This may be a long one, so hang on…………………………..

As always, first the chronology:

11/17/19 – Sunday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine. Kathy went to church. I went downstairs and did the blog. Kathy came home from church and we had lunch. Kathy left to go shopping at the mall. I went downstairs and replaced the battery in one of my watches. Then over to Gary’s for the afternoon get together. Home and picked up Kathy and made a run to Lowes and Walmart. Home and dinner. Did chores around the house then downstairs for computer updates and to play radio. Upstairs to bed, Big Bang and sleep.

11/18/19 – Monday – Up early and the usual morning routine. Kathy went up to Mike and Julie’s to pick up Carter. He was home with a fever. I went downstairs and started working on a serial link between Linux and XP for my friend Gary. Upstairs and made myself lunch. Spent most of the day with Carter as Kathy had to go to her Circle meeting. Julie came and pick up Carter and Kathy came home. We had dinner and I went back downstairs to finish the work on my project there. Computer updates. To bed, and sleep.

11/19/19 – Tuesday – Up early and usual morning routine. Kathy went shopping and I went downstairs to play radio. Made some phone calls and did some banking. Kathy came home, helped unload and put away groceries. Had lunch and Kathy went to get her hair done. Did chores around the house and got cleaned up. Kathy came home around 3PM and we went to get our flu shots. Home and dinner. Down to chat with Gary on 2 meters. Upstairs to bed, computer work, Big Bang and sleep.

11/20/19 – Wednesday – Kathy was up early and out to help Julie take Shelby for an allergy test. I slept in. Up and downstairs to play radio and make phone calls. Kathy got home and we had lunch. Worked on the remote system for Gary all afternoon. Kathy napped. Up around 3:30 and cleaned up. Took Kathy out to Applebee’s for dinner. Home and chatted with the guys on 2 meters. Bed, computer updates, research, Big Bang and sleep.

11/21/19 – Thursday – Up early and chores around the house. Cleaned up and out to Dare to Care at lunch time with a stop at the post office. Had a break and went to Julia’s for a late lunch. Finished up at Dare to Care around 4PM. Came home and had dinner. Chatted with the guys on 2 meters. Upstairs to bed, Big Bang and sleep.

11/22/19 – Friday – Up early and started chores around the house. Then started research into streaming TV and calculating how much I would save. Looks like about $70 a month if we go to streaming TV. Started a one week trial. If Kathy likes it we will buy two more fire sticks and cancel our existing TV service over the cable. Then just have phone and internet over cable. Went to Chinese restaurant for dinner. Home and chatted with the guys on 2 meters. Play radio awhile. To bed, TV and sleep.

11/23/19 – Saturday – Up at the usual time. TV box was acting up in the bedroom last night. So I spent the day replacing connectors and coax to no avail. Finally disconnected the TV and that was apparently noising it up. Also smelled something like acetone in my room. Discovered a spray can of 3M adhesive had developed a leak and it was all over the place. A call to my friend Lynn to find out what to use to clean it up. Kathy did most of the work. Played radio awhile after dinner. Then to bed, computer work, Big Bang and sleep.

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Now the specifics:

Did some home improvements this week. I helped Kathy clean bathrooms and she was complaining about the shower head in her bathroom. It was a very cheap shower head that has been here since we bought the house. So we made a trip to Lowes and found one she liked. It has multiple patterns and is on a hose so she can use it to wash her hair as well.

Carter was home sick on Monday. He had a fever so Kathy went over and brought him over to our house. Kathy had her circle group from church in the afternoon so I got to spend time with Carter and taught him how to play Cribbage. He seemed to like it and was excited about it when he got home so I bought him a Cribbage board for Christmas.

I was amazed that I got Kathy to get a flu shot this year. Actually, I’m just kidding myself. Julie told us it was not an option this year as she has seen patients come into the hospital the same age as we are that died from nothing more than the flu. So I guess it wasn’t an option.

Thursday this week was the monthly Dare to Care event at the First Baptist Church in Taylorsville. We went over around lunch time and helped load boxes with non-perishable things. Then took a break a little after 1PM and went out for lunch. Back a little before 2 then started putting out the perishable stuff at 2PM. The doors open at 2:30 so we help take the food boxes out to peoples car. We initially setup about 144 boxes and this week we had to put together and additional 12 to 15 boxes. A busy but satisfying day.

For whatever reason, I was hungry for Bourbon Street Chicken and Shrimp from Applebees’s. We haven’t gone there much since our favorite one closed in Middletown. So we went over to the one in Fern Creek on Wednesday and had a great meal.

Spoke with a few friends this week. Jim’s wife is not doing well. She had the second knee replacement and it certainly is not going as well as the first one. I won’t bore you with the details but we hope she recovers and things start going better for her soon.

Also got a call from Ron, a guy I used to work with. He is from Denver Colorado and bought a winter retreat in Florida. They will be traveling down to Florida the beginning of next month and plan to stop at our house. It will be great seeing him.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working on software for my friend Gary. He wants to remote his HAM radio into the house for the winter months when he can’t get out to his barn to use it. It’s a rather complex process and our friend Mike had it setup for him but was very complicated. I’m trying to simplify things such that he only had to turn things on and it will work. I’m through the control part now, just need to do the audio and I’ll be done. As a result my efforts on the garage controller project took a back burner.

Over a year ago I picked up an Amazon Fire Stick and showed Kathy how you could watch movies and TV over the internet without having cable TV or any other sort of TV service. Well that was just too complicated for her and it died. The beginning of the month while we were working as election officers at the polls, one of the gentleman there commented about how much money he saved by doing exactly the same thing. So, since someone else mentioned it, I guess Kathy decided it was something to look into. So, I spent Friday this week taking a list of channels she liked and compared them against what was available and the cost. We settled on Fobu which was the most expensive but it had everything we usually watch. I called the cable company and got some prices on service for just phone and internet. That would reduce our bill with them by about $150. The cost of the streaming TV with Fubo was only $60. So I figure with taxes and additional costs we are going to save roughly $75 a month. Just need to buy and Amazon Fire Stick for the other 2 TVs but that will be a one time cost of about $60. All in all a good deal from my perspective. Should have done this a year ago.

Saturday was not a good day this week. It started Friday night when I noticed that the TV box in the bedroom was rebooting itself. So, when I got up Saturday I decided to fix it. First was to swap boxes with the one in the living room. The bedroom box still didn’t work. Long story short, I ended up replacing the coax from the wall to the box, the coax from the wall jack to the 0 loss splitter downstairs. Swapped ports on the 0 loss splitter. Nothing fixed the problem. So I decided to get everything away from the box. Unplugged the TV and DVD player and plugged the cable box directly into the wall and it worked. Hooked up the TV and all is well. Still have no idea what really caused the problem.

At the same time, as I made trips to my room downstairs I smelled what I perceived as a strong acetone smell in my room. Started looking around and found an old spray can of 3M high strength adhesive that had started to leak. It was all over my HAM desk I built and some things that were on the floor as well as the floor itself. I did some looking than gave up and called my friend Lynn for suggestions on what to clean it up with. We ended up throwing some things away and was able to wipe the rest up and use warm soapy water to get the rest cleaned up.

Well that’s it folks. Sorry for such a long one this week but a lot of things were happening. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and of course I’ll tell you about our Thanksgiving next week. Perhaps with pictures. Hope all is well with everyone and wish you a great week to come. Bye for now.