Under overcast skies, sounds of thunder and storms all around us ... we will stay dry for most of the day. There is something about that I-70 corridor as it has thunderstorms and snow storms follow it across the state. It didn't take me long to find out this morning why I stopped using Firefox ... it's a data hog ... I'll discuss it at the end of this post.
As I made coffee I was sure it was going to rain any second and our morning walk might not happen. With my 11pm grocery shopping trip last night I had a new bag of Seattle's Best Coffee and a much needed caffeine boost.
After checking Intellicast radar I could see sever storms to the north and northeast of us but nothing was to the west or southwest of us. It was time for our first walk of the day. With Stella nibbling a little grass before we got started, Sadie and I took off on the path.
I was surprised as I turned to look behind me and didn't see Stella. When I looked to the side and in front of me I didn't see Stella. Holy cow!!!! She was taking a brand new path and was over on the corner of the yard heading in the direction of her favorite woods ... nowhere near Sadie and I.
As I yelled her name she ignored me and kept walking north, parallel to Sadie and I. No doubt she was smelling the scent of one of the field cats.
While calling her name over and over, she sloooowly turns in our direction.
She started trotting toward Sadie at a fairly fast pace but not quite a run. I cannot describe how good I feel when I see her trotting again more than once per day and multiple days in a row.
Although we had assurances of no rain on the radar, the thunder was loud and in the skies up ahead. The colors of the radar of those storms were those deep reds, browns signifying just how serious the thunderstorms were. They were about 20 miles from us.
After reading last night that a favorite lens of a professional photographer was her Nikon 16mm-35mm lens I thought I'd try a few shots today on the walk with the lens set at 35mm. Here is one of them below, power tower and lines included.
Sadie had other plans and started running in the direction of the far right hand corner of the field, but she had a scent to check out first. That area is a deer lounging area.
This next photo is a good example of why it's so hard to put both bloodhounds on a leash that is connected to a splitter. In that situation they would be 6' away from me and walking right next to each other. They each have their own interests when walking and their noses leading them in different directions. No RVing for them. I would never do that here on our walks, only as a test for possible travel.
Sadie had found some fresh protein supplements this morning. Stella trotted to see if Sadie would share any of it. Of course I had to stroll over and tug on Stella's collar to lead her in our direction. Sadie will always come running when I call her name ... Stella is a different story.
Walking by those rolls of hay and smelling the aroma of hay bales (rolls in this case) reminds me of the summers in high school where I had part time jobs of baling hay for the local farmers, then stacking it in the barns. Extremely hot work, good money. You would have to wear a t-shirt to keep from being scratched by the cut hay ... but the smell of cut hay always brings those memories back to me.
When Stella heard thunder becoming louder she thought it might be to her advantage to get home a little faster this morning. She didn't trot all the way but I couldn't keep up with either hound all the way back to the house.
With everything green around here, I thought I'd add a little color to my blog post this morning.
During the walk I also realized that I don't and probably will never have a set time each day where I post to the blog. I am pretty consistent in posting in the middle of the day after editing our morning walk photos ... but I find it too hard at times to wait until the end of the day to post which adds even more photos.
Two blogs per day are sometimes missed by readers, at least statistics show that. They will alway view the latest blog post of the day but not read the previous one. Yet there will be days I'll blog multiple times per day because my schedule is basically this --- "do what I want when I want, no plans".
Now to the Firefox story ....
I opened it up late yesterday and used only 20Mb of data to get it updated. It seemed faster than it use to be. I liked the look of it. Yet it would open websites up a little slower than Safari (instant) or Google Chrome (2 seconds). It was not until this morning when I tried it, that it reminded me EXACTLY why I don't use it.
Since I have limited data per month for my home computer, no choice based on my location ... I always have Activity Monitor open and on my other monitor so I can catch any unexpected data usage that is more than I can handle to stay within my estimate of 665Mb per day to spread 20Gb out per month.
So this morning I did all of my internet reading on Google Chrome, which uses a data saver in the background. After I returned from the walk I opened up Firefox and went to my blog dashboard to edit last nights post and correct some spelling errors.
That was the only website I had open.
Right before clicking the 'update' button on the blog, I glance over at my Activity Monitor and see that Firefox had used 83Mb of data just on my blog edit. While two hours of internet reading, including my blog and looking at stats from the dashboard had used a total of 38Mb !!!
That probably doesn't mean much to you but when you have limited data 45Mb used doing really nothing is a lot. I can buy more data if I go over the 20Gb limit and luckily with HughesNet any of that additional data I buy but do not used is carried over for future use. Exede Satellite service zero'd it out at the end of the billing period.
Even writing this post and uploading photographs to it, I still have not used as much data as Firefox did this morning and that includes my 2 hours of internet reading while on Google Chrome.
The pace of life will not be out of the ordinary today. I have found an old John Grisham novel on the bookshelf ... it's hard to put down ... yet the hounds will get their 3 walks in today.
Heidi has moved from the couch to the floor right next to the register that has that ice cold air conditioned air flowing out of it ... she is a pretty smart basset hound.
Food supply was replenished late last night ... all is good again here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.
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