Thanks,
I will take this code home and chew on it a while . . . . I am not manipulating data in an lcd, rather I am using it to control hardware.something like so:

x var byte

main:
if porta.0 !=0 then
pause50
DoSomthing
else
endif
goto main


DoSomething:
for x = 50 to 0 step - 1
goto encoder
portB.5 low
next x
return

encoder:
Portb.5 high ' to power up encoder
some code here to count encoder subtracting code from var X
return