Over Exposed?

Heidi could hear me, she could hear the click of the camera but didn't see me as I leaned and put the camera directly over her head as she laid in her chair. She has been the smartest of us all today. No sense in trying to make a slow afternoon faster when you can just kick back and enjoy what's there. No tv, no music, no sounds around .. just pure quietness.

I couldn't tell if it was raining again in the early afternoon. Stella was still sleeping after her lunchtime kibble. So was Heidi and I was nodding out at times. You can only play so many games of Mahjong in a day. Sometimes reading a book is like work, not enjoyable. I had no idea where to go, even if I were to take a drive. So I did what Heidi was doing ... I just sat back, relaxed and listened.

Either the water is rising underground or it has rained a little since our walk this morning. One step into the field felt like it was muddier than this morning. The wet leaves make it slick like snow but I was still paying attention and making sure that Stella didn't go near the land of burrs.

The afternoon pace is slow, one paw at a time. I was way out in front by the time she started moving my direction. By the way she looked I wasn't sure that she wanted to make this walk.

That tree limb fell in high winds in February 2009. With the windows closed and the tv tuned to an IU basketball game I could still hear it cracking as it fell. The next morning utility trucks all over the highway a few houses down.

I found out there was a tornado that has passed through that night. Near my house a utility pole had been snapped in half like a toothpick ... but the ballgame went on. I was totally unaware of what was going on outside.

It has been a long time since she went to the far corner of the field. I found out she went there for one reason and one reason only ... a lot of verbal herding took place and a small lecture as we returned to the path. 

Whatever it was, it was so good she stopped a few times to look back in that direction.

Now it was the sound of a very small dog barking. It's the same one as the other morning that stopped Stella in her tracks. I walked into the yard and waited, just so I could see what she would do.

In the north backyard where I cut a small tree down a few years ago.

After letting Stella be on her own for the whole walk, not counting the time I had to lead her back to the path away from the gross stuff she was eating ... she decided she wasn't coming in the house. She was going on strike.

So I left her, walked inside, took off my coat, poured a glass of water and I hear a bump against my storm door. That is the sound of her pushing the door with her nose to let me know she wants inside. I know she changed her mind awfully quick after I left her and was out of her view.

I was just reminded by a fellow Apple Watch user, that I cannot use just the watch even with the cellular feature. All that cellular feature does is let me use the watch when I am away from the house without taking my phone with me. I need the phone to download data the watch collects and to do the updates for the watch when they are released.

I knew there was a reason I wanted to keep my phone. BTW, she has told me that exact reason more than one time and I keep forgetting.

I'm going to set this post aside and let it brew for a while at 2:36pm.

Oh ... that's it ... now I remember what all of this was about. The OVER EXPOSURE????

A photo guru of mine saw my new blog, the photos from the Canon and thought my pictures were over exposed. So before this afternoon's walk I decreased the exposure on the camera three clicks to start and after a couple or three pictures I moved it up a click for a net decrease of two clicks on the exposure setting. I see a big difference in these photos compared to the last few weeks for the ones taken outside.

About the time I was having a snack, high protein day ... I checked the DVR to see if any new shows were recorded that I might watch this afternoon. I was in luck ... Homestead Rescue and Life Below Zero had shows listed. With a new season starting Building Off The Grid, I'll add that to the DVR timer to record only the new episodes.

It's nice to have a 2TB hard drive in the DVR. After 11 months I still have not filled one half of it. Later on once I need some space I can download those to an external hard drive. BUT THERE'S A CATCH !!!

To replay those ballgames or movies I have kept, I can only see them on a Dish Network system. If I were to eventually move to DirecTv or a streaming service, due to their coding and file structure all those ballgames and movies would be worthless.

Heidi has turned into a food begging monster. She has gotten to the point of wanting everything that I am eating. If she hears a cabinet door or refrigerator door opened, or the smell of cooked food ... she is right there looking up at me wagging her tail. She wasn't like that six months ago.

A day closer to snow Saturday night and the coldest temps yet on Sunday, here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella's Thursday Morning Walk

Following my blog policy I mentioned the other day of "blogging when I feel like it" ... here is a morning post about Stella's walk. I received a photo article in my Feedly account this morning about Nikon AutoFocus. I found some adjustments I could make on my camera from that article. I only did one but it was not mentioned in the article but found as I was looking through my camera setup for something else. It had a setting for telephoto lenses, which I used at all times, the Tamron 18-200mm.

I did a little editing on most of the photos like I always do but one thing I did not do was go into the HTML of this post and change the size of the photo back to s1600 from the compressed size s640 that Blogger does automatically. Let me know if you notice any difference in the sharpness even in these low light morning. Apple Photos has a very detailed editing program that is free and comes with the program.

The owner of the field made a lap around the edge of his field Tuesday afternoon. The tire tracks from his truck has given Stella a whole new set of scents to follow. You can barely see one of those tracks in front of her nose.

Mid 50's ... overcast for today.

She thought she heard me mention food ... but she was wrong.

Another walk into the books. It's already Thursday.

Sitting at my kitchen table I saw this in the southwest skies. You could almost think I was witnessing a plane crash from this angle.

Pulling back that zoom, you could see it was just a plane heading southwest, possibly decreasing altitude on its approach to the St. Louis airport a couple of hundred miles away.

I hope to be motivated enough today to clean some walls. Yes the same walls I mentioned a few days ago. I've been pretty lazy these past few days after my big day of working out in the yard and on the roof cleaning my gutters earlier in the week.

A dark overcast morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Start a New Week ... But Who's Counting?

All the rain in Sunday's forecast never arrived. It did not rain a drop. So with lower percentages for this afternoon and tonight I don't feel real confident we will get the rain we need. It wasn't soon after the sun tried to come up that all the white flowers were back today. I saw a few in different parts of the field. Most things I did today was inside and although it seemed pretty slow, time passed faster than ever.

Sadie's lump felt no different this morning, except a little smaller. Every time I tried to get a photo of her right side, she would move.  LOL

A few steps outside this morning I decided I was going to let Stella do what she wanted. She started the walk like she has the past few weeks, starting on the path and then slowly veering left.

Looking at her I was sure she was headed to the woods. I stood and watched as she stopped walking, looked in the direction of the neighbors backyard then turned right and started walking toward our path. I was in total shock, speechless.

I gave her a few pats on the head and some positive praise as she walked closer to me. She is not in that LOL ... she kept walk right past me ... acting like I was in her way.

She made a left onto our path and started her walk along the edge of the field.

Once Sadie got ahead of her, she glanced back at Stella to see if she was going to have a partner to explore with or was this going to be another solo walk. Sadie has never liked waiting too much for anyone.

Overcast, not really hot but really muggy ... it felt like rain was right around the corner this morning. By lunch that would all change to bright sunshine and the thought of rain was just a rumor.

I tried to sneak on the left so I could take a picture of Sadie's right side but she caught me ... and started running toward me.

A lot of the times Stella likes to follow last summer's ATV path that is now grown over. I can tell by the way she is hanging her mouth that it's hot. She might pick her pace up to get back to the house for some air conditioning relief.

I tried some different things today as far as focus, cropping and settings of 'single point' and 'auto focus area'.

If I had a Facebook account this is a photo I would have posted for some friends to see that don't read the blog. I don't miss Facebook and it's now been over a month since I deleted my account. I also changed to DuckDuckGo for my search engine and only use my gmail account to log into this blog.

Every morning walk, Sadie will get some running in.

Stella sticks with one pace, no running and very little trotting if any at all anymore. Last week when I asked, the vet did not feel anything abnormal with her hips and Stella did not show any signs there was soreness in that area.

The butterflies are slowing coming back ... not a lot of them yet but I'll be taking photos of them when I see them. I see most of them on our afternoon walks.

I looked these up on google search last year and named them in a blog post. I can't remember the the names but do know this is the first 'orange' we have had this year in the field.

Stella didn't stop to scratch herself this morning. She walked without stopping straight to the door ... she was hot and wanted her air conditioned room to sleep in.

This is about as far as Heidi went today after lunch. Of course Sadie had to run over and check to see if she was okay and what she had been sniffing. You never know, it might be food.

When I asked Heidi if she wanted to go for a walk (already knew the answer), she trotted to the door to go inside. She jumped on the couch from a sprint and was asleep within 10 minutes.

I ended up buying a $99 Audio Technica turntable the other day. I was guessing my ears at this stage of life would not be able to tell the difference between a $99 stylus and a $499 stylus. The vinyl LPs are old but are sounding great. Some of them have not been played in over 25 years, just sitting on the shelf.

I did buy the 55" TV. I did have it setup and operational by 3:58pm Saturday with the Reds game starting at 4:15pm. That was after a 45 minute drive each way. I am slowly getting the picture the way I like it with adjustments that are available. I am glad that someone stated on their customer review, the tv would need to be adjusted because the picture "out of the box" was terrible. In fact it was scary how poor the quality was when it was first turned on.

I watched a Blu-Ray DVD last night, so that is hooked up correctly since I had a picture and sound. You would not believe how many people on forums are looking for either a picture or the sound when they hook their tv up.

I was able to check the picture for any changes by setting 7' and then 10' from me. No matter what the distance will be, it will not miss the flying drool that Stella spreads sometimes before I can ask her to move or stop her. I think bloodhound drool could peel paint if I didn't clean up soon after I see it. I also saw signs where she had licked the new remote control for the stereo receiver.

Needless to say ... the bloodhounds are so different than basset hounds.  Entirely different.

For those that use to get emails as soon as I posted a new blog post, something is wrong with that feature on this blog. It's not Blogger because this morning I typed in my own email address in the settings of my private blog and got the invite to accept and get my new blog posts immediately after I saved my settings. I did a one line test blog post and got that in my inbox in less than a minute ... but not on this blog.

I have relisted all of your email address that use to have that and asked for you to get back to me and let me know when you received the invite. So far one reader has replied that they have not received the email and it's been over 6 hours. When I added my email I received the invite email as soon as I saved my blog settings.

Something is going on with Blogger in the background.

With no baseball games tonight I'll probably be in the movie mode. Once the hounds wake up, the bloodhounds and I will go for our afternoon walk.I'll ask Heidi if she wants to go but for some reason ... she has zero interest. I might have to carry her to the field and go on a walk with just her to see if that makes a difference.

Checking the weather radar there is not a storm cloud within 200 miles west of me ... so no rain today.

All is good though here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.