diner at the FishBones grill which is a private independent Grill and was a fantastic restaurant. it's a little pricey but so worth it. i had a Tuna steak and also shared a Shrimp cocktail with Libbie. Wow was the shrimp great, the salad was out of this world and I loved the fully loaded baked potato that came with the fish. This was expensive, $126 but was outstanding.

I'm very glad we did not go last Saturday. I got aa number of things cleaned up but unfortunately I could not remember the password for Veracrypt where I stored a few files I need. Bad news. We had the last of the Nathans Hot Dogs for lunch then in order to continue the Memorial Day Grilling tradition we had hamburgers for dinner. We have a mouse so I put some almonds in glue traps around the back foyer. Libbie reported that the upstairs AC was sounding bad. I went outside and found that the fan was not running. i took the cover off the unit but did not get very far. I'm afraid it's the starting capacitor. I'll deal with it when we get back which unfortunately is when the crawl space construction work begins. I packed the rest of my stuff and am now ready to travel in the morning.

We decided not to drive to FL today. I waited for Best Buy to open at 11 this morning and swapped my cable modem for a new one. It was still covered by the extended warranty. This is the 4th modem since I purchased the first one 18 months ago. I hooked up the multimedia PC on the ethernet output of the modem and authenticated the device. This went smoothly but I had a little trouble getting the router hooked up. I noticed it still had the old mac address in the status screen. I killed the power to both the router and the modem for about 5 minutes. I then powered both up and WiFi internet came alive!!!! This whole thing was so frustrating but I'll be prepared next time. I ordered an ethernet cable adapter for my laptop and I will order a second cable modem when we return. Lunch today was the traditional Nathans Hot Dogs for Memorial weekend. Dinner was Libbie's outstanding pizza.