While Libbie borrowed my car I went outside and cut the 12 foot boards into stair stringers. I ended up with 9 steps cut out. I'm 3 treads short since I only purchased 6. These boards were heavy and that concluded my activities for today. I brought them around and tried them out but just placed them there without nails to see how far they extend. We signed up for an Aetna PPO today which was a long process on the phone with the representative. My Clarinet arrived late in the day after I returned from a Lowes trip to get 2 bags of gravel. Dinner tonight was Salmon with broccoli and Mondavi Cabernet.

I bought the 2 2x12s today in Lowes for the stringers. They were heavy and hung out the back of my trunk. I kept them in the garage since we had a little bit of rain during the evening. Libbie made her pizza from scratch, she didn't have any saved dough. We had this with the leftover Yuengling Black and Tan that Joe bought on Thursday.

It was hard getting up this morning. I did a short warmup on the Clarinet at 8:15 then left for my lesson with Justin. He taught me a Pentatonic blues scale which I need to memorize and then improvise.

I had lunch on the back porch with Libbie, it was soup today. After lunch i did some measurements of the side deck height for stairs. It's about 50 to 55 inches high. I went to Lowes and bought a pair of 6 step stringers and 6 stair treads. Unfortunately when I got them home I measured them against the deck and they seem to be 2 or 3 steps short. I will have to purchase some 2x12 planks and make my own stringers this long.
We did a trip to Kroger for dinner fixings and bought a package of steaks on a WooHoo special for half price. They expire tomorrow. Dinner was the NY Strip steak, broccoli, baked white potato with sour cream and a bottle of Rodney Strong.

Up at 5 AM this morning. I set up the coffee the night before then went downstairs at 5 to turn it on. We left at 5:30 for the airport with Joe and Paige. They have a 7:30 AM Delta flight. We parked in the Premier parking which used to be called short term parking. It costs $3 per hour, we stayed less than an hour. We accompanied Joe and Paige to the check in then left them at the TSA entrance. We got home tired but happy with the 2 week visit of Paige. She is a delight but certainly has her own way.
I got a new printer installed in place of my old one which quit. I needed to print the IRA distribution request then carried it to the Scottrade office in Durham. They were helpful. I made some errors in the form and the person at the desk was helpful in the corrections. I need to transfer 17,555 to my individual account. I really don't want to withdraw anything but IRS rules force me to do a withdrawal.
We left for Esquires at 5:50 and had an easy drive to North Ridge Country Club. The band was the Continentals which had 4 Sax players across the front of the orchestra. The buffet dinner was excellent as usual. I had the top round and a piece of the seared Salmon. I really like their salad. We each had a glass of wine with dinner. We sat with Jocelyn and Greg and also Bob and Phyllis. Bob is one run on sentence but his wife Phyllis is pretty nice. She is taking jazz piano lessons which is interesting. She's also a singer and uses the singing to help her piano playing.
We left shortly after the announcements during the break. Others were leaving as well but not because there was anything wrong. We were incredibly tired.

Today I turned the ceiling power off downstairs and hooked up the relay to the ceiling fan and then packaged the Huzzah into another electrical box and tucked them both into the ceiling space. I put the cover on the ceiling cutout and put the fan back together then tested it. Surprisingly the Huzzah is able to attach to WiFi while inside the electrical box in the ceiling. This was my biggest worry. I did all this while Libbie took Paige to the library for another costumed story time and then Crowder Park. Joe arrived at 3 PM after his drive from Clinton, TN. He took the Northern route from Virginia and said it was better. Paige was almost in tears of happiness when she saw her Daddy in our kitchen. We took a walk in the back to the little play area in Seagroves. On the way there we stopped at the pond and fed the turtles some crackers. Joe, Paige and I drove to Smithfield BBQ on Davis to pick up dinner. We picked up a BBQ pack which was 1 pint of BBQ, 1 pint of slaw and 12 hush puppies. We added a pint of potato salad and a pint of beans to the mix. On the way home we stopped at Foodlion and picked up a 12 pack of Yuengling bottles. I only wanted 6 but Joe said he would take some home. The meal was great, it has been a while since we had BBQ.

This morning I used the Adafruit perma proto board for the first time and really liked it. It makes wiring so much easier because rows of pads are tied together. This means each pin of the Huzzah is brought out to multiple pad holes. At first it didn't work when I plugged the relay into the proto board. Eventually I found that the relay input had 4.5 volts floating on it when not attached. The huzzah max is 3.3 volts. I put a 2N2484 NPN on the input with a 1K resistor driving the base from the Huzzah GPIO 15. This did the trick and it all worked perfectly. This is now ready to go into the ceiling. I installed misterhouse on the Node Red Raspberry Pi. I'm going to use this to experiment with voice recognition by Alexa and voice feedback from IBM Watson.
Dinner tonight was Spaghetti with Cheese and 14 Hands Red blend wine which was great.

After breakfast we headed out to the 10:30 AM story hour at the Natural Science Museum in downtown Raleigh. This is really a nice museum. Paige of course had 10 seconds of attention span at each exhibit. We spent the most time playing with the stuffed toys in the Discovery Room. We luckily found metered parking in front of the museum for $1 per hour. After the museum we went to McDonald's in Crossroads. This is a really nice McDonald's with a 2 story play area and it wasn't busy. I had a big Mac. Paige had a Happy Meal with nuggets and Ranch dressing with chocolate milk. After lunch I walked over to Lowes for wire while Libbie watched Paige in the Play area. When I got back I put the ceiling fan back on the ceiling and did all the wiring. This ran me down. The music chair arrived when we got back from the museum. I really like it as a proper chair to practice Clarinet. Dinner tonight was pork chops with rice and squash and a bottle of Mondavi Cabernet. Hoffman was live from the Met tonight. Very nice.

I had an early morning, 8:30 am, dentist appointment. I learned that Dr Paul is going to retire at the end of June. We need to get placed with a new dentist.
We had some of the leftover pizza for lunch then Libbie went to the craft store for paint for Paige and then Kelly Road Park. I stayed home and cut the opening for the timer access panel to the fan. Unfortunately I ran into the joist blocking that I had to chisel out with the oscillating saw and the chisel. This really tired me out. I didn't do much for the rest of the day. It was a cloudy and misty day and then finally later in the evening around 10 PM it started raining. This is our first real rain in 2 months. For dinner tonight Paige had some pasta bowties with tomato sauce that Libbie cooked while I went over to Chipotle Grill and ordered 2 Chipotle Bowls to go with Carni Asada, rice beans, cheese, salsa, Sour cream, corn and peppers and onions.

Up early with Paige this morning. She is quite a handful. We still were able to watch our CBS Sunday morning program. This was a good one with a story on the Cloud. I took the ceiling fan down in the back bedroom. I decided I am going to provide an access hole with a white cover next to the fan. This hopefully won't look too terrible. I can put the timer and power supply up in the ceiling through this hole. We walked back to Seagrove Park and had a delightful walk as well some play time before Paige decided we weren't going back the short way we both wanted to. Melt down time but she settled down after a while. I think it's a phase, sort of like the terrible twos but at three. Libbie made 4 pizza crusts for our guests tonight. Cole and Emily came for dinner to meet Paige. They brought a Wolfpack tee shirt and hair bows for Paige which she modeled for me. I posted the pic on Facebook and Cole forwarded a pic to Joe. Josh commented that it was nice. Cole said best tee shirt ever. Funny. We had a delightful evening with Cole and Emilie. Cole brought Pepperoni and mushrooms as well as some shallots to top the pizzas. They came out pretty good. Paige was delightful throughout the evening. Accompanying the pizza tonight was some Killian Red Beer. Tonight I made the decision to buy the Yamaha intermediate Clarinet YLC255 which lists for $1270 but is listed on Amazon for $589 plus shipping. Bottom line was $597. which I thought was a good price. It's coming from New Hampshire.

I went to my music lesson at 9 this morning. I was using the new 3.0 reed but was still having some trouble. Justin tried my Clarinet with his mouthpiece and determined that it may be time for me to move up to a Yamaha Student Clarinet. He wrote some models down in my music book. I had a little bit of a shock upon waking. Where was no hot water for my morning shower. I tried a little bit of a cold shower but not too much. My most sensitive area for cold is from the waist to my neck. My lower body and my face are not sensitive to cold water. When I came back I worked on the heater. I found an online forum that discussed the 4 flashes that my controller was putting out. Sediment in the tank causes the sensor to cause the controller to go into an over temp lockout state, the fix is to perform a reset protocol using the gas control. I posted the protocol on Google Keep for the future. After I got the heater going again I retrieved the hot tub drain hose and hooked it to the bottom of the heater and flushed it. There was a lot of sediment, rusty water and a gelatin like substance in the tank that I flushed out into the laundry tub. I kept flushing the drain until it ran clear. Libbie raked the driveway with Paige and I picked it up with the cart. Paige got a ride back in the cart after I emptied it. In the afternoon i read the WSJ on the back porch while Paige took a nap. I then took down the fan in the back bedroom. This is going to be an issue trying to fit the Huzzah chip and the relay into the ceiling. I may end up putting a false junction box cover in the ceiling for access to the electronics.
For dinner we had Chinese with Paige. She ate some rice and an egg roll. We had an egg roll, 3 meat Szechuan with rice and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Another busy day with Paige. While Libbie went to story hour I continued working on the timer. I stripped down the interrupt function eliminating a few MQTT status calls. Before reading hour I ran over to Kroger for supplies and the Friday freebie which was Idahoan loaded potato soup. I finally got the Timer functioning correctly. After lunch we went over to Seagrove Park and played on the slides and climbing wall. I actually climbed the tree ladder and then the climbing wall and went down the slide with Paige several times. There are two side by side slides. The 3.0 reeds came today so I fired one up and tried it with my tuning meter. It seems to work a little better than the 2.5 reed. Most of the notes are coming in on the green of the tuning meter.
Dinner tonight was the awful seasoned hamburgers along with baked Honey Chipotle beans and Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon. We were so tired we collapsed in bed at 8:30 PM. Paige is a beautiful little girl but she is a bundle of energy which far exceeds our level of energy

This morning I rewrote the ESP8266 program which was working in order to use the ESPEasy library. After i got it all compiled and loaded it did not work at all! Next step is to strip back all the options on the one that is working so I can get it to do timings better. I have not been having much luck with this thing. Libbie packed a lunch and we went to Pullen Park with Paige. After the playground and walking through the Caboose we had lunch on the bandstand stage then went over to the Carousel. Paige and Libbie rode before we went to the train. While waiting for the train Paige rode the boats which used one of our tickets so I walked to the ticket booth and bought one more ticket. Tickets are only $1 each. We all rode the train around the park which was not very comfortable since Paige decided she wanted to sit on the bench instead of Libbie's lap. She can be stubborn, going through the terrible threes. We drove home in the afternoon after a tiring day at Pullen. Dinner was waldorf chicken salad once again. Libbie spilled her wine which was the last of the 2 buck chuck Shiraz so we opened the bottle of Rodney Strong and had Cabernet Sauvignon with dinner. Clarinet is getting better. I'm doing scales using the tuner and am now managing to stay in the green mostly by putting more pressure on my lower lip. Today's practice session was the best so far. Earlier this week I couldn't play anything after doing the scales with the tuner.

Libbie went with Paige to the library for story time while I redid the timer program with debugging enabled over the serial port. I had to get rid of ESPhelper to do this since I have not been able to get ESPhelper to work with the serial port. I found a few errors in the program this way that I am going to fix. After our lunch of BLT sandwiches we went to Crowder Park for play on the gym equipment and turtle watching from the zigzag bridge. After the park I was really tired but we kept on going. Dinner was hamburgers with butternut Squash and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. My Logitech hub arrived. I can control the TV with Alexa but am having trouble with the DVR. I have yet to get it to come on. During the night we had an issue with the light over Paige's bed. She wanted it on but the 60 Watt bulb gets really hot so we wanted to turn it off. Paige wanted it on. I ended up taking a 60 Watt LED and putting it in this fixture. I need to buy a case of 60 Watt LED bulbs.

We went to the library after a breakfast of pancakes. Paige had a melt down because the animals were not arranged the way she wanted them in the car. We fixed a picnic lunch then drove to the State Fair. We parked at the far end of Carter Finley in the first row. It was a long walk. We got some free hush puppies and Cheer Wine then went to the Kids Barnyard. Paige wanted to have lunch so we found the picnic area and had our sandwiches. She had an American Cheese on white bread with fruit punch juice while we had tuna sandwiches. After lunch we went over to the Sky Ride and bought $15 worth of tickets and rode across the midway. It was a great but expensive way to get back to the entrance and exit the fair. We found a pedicab and got a ride for $10 plus $5 tip back to our car. This was worth it because of having to carry Paige which neither of us could do for a long distance. Dinner was white spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. We had a glass and a half of Shiraz since it was a very long day with Paige. I tried and failed to get the ceiling fan timer working with MQTT. I removed the interrupt without much luck. Next I will try to remove ESPeasy to see if I can make it to work. I'm quickly running out of ideas. Late in the evening we listened to Turandot live from the Met.
I had some interesting eMails with Joe regarding credit card rates. he calculated what the break even would have to be between a free card rewarding 1.5% and our $59 card paying 2%.

It's a rainy day. We tried walking to the park in Seagroves but it started raining on the way there so we turned around at the pond. Joe left around noon before lunch. We had lunch then drove over to Trader Joes for Apples. The weather was misty and cold but we drove over to Crowders Park and enjoyed the Park. This was a huge park with lots of play areas. After the park we came home and stopped at the library for a pile of books. Dinner was Waldorf Chicken salad in Pita pockets. Paige liked the chicken but didn't eat much. We had a glass of wine with dinner.

After the Sunday morning shows I went to work on the ceiling fan timer. Unfortunately I had many problems trying to get the serial port to work for debugging and status. I got MQTT working but not the serial port. In the meantime I put up the Rose Parade poster and the bulletin board in my office in a further effort to continue moving into my office. My Clarinet practice today was awful. I tried running the scales using the tuner and had many shrieks. When I switched to playing a song the shrieks continued. Worse, I couldn;t do the scale that crosses the break. I need to keep trying. We left at 5:45 PM for Joe's 6:20 flight. I chose to park in Premium parking which used to be called short term. It's $3 per hour. We ended up paying $3 after picking up Joe and Paige. It was dark when we got home but Paige seemed to settle right in to playing with Joe's old toys that Libbie dug out of the attic and washed this week. We had Libbie'a outstanding pizza with a Killian Red. She made 3 pizzas which were perfect. I had one beer which wiped me out.

Good lesson with Justin. My homework is to practice with the tuner running scales before I start playing songs. After the lesson I went to Lowes in Apex and picked up a stud sensor because the Stanley quit working. This tool worked well finding studs for me to hange the 2 shelves I bought for the Navajo art. Libbie went with me to get another shelf since I needed 3 instead of 2. I hung the last shelf and then installed the art. It looks great. I spent a lot of time looking for the Android TV box and finally found it in the Jtag container. I hooked it up and got the Sweet Adelines convention competition from Las Vegas streaming on our big TV. We both watched the finals including Sue's Harbor City chorus which ended up placing 6th. The show was enjoyable, next year they will be in St Louis. During the competition we had Chinese Szechuan 3 meat wit eggrolls and 14 Hand Red blend wine for dinner.

The garbage guy took our scrap wood. The can was super heavy but it's all gone now. I ripped all of the CDs Libbie had in a crate in the Plant Room. i finished up the Timer program for the ceiling fan this afternoon. Dinner was spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. We went to dance at 8 and found from Robert he was going to end it at 9 PM. Not sure what's up for that. After dance we went out to McGregor Tavern. Libbie and I shared a plate of fully loaded Nachos which had Jalapenos, chicken, cheese, Olives, etc It wasn't too good. We had this with Red Oak beer.

I continued ripping CDs and working on the timer program throughout the day. In the afternoon I took the saw and chopped up the pile of scrap lumber from the flooring job and the attic stairs. It filled the garbage can to the top. I did a Costco trip today to get blueberries and wine. The blueberries unfortunately were from Argentina. I sampled a pretty good frozen Margerita pizza and a chicken wing. Both were good. I also found 14 hands wine for 7.99 which was $1 less than Trader Joes. While there I went next door to Academy Sports for the first time. Nice store but they didn't carry zip lines. Dinner was Salmon with rice and Shiraz.

I moved more stuff into the office since it's getting more difficult finding stuff in crates and tubs. I have too much junk! I fixed the garage door button finally by taking it apart and putting new wire to the junction by using solder and shrink wrap so a single wire comes out of the wall to the button terminals. i also installed the single button at the side door. The door opener is now reliable. Dinner tonight was the leftover Taco salad which we did not have with wine this time. Water only. What a disappointment.

I made 2 stepping stools for Paige with the scrap stair treads lying in the side yard waiting for a dump trip. I did a Kroger run for the weekly groceries but no dinner plan since we have the ingredients for tonight's dinner. We had taco salad with Shiraz for dinner. After dinner we listened to the Magic Flute live on Sirius XM from the Met. I ripped a pile of 30 CDs today now that the office computer is back online. I'm amazed at how many we have yet to be ripped. I'm barely at 25% of our media library.
Dinner was the Taco salad which we had with a bottle of Shiraz.

This morning I shut down Traviata and moved it to the new office. After many trips I started the Server and everything worked including the printer. Hurrah! I need to build a step stool for Paige so she can use the toilet when she gets here next week. I have some scrap lumber in the side yard that was going to the dump but I'll use some of this first. I took some time off this afternoon and read on the tablet in bed as well as viewed some phub. My favorite girl, Emma Lovett, was topless in her hot tub outside. Very nice. I went back to Staples
and exchanged the small chair mat I bought for the larger variety. While there i went into Trader Joes with Libbie and bought some popcorn that Joe said Paige likes and also picked up some two buck chuck. On the way home we stopped in Kroger and bought the ingredients for Taco Salad which we were going to have tonight until Libbie remembered that tonight is Mr Wonderful at the Pittsboro Roadhouse. We had a very nice time at the Roadhouse. Ken and Anita as well as Ken and Lana joined us for a table of 6. It was fun when we have more friends there at our table. We stayed part way through the second half of Mr Wonderful's performance. Dinner was below Roadhouse standards. The salmon had way too much mayonnaise and the sweet potato fries were very greasy. The dinner was a salmon BLT that we split accompanied by Sweet Potato fries. I had 2 craft beers, a dark porter to accompany the meal.

I disconnected my Desktop computer, Manon 3, and moved it up to the new office. I had to take a scrap of 1x8 and mount it to the side of the table to get the switch off the floor for Ethernet. This worked pretty well. I wanted the floor clear for future passes with the Swiffer cleaning pad. I spent quite a bit of time getting everything hooked up again. When it was all done I fired the thing up and it worked. Yes!
Libbie vacuumed the attic since we didn't want any of the sawdust and crap on the floor to track down the nice newly painted stairs. This allowed me to bring the desk drawers down which I washed before installing in the desk.
I did some diagnosis of the garage door control and think that maybe the wire was broken that hooked to the red terminal. Either that or I broke it removing the panel from the wall.
Dinner tonight was Libbie's great pizza which I put some red pepper on. We had the pizza with water then had Key Lime yoghurt by noosa which was the Kroger freebie. It was great but at 310 calories it's a bit rich.

I had an excellent lesson with Justin. I learned a new note, b flat, then learned emphasis on marked notes. My music is coming along. On the way home from the studio I stopped into Trader Joes and bought Apples then looked at floor mats and file cabinets in staples. Came home to help Libbie sweep the floor then went to Office Max and Lowes. Bought furniture coasters in Lowes then went back to Staples and purchased 2 of the floor mats for the office. Came home and had a nice bowl of tomato soup for lunch then went out in the rain with Libbie to Walmart and bought a table for my computer. After lunch today I also slid the big steel desk into the office and the file drawers. The other drawers are in the attic and because the stairs are painted will have to wait. Instead of moving my computer I spent some time ripping CDs from our audio collection. I did about 30 but still have literally hundreds more to do. I'm amazed that even though our online collection seems huge it barely is 25% of our CD collection. Dinner was a rib eye steak with sweet potato and Rodney Strong Cabernet. After dinner I worked a little more on organizing the CDs I ripped, transferring them to Traviata.

Libbie put another coat of urethane on the stairs then we went to Woody's furniture to look at wooden file cabinets. The one I liked was $329 unfinished. We did find 2 lamps that seemed perfect for the downstairs bedroom so we bought them for $30 each. I put 2 LED light bulbs in the lamps. Now I need to address the fan relay so I can control it via MQTT. I finished spackling all the nail holes then painted them. This concludes the office remodeling work. It's been a long 2 months but is finally done. Dinner was Libbie's Quesadilla with cheese, tomato and salsa on flour tortillas. She never made them before. We went to dance tonight and enjoyed ourselves then went out to BJ's Brewery for flatrbead California Club and 3 Red Oak beers.