An Active Sunday Morning Walk

Since it dropped into the 50's last night after reaching a high of 80° yesterday I knew the field was going to be extremely wet this morning as I put on my North Face snow boots. That would make no difference to Sadie. While I was lacing up the boots I decided Stella would have what I call total freedom this morning ... she could go anywhere she wanted at her pace ... I was not going to be 'herding' the hounds this morning.

It was a perfect quiet morning for our walk that started a little after 9am. Things were back to 'normal' since we our internet service had been fixed on Saturday. I was up early to upload over 300 photos to Google Photos and Flicker since July 26. I then move them into their own individual albums. Before I knew it, my 'free' data period was over at 8am. A little more reading online, two cups of coffee and Sadie let me know it was time to walk.

Since she was very active this morning I was sure we had just missed some early deer appearances. A lot of things were getting Sadie's attention just after starting the walk through the wet grass and wild flowers that are starting to grow for their fall cut.

Stella followed along laidback as usual, casually walking one paw at a time ... in no hurry.

That is until she saw Sadie sprinting toward the middle of the field. She actually ran again for the 2nd morning in a row. I know what is wrong with her though. It's her rear hips. She couldn't jump up in back of the FJ yesterday for our local drive. I helped her up as he put her front paws on the bumper ... Sadie was already inside ready to take off.

The way both hounds acted and me being so far away that I had to use the 200mm zoom on these next three photos, I was sure that we had just missed some deer. I thought they might be back in the far right corner of the field so I glanced in that direction once I caught up with the hounds.

It was good to see Stella running slowly but hard enough that both of her rear paws were off the ground as she ran. She and Sadie were all over the first part of the field up to the first corner turn.

As I turned into the sunlight you could see the heavy dew reflecting off the grass and wild plants.

Just as I was about to reach the rolls of hay I turned to find Sadie staring at me in the far right corner. She was having a blast running all over the field. Stella was not in sight as he was behind us on her own path.

By the time I had walked by 4 of these rolls of hay, Sadie had sprinted toward me and ran right up next to me. She covered quite a distance in the time it took me to walk only halfway in front of the hay rolls.

As usual I could barely see Stella's red coat through the growing field as I was on my way back home. The cooler overnight temps had chased away all the mosquitoes so far this morning. I forgot to mention the other day, that a light spray of 50/50 water and vinegar DID keep the mosquitoes off of me on my afternoon walk. Bethers had suggested 100% vinegar but I thought I'd try the 50/50 solution first since I had that mixed for Heidi's skin allergies.

I told Sadie to 'go get Stella' ... she had Stella in her sights of her nose within a minute.

She ran towards Stella and tapped noses, and like always Stella turned to follow Sadie. That message by touching noses must be pretty influential for Stella to follow Sadie's direct order.

I started to call the hounds for them to move over to my path on the last part of the walk. Today I decided to keep quiet and see what they would do. I was pretty sure that eventually Stella would walk into the north part of the yard near the property line pole that I was asked to leave up years ago.

By the time Sadie was almost home, she was soaked from the field. Her legs and paws were just as wet.

I might want to get back inside to make a small breakfast but that doesn't mean that Stella wants to. She is always on her on 'clock' unless food is mentioned ... then she will run for the house.

Still waiting for her to finish.

Slowly but surely she starts towards the yard. Instead of a direct route toward me, she walked far to her right and entered the yard just inside the property line pole. I find that to me not only interesting but amusing.

Sadie wasn't going to wait much longer. She was reading for her morning nap ... Stella took her time, she wasn't going to hurry for anyone.

The Daylilies are trying their best to show me they can grow after planting them only a week ago. I'm not sure how long it will take for them to get fully grown but they will cover a lot of area and still have nice blooms. That's the reason I chose them.

This is to the left of the porch under the living room windows Saturday afternoon.

This is from this morning showing how they had closed over night. They will get shade until about noon. Then that sunshine moving to the west will blast them with bright sunshine all the way to sunset.

I am going to go on a plant exploration sometime this week in Bloomington and hopefully find some Hostas to add to these areas. Once I get all the planting done and the ground settles a little, I'll cover all the exposed ground with Cypress mulch.

A little rambling before I go this morning. I had so many pictures from this mornings walk and was only able to get my choices down to 21 pictures for the blog. With the day as nice as it's going to be I can see later tonight I'll do another blog post with pictures of the hounds taken throughout the afternoon. I continue to read "Inside of a Dog" by Alexandra Horowitz. I can see a lot of what she says in all three of the hounds.

I really cannot figure out my internet data usage. By paying only for 20Gb per month and only 2Gb per month on my phone I am still very careful how I use and what I do on the internet.

Here is what I find strange and it makes me wonder if it is costing me more data to use HughesNet Gen5 for my internet service. When I had Excede Satellite I averaged below 500Mb of data per day. My internet use has not changed just because I have changed service.

I get faster speeds now ... 48Mbps instead of 10-12Mbps. My free period changed from midnight to 5am with Exede but 2am-8am with HughesNet. I normally use my free data early in the morning but not every day. This morning uploading those 300 photos took almost 200Mb of data, luckily it was on my extra data that HughesNet gives me for free.

Friday when my internet service was down I viewed and did my normal online reading on my Verizon account on my iPhone. By the end of the day I had used 358Mb, way below my self imposed 667Mb average.

Yesterday after the tech rep fixed my internet service, it was past 12 noon. I did my normal internet reading but spent a lot of time away from the computer. I cannot say that I did anything different than what I did on Friday with my iPhone.

Last night at midnight when I logged my daily data use into my spreadsheet ... Hughes told me I had used 895Mb !!!!

895Mb from 1pm to midnight compared to my use on Friday with Verizon 358Mb doing the exact same kind of internet surfing. My Activity Monitor was showing I had used a little over 500Mb of data.

My iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air had Wifi turned OFF during this time as part of my test.

The Google Chrome Extension I added a few weeks ago called Data Saver shows how much each website I visit uses in data. I can choose to look at their counts for 1 hour, 3 hours, 1 day, 1 week, 30 days and 60 day intervals.

In all cases Facebook was the leader in data use, using twice as much data as the #2 in line ... Blogger. My blogs use more data than any other website I visit except Facebook. If I use Google Photos or Flickr between 8am - 2am, then they are a close 2nd place depending on how many photos I am uploading.

So this morning after 4 hours, minus the time it took us for our walk ... I did the photos upload during my free period and I have not spent one second on Facebook ... I have only used 99Mb of data in a 4 hour period.

99Mb ... 25Mb per hour roughly ............ how could HughesNet show that I used almost 900Mb??? I would have had to been on the computer every minute of the day and night for that to be possible.

Also I have all automatic updates in the background .... shut off

Also I have an extension called Disable HTML5 AutoPlay that works well blocking videos that want to play automatically on different news and sports sites.

I have AdBlock Plus to do what it sounds like ... block ads.

I can't think of anything else I can do to stop any data "leaks". I'll be anxious tonight to see just how much data HugesNet tells me I have used after a very similar internet day compared to "their" 900Mb day on Saturday.

Since switching to the faster download speeds of HughesNet, my average data usage is 723Mb per day doing the same thing I did with Exede and averaged less than 500Mb per day.

Any ideas?

I cannot believe this weather we are having this summer in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... it's been great.

Hounds Survived Single Digit Temps

It will probably not be the last time we experience temperatures from -4° to 8° during the daytime hours this winter ... but we did over the weekend.

All three hounds didn't venture much further than the yard and only long enough to dump their tanks. Still, that didn't mean they just relaxed inside. Heidi did her normal winter routine of sleeping, eating and sleeping. Stella also slept most of the time except to remind me it was time to eat.

Sadie on the other hand had a severe case of cabin fever. That started as soon as she returned from her first trip outside after her breakfast kibble. She did not understand of course that the very low temps combined with frozen snow could harm her paws as we walked. Plus I wasn't really enthused that much either to be outside. Daily walks were canceled.

Today was different though. With the highs forecasted to be in the upper 30's by late this afternoon, it was already 24° when we got up. That felt like a mid-summer heat wave. With plans of some early grocery shopping, we took our walk around 9:30am ... the hounds were thrilled to be back on track.

They moved out fast as if they had to be somewhere. I glanced to the woods left of me and up ahead on the horizon to see if any deer might be lingering that would cause a sudden change in plans. I saw nothing ... but Sadie & Stella both either heard or smelled deer in the wooded gully area.

Once they stopped and looked into the woods and then took off running along the edge of the gully I was thinking deer were around the corner and the chase would be on. There are deer tracks all over the snow coming from the wooded gully area.

Once Stella made her stop and glanced that direction, I had my camera on and ready to capture any deer jumping out of the overgrown brush area.

Sadie was so agitated with what she was smelling or hearing that she went the deepest she had ever been in the brush. You really have to look hard but you can barely see her just left of center, with her tailed curled. I was yelling over and over for her and Stella to "come on, get out of there".  They both jumped out of the brush and looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

Instead of turning to the right corner and further investigating the area where there is always heavy deer traffic ... they sprinted along that edge only to run into the brush on the back edge of the field. By the way they were acting it's mostly likely deer were here running earlier this morning, but not now.

As I turned around to see where they were ... both of them were sprinting my direction and went right past me, heading for the 'no-fly zone'.

24° was feeling like summertime to these two today.

All of us made the final turn toward home but Sadie had another area to check out and identify.

Between the snow and warmer temps ... they started playing just a short time, did some running around outside of my reflexes to get the picture and then eventually headed home.

They both stopped to see which one would make the next move. It's funny how long they will stand like that, each waiting for the other to move.

Then they are at it again, but only for a short time.

Back to standing still waiting for the other to move.

They finally decided they had enough, it was just a bit colder since we were outside for almost 30 minutes. They sprinted down the return path toward home.

Even when Sadie stopped to sniff something one last time, Stella just kept on running .... all the way to the door.

It's suppose to rain a lot the next 4-5 days but with the temps in the 40's and 50's I'll not mind the rain. How wet the ground is, will determine just how many walks we get in and how many pictures we take.

I tried Firefox as a browser again yesterday. I was really liking it, seeing that it was blocking any auto play videos. Even with the settings at "do not auto play" I've noticed recently that a lot of these news or sports sites have smaller videos in their front pages that pay automatically no matter how you have your settings, thus increases my colored data use bar on the Activity Monitor.

I once again put Firefox on the shelf due to something running in the background yesterday, that used over 300Mb of data so fast I couldn't get it turned off in time. I am not sure what it was since I have all auto updates clicked off. It will notify me when I have updates but I am the one that decides when that will be updated, so I can control my data usage. I get free data between Midnight and 5am.

I tried Safari. I imported all my current list of bookmarks, then updated the browser. That was working out pretty well except it kept deleting the 714 bookmarks I had imported. All of my favorite sites across the top bar would vanish. After re-importing the bookmarks 3-4 times, I closed Safari and went back to Google Chrome.

Only this morning when I clicked the FlashBlock icon did I find that all of the settings were unchecked. Must have happened after an update of some sort. So after I rechecked those correct settings, Google Chrome has been blocking all video.

Not much I can do when I have a monthly limit on data unless I want to take a out a 2nd mortgage to pay for additional data ... it's ridiculous how much they want for just a few more Gig's of data per month.

I don't know how I started thinking about it ... maybe it was the single digit temps seeping into my brain cells ... but the spelling and use of the word "coUrse" or "coArse" came up. I had always used the word coUrse when writing on the blog but it would yellow out on a spell check telling me that was wrong and would accept 'coArse'. I used that for months if not years on this blog.

It never felt right, didn't look right.

All I would have needed to do was type either word into the browser address bar to get my answer. I cannot tell you why it took me this long to further investigate the proper use. I found out 'coArse' is wrong so today I am back to using 'coUrse' when saying "of course".

Maybe the discussion I saw on Facebook yesterday about the correct process in using a period cause me to step in the forbidden area of the english language. The discussion was about how many spaces were to be used after the period ending a sentence ... 1 or 2 spaces.

A century ago when I was in school taking a typing class I was taught to put 2 spaces after a period, and 2 return keys between paragraphs. They are saying now that is incorrect, that only 1 space should be used after a period. I wonder if I will adapt to that change or keep typing the way I type.

College Football will be officially over tonight sometime a little after midnight eastern time. Should be a good game with the same two college teams playing for the championship as last year. No matter what happens I doubt it will be as exciting as the Rose Bowl was last week between Penn State and USC.

Being the sports junkie that I am, I have now turned my attention to college basketball and I started really back in November when the season started. That will move me to April Final 4 games, ending college basketball just in time for MLB baseball to start. It's a vicious circle but someone has to do it.

I'm going to start a pot of Cajun beans and make some cornbread later, for tonight's 9pm kickoff. The hounds will be in the 'dream state' of sleeping by then but I'll still have to fight for my spot on the couch and don't dare get up and lose my seat.

Warmer temps here in 'the tropics of southern Indiana.

Heidi Surprises Us On Sunday

For once the local tv weatherman was correct. Much cooler temps after a night of rain while the hounds slept. While we got to bed early, we all woke up early to a light rain, overcast skies and the temperature at 60°

That's quite a change from the 70's in the morning and mid 80's during the day.

The hounds had a pretty good weekend, surviving another weekend of nonstop football, getting in walks in between games or at halftimes.

While it was a little sad to see all of the flowers gone, it was great to walk with the field cut and I could keep better track of where they were running off to. We thought about walking this morning but there was still a very light rain going on.

Stella's favorite is eating the wet grass after the rain. She does not vomit it back up so I can only assume she eats it because she likes it, instead of trying to settle an upset stomach.

Even with sporadic big drops of rain hitting her, Sadie could not figure out why we couldn't take an early morning walk. She didn't hesitate though to head back to the house once it started raining a little harder.

Just like I thought they would, the farmers let the hay dry out for a day on Saturday, let the dew dry out Sunday morning ... then rake and bale the house sometime Sunday afternoon before the expected rain later that night.

With dad running the baler, his son ran the rake ... they still did not want to take that area giant ragweed next to my yard. I tried getting the Echo weed eater started. It has a steel cutting blade and would move right through that ragweed at ground level ... it ran and then shut off. I still need to play with some adjustments before giving up hope and having the local hardware store fix it.

After they left the hounds and I took off for a Sunday walk. A big big surprise ... when I asked Heidi if she wanted to go for a walk ... she jumped down off the couch and headed out to the field along with Sadie and Stella. I couldn't believe she walked right into the field without any coaxing by me.

From the start I could tell she was going to go at her own pace. There were a lot of smells for her to catch up on, after 5 months of refusing to walk with us. I can only conclude that she does not like to walk in the field when the grass is tall (like Winston) and the temperatures have be lower than it was in June when they last cut the field.

The longer I waited for her to catch up with us, the slower she walked and the faster the bloodhounds go out in front of me. I decided to let her roam at her own pace since she was taking her time of moving to different spots instead of a direct path.

Stella was right behind her as far as doing her own thing. Only Sadie and I were in the walking mode and she stayed out in front of me for most of the way.

By the time we made that last small turn toward the house, I could see Heidi up ahead waiting or possibly stopping her exploring once she saw us. She started wagging her tail ... something I have yet to catch in a photo ... and then kept up with Sadie and Stella as we walked back to the house.

She has not gained any weight this summer, yet has not lost weight so it's been stable for the past 15 months. She eats the same amount of kibble that I feed the bloodhounds, twice per day but that doesn't help either. With her blood work coming back perfect in her last trip to the vet in the spring at least I know that she has nothing wrong internally.

Once the field is mowed, you can see our paths from the grass that has been mashed down. I knew the path was not going to be straight this year because of all the flowers we walked around instead of on.

Saturday was another bright sunny day ... it was perfect.

This was early Saturday morning for their first walk of the day. Really wet with heavy dew but nice to have it cut.

They both had a lot of places they wanted to check out. Luckily I did not see anything hanging from their mouths whenever they would raise their heads out of the small piles of hay.

It was pretty slow trekking back to the house because there was just too much to smell on the way.

Even after a 2nd walk of the day in early evening, Stella couldn't believe that she had to come back inside the house. Both of them are still being supervised when outside and that will probably continue for months to come.

I just bought my 2nd gig of data this morning for the home internet connection. For all of you Apple users that read my blog ... I have not had any major issues with the new OS Sierra. My screen has locked up a couple of times to where I had to reboot the computer but nothing as far as software malfunctions. Yet I don't do as much as a lot of the 'power users' but enough to see it's a good upgrade.

I have moved the blog back to one blog post per page. For older posts you can click the link here at the bottom "older posts" or over on the right sidebar all of the posts are listed in order, with the most recent on top. That's a Blogger design, not mine.

I may post later tonight ... it will depend if the rain will stop long enough for us to get a walk in. It has not been raining for the past few hours so I'd say the chances are good for a 2nd post today at the normal time of 6:30pm or so.

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