Rainy Saturday Morning

With the weather forecast from a few days ago a 100% accurate this morning, I knew when I went to bed last night that the chances for the daily walks today were in jeopardy. I had water coming up over the soles of my boots on Friday when we took two walks through the field. So add a night of rain, signs of flooding in the field across the highway, the Saturday morning walk was postponed.

Stella did go outside in the dark this morning when I let her and Heidi out first thing in the morning. An hour later you could still see her paw prints after she came running to the door from the backyard or field.

So that meant to put some kind of a blog post together I was going to have to dig into my photo archives. With over 60,000 pictures in my Photos Library I figured I could surely find 20 some pictures for a post. Luckily I found two old folders that I had not looked in for a very long time.

They both came over in the transfer from Apple's iPhoto to Apple's Photos programs after they changed their formats for storing and editing pictures a few years ago. One folder was called "From MobileMe" and the other was "iPhoto Events". I found pictures all the way back to 2001.

The picture above is from June 2006. It looks like I had a much better lawn, with thick grass and the field was mostly filled with grass/hay instead of wild weeds.

As you can see the field has not changed that much in 20 years. If you look straight ahead you will see an additional Sycamore tree to the right of the larger Sycamore tree. In June 2008, "straight line" winds pulled the Sycamore tree on the right side, out of the ground like a weed ... falling through my fence and across my yard, parallel to the house, measuring over 100' tall.

The house was light gray with white trim with a crimson color front door. Hard to believe that 20 years have passed that fast. I don't know how that small caption in black letters in the upper left corner got there nor how to take it off.  LOL

I bought Max from GABR in 1998 or 1999, can't remember. He weighed 83 lbs when I got him and couldn't walk 30' to the field without sitting down to take a break. It did not take him long to find the "dog chair" and claim that as his favorite sleeping spot.

By taking away his daily portion of cottage cheese on top of Pedigree dog food (previous owners), then changing him to high grade kibble, along with the daily afternoon walk when I returned home from work ... he dropped 21 pounds and lived 12 years.

That stain on his tail is a burn stain. He was sleeping so close to the baseboard electric heater one winter day that he was burning his tail. He ever noticed it and I was able to rescue him after I was smelling a strong scent of burnt hair in the house. He growled at me when I tried to move him ... he never liked being woken up from a nap.  He did not realize his tail was burning!!! LOL

Bertha was my second bloodhound and was a very big girl. Back then I was probably feeding them the measured amount that was on the dog food package without adjusting the portion size. Or ... she might have just been a big girl. She was a great house dog and I can't remember her ever destroying anything as a puppy. I've looked through the few pictures I had of her at a young age and none of them show any kind of damage.

She looked a lot like Sadie and both were so similar in personality once Sadie was older. Yes, that is the back of the same field where Stella explores every morning.

In November 2002 Bertha was not real happy with me. I had been gone all day after an 8 hour round trip drive to pick up a new basset hound puppy. She sat there mad or maybe sad that another puppy had butted into her world. Thinking back to November 2002, Bertha and Max were the only two hounds I had at the time.

But how could I pass up not buying Arthur? He was Winston's "Uncle" born two years before Winston. They had the same exact mannerisms, personality except Arthur would wander off more than Winston ever did.

This gives you some idea just how small a basset hound puppy is at 8 weeks old, compared to that bone. Needless to say, Arthur arrived and took over the house. He drank out of Bertha's water bowl at the same time she did ... and would slide his mouth in to steal Bertha's kibble while she ate. He was extremely funny and a little cocky.

Bertha might have looked mad that fall day in November, but within the hour after Arthur arrived she decided that maybe the new puppy wasn't that bad after all. Max rarely played with her so I think Bertha was happy she had someone to be with.

Arthur loved to play with the big bloodhound ... they ran many laps around the living room coffee table and out to this area when they played. Bertha never used her full strength when wrestling with Arthur. She'd let Arthur bite and chew on her ears, and climb all over her.

After playing a lot, that led to a lot of sleeping until the next round.

Even as Arthur grew older and bigger, Bertha liked him even more.

On occasion Arthur would have to be the 'petsitter' to my niece's mini dachshund. I remember the day we went to pick up Kila as a 8 week old puppy, she wasn't much bigger than my hand.

In 2011 Heidi arrived on scene. That is her up in front and of course on a retractable leash because I was told by the foster mom she was a 'runner' that had to be on a leash at all times. Sadie was 3 years old and after her escape chasing deer the previous December, she was still being leashed on the daily walk, with a 25' retractable leash.

Winston never needed to be leashed even at 8 weeks old. He was just as laid back as a puppy as he was at 12 years old. He and Arthur had the same mother

Again the field was so much different from now. Different owners, although both were/are neighbors. In the first 10-12 years I lived here they would spread fertilizer on the field from the turkey farm you see in the pictures of the AT&T tower. The first time I came home from work, with every window in the house open ... to smell what was all over the field ... told me I had moved to a farming community.

So much different from living on Carlsbad Blvd, Carlsbad California across the street from the Pacific Ocean 20 years earlier.  :)

In June 2011 I was on a basset hound rescue webpage when I saw this picture of Heidi. She was named Lucy at the time. She ended up in rescue because she had been in and out of her local shelter many times, always running away from her home. I emailed them immediately and filled out the form for adoption.

Like I said before, they told me she had to be on a leash at all times, so even when she was in the backyard with Sadie and Winston, I'd have her tethered. Yet, she never showed any signs of running away from the yard nor on our walks. My basset hound Sadie out in Oak Harbor Washington was a 'true runner' and Heidi was showing no similar signs.

I still kept her on a leash the first week she was here. Then I tested her without a tether in the backyard and when we took walks. I had a leash in my hand just in case but not connected to her collar. She would walk next to Winston most of the time on the daily walks. 8+ years later, she has never been leashed since her first week here.

In the summer of 2013 I had plans to sell everything I owned, including the house, buy a Class A or Class C RV and travel with Winston, Sadie and Heidi. I cannot tell you how many times I pulled that sign out of the yard then put it back up a few days later. I would not retire until the next year.

People at work that drove by the house every day to and from work, use to joke with me asking me if I was trying a new method of selling the house. It would be up in the morning when they went to work and not there when they drove home.

I know the future is always hard to predict but based on the trip in June 2015 to Colorado and Utah with those same three hounds ... with their reaction after returning home after a week on the road ... selling this house would have been the worst decision I have ever made.

Sometime around 2002 I got back into the VW Bus scene. I found a website called The Samba that listed every model and every year of VW ever made. I was strictly into VW Buses older than 1967 ... with the year 1967 being the last year they had a 'split window' in the front.

This is a 1965 Standard bus that I bought in Wisconsin and drove it back home without any mechanical problems. It would end up being one of four VW's I would own within the next five years. Every parking space up here on 'the hill' was taken.

This picture was taken on Hwy 6 in Utah as I was heading to connect Hwy 50 in Colorado. I had just bought a 1963 VW Cargo Van in Salt Lake City, UT and was meeting a friend from Alamogordo that had bought my first 1967 VW Bus in 2002 ... I blew the engine on the bus that Dennis bought, on I-25 a few miles north of Truth or Consequences NM.

I've always loved driving through the western states with open skies and beautiful scenery. I've lived in Southern California and Whidbey Island Washington, so I've covered about every state out there making trips back to Indiana to visit family or when I moved back here in December 1994.

Photos always seem to bring back some great memories don't they?

I see where Al over at TheBayfieldBunch has been one of the first I have seen or heard about, that has been hit with the latest Google closures. For years Google has been saying they were going to close certain programs they had developed. Sometimes it would happen but then as if they were teasing us, they would supply an update and keep the programs they were going to close ... open.

I guess this time, they are serious and are doing just what they scheduled. It is not the reason I moved my main blog (not moved but started blogging) to WordPress this past December. Yet, I am glad I don't have my blog based on what Google does. Yes ... my old blog of 7 years is still there and will remain there because I don't think Google will every get rid of Blogger. There are millions of people who use Blogger for personal and business websites.

Besides ... Blogger is one form of income to Google. Advertising.

Whereas .... Live Writer and their Picasa Photo editing is expendable not only because there are options to use to replace those two programs, but Google doesn't make any money on Live Writer or Picasa. It COSTS THEM MONEY to run. Just like Google + which will be gone in a couple of months.

I hope Al finds usable options to do the same things that he is use to using putting his blog together and editing his great photos.

I consider myself to be fairly computer literate but I also found it to be quite an adjustment after moving to WordPress even though in 2005 I had over 100 one page WordPress blogs used as product pages for affiliate ecommerce.

Even when I changed from a Windows PC to an Apple Mac in October 2008 ... it took me a little over two weeks to understand the different language and processes where I could work with the Apple iMac. I love Apple products and will never go back to a PC or Microsoft program.

For those that don't know, with the Apple Photos program that comes free with every Apple device ... you can edit photos in that program with as much detail as Lightroom and other photo editors.

THERE WAS AN ADJUSTMENT AND A STEEP LEARNING CURVE MAKING THOSE CHANGES ... even for someone who is computer literate enough to be dangerous.  :)

Good Luck Al ...

Not much planned today except a basketball game at 2pm that I want to watch. It's already 10:27am and Heidi has still not woken up from her morning nap. Stella has figured out the walks are canceled for today. She does NOT know that all this rain is turning to snow after midnight.

I'll try to get some updated pictures this afternoon to post tonight. I moved the Favorite List and Archives back to the footer of the home page. Scroll to the bottom to see them.

It might be raining but at least it is warm this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

In The Middle Of The Night

4:10am ???

My eyes are wide open in a room filled with darkness and two sleeping hounds. There isn't a sound anywhere. No wind, no rain, no trucks on the highway, nothing. I can remember something about a dream but nothing of what it was about. I tap my watch face and can't believe the time of day.

I'm wide awake.

I give it my best shot to get back to sleep but I know within seconds, it's not going to happen. No, I didn't go to bed at 7pm nor 8pm, not even 9pm but here it is now 4:25am and I am flipping on the light and changing clothes. I'm wide awake and well rested! Within the 15 minutes I spent trying to get back to sleep, Heidi had woke up and did her normal full body shake with the sound of her ears flapping. It happens every morning, no matter what time it is. Stella for once was not moving, not awake and she is usually the first one of three of us to wake up. Obviously in a deep dream state as her paws were moving in a high-speed run through the field.

What am I going to do at 4:30am?


Same thing as always. Hounds out, kibble poured, they eat, I make coffee, they go back to sleep in the bedroom, I am on my computer reading.

Flipboard is a free app where you can choose what categories of news or articles you want to read. I do not have any categories that deal with news ... sports news, yes ... not news. A lot of these articles are what I call "off stream media" ... Flipboard does all the hard work it would take me to find these articles.

The only other option would be, signing up for a newsletter from a hundred different magazine, blogs, sports sites, dog sites, camping sites, technology, gadgets ... you get the picture.

All my reading was finished by 6am. I was a little surprised how active the highway is at 5am with people going to work 12 miles away or catching the Interstate and heading to work 30 miles away. I remember there were times 13 years ago where I would be one of them. I'd be at my desk by 6am, getting more work done between 6am - 8am, then I would between 8am - 5pm.

Winston was just a puppy then and Sadie had not been born yet. Bertha was the bloodhound of the house at that time. On Friday's they could go to work with me and meet the other dogs from 20 different co-workers. All but a few had dogs for pets. Or, I'd make a trip home for lunch and let them out mid-day. They probably spent more time alone than with me ... but they were inseparable.

So sitting here a little after 6am, I asked myself, what am I going to do now?

I could and am writing this blog post, at least up to this point but that presents problems. I now have to insert one picture at a time between the paragraphs that I choose. It is much faster to post all the pictures first and then type content between them. Really it's faster than what I will be doing today.

Another reason I started this early ... it's been raining lightly the past hour. It's strange that the Intellicast Radar shows the whole southern part of the state free of any rain, snow or clouds. So maybe our walk at 8am will not be postponed after all.

What am I going to blog about? It's only 6:33am and I have nothing to do.

What I ended up doing was scan some pictures of a basset hound I had in the past. I will be blogging about her and it will be the post this evening. Maggie was a lot like Heidi or I guess I could say that Heidi is a lot like Maggie was 17+ years ago.

The radar was clear, but there were signs it had rained sometime. I could tell that by the landscaping blocks in front of the carport. Stella and I decided we would at least start the walk and see how wet it was. I am going to pull those four stepping stones up and have the landscaping business bring me a large rock to place there. It's a place where the rain has aways dripped from an overflowing gutter or collected heavy rain. That rock will help keeping the ground a little more stable.

These boots are too good to being labeled snow boots. I wear them as rain boots or muddy field boots too. They are very lightweight, comfortable and fit much nicer with a slightly thinner pair of wool socks.

Stella was back into exploring on her own, at her pace. It was wet and cold but no wind, so it wasn't that bad. I did not catch her eating any deer scat and most of her 'nose to the ground' work was collecting scent data. Instead of following her this morning I decided I'd let her go while I stayed on the path and hopefully we would meet at the point where I would turn and head for home. She was close as she walked just a few feet in front of me, not quite to the final turn.

As you see, she was back in the brush. A place that still has sharp thorns, and enough wild growth that she can get tangled up trying to get back out into the field. Being strong, she just marches through any thick thorny brush.

We are mentally preparing for this Sunday's single digit temps. Not 'we' really ... 'I'is more like it. Where last year we went for over 30+ days straight not having a high temperature more than freezing at 32°, this year almost all of our high temps have been 38° and higher. This is almost exactly the same kind of winter we were having in January 2016.

There she goes ... let's see if she and I can meet up after taking two different paths with no verbal herding.

She is there ... can you see her?

She thought she was headed for the fence line, the path the deer take, but I told her I was going home so she stopped, stared at me and then turned left to follow me on the path homeward.

A foggy day for that AT&T tower.

The walk always seems slower than the last, as she spends more time exploring but by the time I turn off the Activity App, total time is always within two minutes each day.

With me already having a post put together for publishing tonight, I'll be out doing some shopping today. The last of the coffee was used this morning so that dictates a grocery store run no matter what I want to do. I have added the 'new' way to shop to my Any List app so I'll not forget coffee or the water filter. If I did not have a grocery list on my phone, I wouldn't remember half the food I need to buy. With both hounds sleeping until lunch, it's the perfect time to sneak away. I'll be back in time before Stella could go nuts wanting lunch and attempt another breakout.

There may be a government shutdown going on but I received both of my government sourced funds this month electronically and an email notice that my Federal Tax Return was received by the IRS. It's interesting how they pick and choose what will be closed. When I worked for the government they use to keep 'essential personnel' working even when a department was shut down like this. It sounds like Trump is not giving in and the 'tag team' of Chuck and Nancy aren't either. They must have deepened their tan in Puerto Rico last week with all the other Democrats that decided to leave DC instead of work. Can government personnel file for unemployment? Honestly I don't know.

Well I am out of words ... scrambled thoughts ... and I've lost my train of thought ... that happens when I have things to do I guess.

It's cold, wet, foggy and quiet this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.