More strange problems the timer appears to not be working correctly. it is moving far to slow. In fact as best I can estimate it, delay(1000) actually produces a delay of 7.8 seconds. That would seem to indicate the clock is running at 1MHz. do not understand that. I am using an 8MHz crystal resonator and programmed it as 8MHz. Tried programming it as 16MHz and it now takes just under 16 seconds. So clock is definitely running at 1MHz
Perhaps these issues are related, if the clock is messed up perhaps that's somehow messing with serial communication with the lcd screen.