Rambling At -2°

With Heidi telling me not to wake her until late April, I decided for the first time this winter I would put on a pair of long johns even if I was staying inside the house all day. I didn't care. I wanted to feel warm, hot. I wanted to get to the point where I'd have to pull them off because "it's too hot to wear these" ... we'll see if that happens.

The hounds decided they would continue to prepare for the time change this Sunday morning at 2am by waking me up at 5am wanting breakfast. Heidi was even awake and helping Stella wake me up with loud basset hound whining, not quite a bay. My watch told me it was 4°, the "feels like" was -7° and the storm door was frozen to its door frame.

What a way to start the day.

Even with the heat on inside and most of my room thermometers telling me it was 65°- 68°, I still felt cold that time of day. At 5:15am getting my second cup of coffee I could see the neighbor to the south of me was warming up his truck and her car as they waited inside their house. I guess they don't have heated seats like my Mini does.  :)

With the hounds fed and back to a deep sleep 30 minutes after waking me up, I did my normal routine reading the internet, replying to a few comments on the blog, answering some texts and emails. I wasn't thrilled about another day being cooped up inside. Then I remembered last winter, when It was like this for over 30 straight days ... I wondered how do people in Minnesota put up with this kind of cold, especially since they experience colder weather than I have by 20-30 degrees.

From the time Stella walked out to the field to relieve herself and was standing at the door to be let back inside, she was outside only 1 minute 46 seconds beating yesterday's time. How's that for some aerobic exercise? I didn't have to remind her before going outside that we were not taking the morning walk. She figured that out on her own and I was happy I didn't have to go out in the field to get her.

At least it is bright and sunny just like Monday. The temps will crawl to the high 20's but it will take all day and maybe into the early evening to achieve that. When I looked at the "feels like" temperature for each hour it never climbed above -2° .... my day is cancelled !!

I did get a lot of reading done yesterday. I played a lot of games of Mahjong. I sat and wondered at times. Like ... if it is dumping snow in Arizona where they normally don't get much and tornadoes sweeping through the southeast and it's even colder the further north you get ... where does someone go to miss all of this weather? California? Down where the "OFM" is in the gulf of Texas? What about the southern tip of Florida?

I decided as I was taking off my down parka and commending Stella for making it back inside in record time that it might help to warm up if I could see some photos of summer. So I went into my Apple Photos program on my computer, typed "Jul" in my search block and had over 4,000 images to choose from, all the way back to the year 2003. I label each new photo of the day with the three-letter month abbreviation. Thus finding photos in my library by using Jul as the search topic.

Listed below are 20 some photos that may make you or me feel warmer, depending where you are located. These are not listed in any specific order but a few are from 2003 with Bertha and Arthur.

I'm going to ramble a little between all of these photos. There seems to be a lot going on in the world of politics, sports and weather. The 'dingbat AOC' had her second FEC complaint filed against her in the last two weeks. She is so busy trying to get to Trumps income taxes she forgot that someone would find out about that 1 Million dollars she has moved illegally from her campaign funds. You can read about that fabulous move here -- FEC Complaint.

No one has ever accused her of being the smartest puppy in the litter. In fact the founder of GreenPeace called her a pompous twit yesterday in the news

I think it's pretty cool that SpaceX Crew Dragon test passed with flying colors. SpaceX Crew Dragon

I really feel the longer the Democrats spend time investigating Trump, which they will until he is gone whether it be in 2019 or 2024, will only seal a 2020 win for him. Have any of you seen a viable Democratic candidate yet, that has put their hat in the ring? I had friend tell me the other day that his wild ass idea is Michelle Obama will announce she is running at the last-minute, thus reminding me just how quiet her husband has been in the past few months. (Firming up plans????)

I can confirm that I am not the winner of the $1.5 billion Mega Millions jackpot and I have not hired a lawyer to take care of that for me. Although, it would be my luck that I'd misplace if not recycle my ticket as trash if I were to win a lottery such as that.   :)

Looking through the photos yesterday of the tornado that killed 23 in Alabama, it showed me we don't have a chance surviving one that strong. Houses were pulled completely off their foundations. So the theory of taking the hounds to the 'inner room' without windows, such as my bathroom ... wouldn't mean shit with 170mph winds.

I remember that June afternoon in 2008 when the local tv weatherman said "if you are in these locations take cover NOW!!!" I was trying to gather up a bloodhound and two basset hounds trying to convince them we were headed for the bathtub. We ended up having only straight line winds of 70-80mph and those were nothing to what Alabama experienced on Sunday. Sadie never liked gettng a bath and wasn't going near any kind of bath tub ... high winds or not.

I was disappointed to hear my favorite politician of all time (NOT), Hillary is NOT going to run in 2020. Also another favorite is not going to waste my bandwidth or tv time ... Eric Holder. In my book, I'll be blunt ... they are two pieces of shit.

This next bit of information I cannot even comprehend. A 100,000 in March rushing the border ???  WTF

I am in somewhat of a quandary today. It's freezing outside and I don't want to drive anywhere. At the same time I am getting down to the lower limits of food in the house. I stopped buying two weeks worth of food because before the more food I bought the more I would eat in a short period of time. The food never last two weeks. Sound familiar? Probably not.

So most of the food I have left I am not hungry for. LOL I don't want steamed broccoli or carrots with chicken breasts or baked salmon. I am still eating low-carbs so that bag of beans will not get cooked. I have cans of black beans and refried beans left for burritos but I don't have any salsa, cilantro, or even tortillas and too many carbs. I'm tired of salads. I'm out of fruit.

Where is that Amazon grocery delivery by drone when you need them?

Here is another story about the 'dingbat AOC'. I like to read different news from different website to get their point of view. I guess you could call that bipartisan reading.

Will Hillary ever shut her "pie hole" ???? Wisconsin Voters

Over the past three and a half years, Stella has chewed and/or eaten my Cincinnati Reds ball cap and my IU Football ball cap ... worn for yard work or taking a hound walk on a hot summer day or any day warmer than 40°. Will the Sacramento State Hornets hat survive another summer? It's been a while, maybe over a year since she last destroyed something of mine.

Heidi does enjoy sunbathing but she still isn't out of bed yet today.

This explains even more why Cohen is acting the way he has ... He Wanted A Pardon From Trump

To Stella there is nothing finer than a short afternoon nap under a hot sun, right after lunch and feeling those hot stones under her. Weeds and all, makes no difference.

It's great to see the NYC mayor and governor on their knees begging Amazon to come back. Did you ever picture things being so far out of control in the world of news in the US?

Stella is not the only one that loves ... LOVES ... a hot sun.

Do you know how many professional baseball players are still good when they are 39 years old ??? Not many if any at all. Just another example of why this is such a stupid contract. Yet they will justify it by saying Harper is not being paid for what he CAN do at 39 but what he HAS DONE in the past and all the BILLIONS of dollars our team will make in the next 13 years.

I'm still cold and it's 68° in my computer room.

Over 70% of voters polled the other day said they did not like someone over 77 years old running for president nor did they like anyone socialist. ... Bernie ?? "Can you hear me now?"

I cannot believe they finally finished the Highway 99 Tunnel in Seattle. That was only a dream when I lived in the area until 1994.

I remember those days of "office food". I weighed between 25-30 pounds more than I do now. During a work week from Monday to Friday it seemed to be a nonstop supply of food brought in for all to share from the co-workers kitchens. Of course Friday's the amount of food would top out and counter space was being cleared to hold all of it. EVERY MORNING there were the best donuts, bear claw's, breads, or pastries just like the photo in the article. Wash all of that down with Pepsi's after 10am (coffee before) and it's no wonder I weighed was much as I did.

Days like today would have been a line of crock-pots full of different kinds of chili, with everyone declaring theirs was the best. How much chili could one eat in the course of the day ... A LOT !!!!  :)

Ah yes ... dreaming of mowing the yard in July and cooling off as fast as possible afterward. I can almost smell the fresh-cut grass ... until I look out my window right now. DAMN is it cold !!!!!

Just one of the photos on Heidi's (Lucy) ad on the Basset Rescue site back in June 2011. I couldn't believe a basset as nice as she, was available for adoption.

As I finish this blog post I am not sure about today. Nothing sounds good enough to eat. No book sounds good enough to read. I don't want to sleep. I don't want to go outside. Even playing Mahjong seems over, at least for a few days. Both hounds are asleep mid-morning and hours away from lunch. Oh, I also don't want to turn on my tv and fill it up with political or news crap either. Movie?? Too early.

Still ... being retired is fantastic and every day is great here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Wide Awake At 3:45am

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Do you remember back in December right after I moved my main blog from Blogger to here? It was around December 9th. I had plans for changes in the way I wrote, maybe the format and the subjects would expand from just the hounds to a lot of other stuff. Just like the blog title says.

There is that word "change" again.

It's what makes life fun, interesting and at times insane. A good example of that kind of change, it was just a few days ago where the hounds and I were not starting our day until 830am whereas it was pretty normal to start at 7am and be in the field for the morning walk by 8am. Of course Sadie was no longer calling the shots on that walk and Stella's clock seems to be on Central time or about an hour behind.

I also played a factor in that starting time. I was staying up close to 2am like the 'old days' and sleeping later. My sleeping app liked that I was getting more sleep, at least that is what it told me.  :)  In the past three days I have done "a 360", I've gone to bed early and woke up earlier. I'm sitting here writing this at 3:48am .... 3:48am !!!!!

I am wide awake and have no plans of going back to bed just like Stella is thinking about right now. She is confused after waking up and walking into my computer room to see the darkness. I just heard her toenails move across the bedroom hardwood floor back to the dog bed in the corner. She will not be getting up at 4am.

I really woke up at 3:05am and after a solid attempt I could not get back to sleep. Thoughts were racing through my brain like screens of computer code. (I just took my fist sip of coffee with 2 tsp of sugar for the first time since last Friday).

This was the type of post I was going to do starting last December, posting whenever I  thought about something or had something on my mind. Multiple posts per day, some with photos some not. I hope I can remember everything I wanted to talk about an hour ago.

Where do I start?


I knew something was up a few days ago. It was a warning sign that I am all too familiar with. "Changes" ... I wanted to change things. Maybe a new blog template, a different look? No. That's it, change the Mac OS to the dark mode. A different desktop picture?? That seemed to have worked. I liked those changes and still do a couple of days later.

Then yesterday it was total mental turmoil. SUGAR over took my brain cells and I couldn't run away from it. I was in my 5th straight day of no table sugar for my two cups of coffee per day. I was eating around 35g of Carbs per day. I was feeling good and I could feel the slight change to my stomach and now having zero heartburn after eating some foods. But ... I had an insane craving for sugar. IF it is more than this I'd hate being a meth addict.

Is it so bad to have just 2 tsp of sugar in a 12 cup of coffee? Or 4 tsps in two 12 oz cups of coffee for the whole day?

So with no intentions of falling off the 'no sugar' wagon Wednesday, I am walking around my library aisle by aisle looking for something to read. Anything to read, because I haven't found any book interesting enough with that "new" tag on the cover. I had no idea what subject I wanted to read about so up and down the aisles I went looking at every book it seemed, from the top shelf to the bottom ... next section.

The book called "Year Of No Sugar" by Eve Schaub

That book stuck out like a sore thumb among the thousands of books I was scanning shelf by shelf, aisle by aisle. It was the only book I brought home with me and I started reading it immediately.

But that's not all that happened.

From the library and the short mile and half drive home ... I made a detour. I stopped at the local Dollar General (Same as the Dollar Store) and bought a 4lb bag of sugar because it fits perfectly in my 21-year-old piece of Rubbermaid container. It kept the sugar safe from mice in 1998 as it does now IF I have any mice.

The the real problem was at the checkout counter of the empty store. One customer before me, one cashier available and she was "a talker". While only checking out a few items I heard her cover everything from health issues, her dead husband, her grandkids, her dogs, cats blah blah blah .... just stick your credit card into the reader and pay for the damn food !!!!!

So I was becoming a little irritable. I don't do well with checkout lines as you read about a few weeks or a month ago. That time also gave me time to look at every brand name candy bar on the planet, strategically placed where I could see them while waiting in a one person line.

An old favorite, kind of off the wall, outside the box thinking ... candy bar ... Zero!!

I grabbed the king size bar and sprinted to my car to rush home. I had a book to read, a new bag of sugar and a candy bar to eat. I had fallen off my 5 day strict Keto meal plan and hard. I could feel myself somersaulting down the side of the highway as I bit into that Zero candy bar with the white icing.

An hour later ... I didn't like it. It didn't taste that good really ... BUT I had no insane craving for sugar.

I didn't have a cup of coffee with my book. It was early afternoon and I never have coffee that time of day. I just wanted to read and find out as fast as possible what this family of four had done for a year with no sugar. After the first 100 pages I had heard their story but nothing about how they felt or how their bodies were adjusting. Only their FRUSTRATION finding food to eat because they were not only cutting out table sugar but any food that had the word sugar in the ingredients. Fructose was the main enemy I learned.

I'll leave the book summary right there. On to my next subject.

By the way, just like when I tried the Paleo Diet in May 2015 for the first time ... ALL indigestion went away immediately. I have not slipped a TUMS into my mouth since sometime Saturday morning around 2am.

Back to that word "changes". As I was looking at my old blog, as I do everyday, I noticed my list of the blogs I followed was so much shorter than it use to be. I had to count them. 19 ... only 19 of them listed. I remember last summer I had 53 different blogs listed that I would read with regularity, each time they posted something different.

I had gone from 53 to 19. How and why?

That cup of coffee with 2tsp of sugar in it did NOT taste as good as it use to. My second cup is black coffee, no sugar.

I look at the old blog sidebar because unlike the sidebar at the bottom of this blog's homepage, the list moves the blogs I follow to the top of the list with each new post. It's easy to pick out those that have posted something that day instead of looking through all of them to see if they have something new.

Also as late as last summer I was still following a ton of RVers that I had followed since finding them in 2011 and 2012. Some of them were full-timers, some part-timers, some tent camped, van camped etc. RVing is what got me started in this type of blogging, although my first blogs were back in 2005 tied into my online sports business and my attempt at affiliate marketing, one product per blog, and hundreds of WordPress blogs.

For those that don't know, in August 2015 when I made the final decision to drive down to Jeffersonville Kentucky to pick up Dipstick (now Stella), I knew then my plans for traveling full-time or even part-time was NOT going to happen. I chose to rescue a bloodhound needing a new home instead of dragging two basset hounds (Winston & Heidi) and one bloodhound (Sadie) all over the USA.

At the time I still felt like following those traveling bloggers though.

Then like anything else, as time passes my interests change and as time moved on the urge to travel decreased. Add in those bloggers that disappeared and stopped blogging without notice or the few bloggers that have died ... it was easy to cut the list from 53 to 19. I don't even read the 19 sometimes. I look at their blog title and decide if I want to read or not.

Changes.

Stella by the way is NOT a traveler. Oh, she does great riding in any kind of car (Toyota FJ or a Mini Cooper Countryman) but it's when she gets out in public, like the dog food store or at a park or just anywhere that is not her field or yard that she goes spazo. She turns into a scared, anxious, stressed bloodhound that wants to run away if I lose grip on the leash. She has always been more than happy to jump back in the vehicle and head home.

She does not mind riding though and did well on the 4 hour drive home in August 2015.

I will climb back on the Keto Diet horse though. It's not really a diet because I plan on making this change in eating permanent. I have to get down to 185 and then maybe even lower after I achieve that. Friends tell me I look okay and don't need to lose weight. I am never short on breath. I can jog if I want. I can ride a bike for many miles if I want. I can ride a bike fast inside my house on the trainer if I want without any feelings of being light-headed or a pulse rate that is above my maximum.

I can climb on the roof to clean gutters, haul stone one wheelbarrow at a time, shovel dirt, dig ditches and even pull weeds for four days in a row in the August heat ... nothing bothers me. Still I want to lose the weight. I want to lose that fat I can't see inside and behind my stomach. I want a clean liver and not one blocked with fructose.

I DON'T want to live to a 100 or even 90 years old but I want to live healthy while I am living.

So how did my two neighbors live into their late 90's after living near me for over 50 years? I am pretty sure they were not eating grass-fed beef, nor were they using a water filter and used the water the local company was providing straight out of the White River. Surrounded by chemical laden fields of corn and soybeans. Did they go Keto or Vegan? I doubt it.

Or as my dad use to tell me, every meal for him growing up just across the highway from me, was like a holiday meal with lots of fat, butter, gravies, beef, pies, cakes and of course water from the same local water company I use in 2019. He lived to be 89.

So I can't keep from asking myself "is it really that important to eat well, and lose weight" just so I can grow old and live in a society that I am becoming sick of, from politicians, illegal immigrants to $30M dollar per year baseball players??

You really do have to wonder about all of it. Is it that important?

So while I was taking the afternoon walk yesterday with no camera and Stella on the 25' retractable leash I started wondering. Of course this was after that 4 lbs of sugar was back in my house. It was after I had read about 50 pages of the "Year Of No Sugar" book, but I was pretty sure I had a clear mind and was mentally stable, even after eating the "king size' candy bar.

Why do I even give a shit what is happening in a country that I will not be around in 10, 20 or 30 years. Who cares what happens? Yes I have a niece and nephew, one with kids and if the country turned into the worse possible scenario that I can imagine ... then yes, it would suck for them.

I can't comprehend that though. I can't picture the USA turning into a current Venzuala. It's imaginary not real. It could even be outlandish, paranoid thinking. With images of a million people rushing across the borders from San Diego to the tip of Texas ... with white border patrol trucks chasing them across the dusty deserts. Since approximately 600,000 of those million don't have an education past the 12th grade of course they would be supported by the 'dingbat AOC' with free food, a livable wage, free medical, free free free free.

But what if ??? I didn't give a shit one way or another ??

Will all of that effect me and the hounds living here in "bumf***" Egypt ??? Here in small town USA ???

Does it matter at all that 22 Trillion dollars in debt means anything. A couple of friends from my college days with Accounting degrees, try to convince me that the national debt doesn't mean anything. So why not add another 94 TRILLION DOLLARS so I can have solar panels installed for free and trade my Mini Cooper S Countryman for one of those Electric Cars that the 'dingbat AOC' will provide for me. Besides, I don't like flying in airplanes anyway and I have a single railroad track just a half mile away ... maybe we could build a train station with our savings ????

So who gives a shit about all the chaos in the news today. Those in power obviously don't give a shit about the grave possibilities so why should I ... while hiding down here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ????

BTW ... I don't care who Trump went to bed with BEFORE he even decided to run for President ?? I don't care that he would have made $100M if he had Trump Towers in Russia. I don't care if he was an asshole businessman BEFORE he even decided to run for President ... I've in fact worked for two bosses like that. They were also rich, arrogant and some days were assholes ... but that's what they do. Being sued meant nothing to them, go ahead and do it ... I'm not paying you ... was their battle cry.

With that being said, I confirmed to myself on that Wednesday afternoon dog walk, the Democratic Party can f***off ... FOREVER !!! From yesterday forward I will always vote for ANYONE RUNNING against the Democrats in future elections. And that is coming for someone who jumped back and forth across parties, voting for whom I thought was the best man running.

So we got that out of the way ... politics and sugar, even a little immigration, wandering thoughts, blah blah blah ... I just don't give a shit ... but I DO CARE if my favorite teams win. Any loss is like the world has ended and I either fall into deep depression or fits of anger until the next game.  :)

I STILL DO CARE though about my meal plans. I'll eat healthy, it can't hurt and besides ... if I am going to be blogging when I am 90 years old and still complaining, bitching and moaning about society I need to be healthy don't I ???  :)

Wait ... I'm not finished yet.

I'm only up to
2,492words. (I added a few new words when editing)

Those house rehab tv shows are so much fun to watch. Of all of them I have watched over the years, Hometown is the my favorite out of all of them. I'd love to have them show up here 'in the tropics' and gut this place. I'd have them build the same floor plan, which is simple but just upgrade from the 1970's.

Then I think ... why ???

I am a hermit with few visitors. My hounds are allowed on the couch or the big leather chair, their choosing. I only need a 'man cave', which I call my living room, to watch hours and hours if not days of ballgames or an occasional movie .... or the times I binge watch Dexter, Breaking Bad or True Detective.

My 1975 Tappan 400 stove and oven still works perfectly. My cheapass basic fridge that I bought in 1998 still hums right along while I give it annual deep cleaning on all sides of it, including the back and bottom sides. I don't care if I am wiping a counter of formica instead of marble. I don't care if my backsplash is just a painted wall, unless it's the stainless steel part of the stove and small oven on top.

That living room wall of old fashion paneling looks pretty awesome AT TIMES  but I wonder what it would look like as painted drywall. The yellow aluminum siding I have covering the house and I have painted over for 21 years is in better shape than most of the new vinyl siding which I have never been a fan of. Yes, the siding has a few dents, one major by my 'senior moment' mistake and one by the renters in 1996. Besides I have a box of the original yellow siding stored in my carport shed up top, if I need to repair anything.

So yes ... "they" could make my house look tv quality if they did a total rehab but do I really need to. I mean, I can and do fix the normal maintenance stuff that needs repaired. The house is in great shape and protects the hounds and I in all kinds of extreme weather.

Plus .... I live here for free !!!! Not counting that whopping $220 in property tax I paid in 2018.

Do I really need my house rehabbed ???  LOL

Hmmmm ... I might be finished finally. My list of "blog thoughts" have been written about. I am looking around for my next topic and can't seem to find anything ... besides you might be surprised how many people are up and driving between 5am and 5:24am based on the noise from the highway. No, highway noise does not bother me.

My working neighbors probably think I am an insane old man living next door ... they would have seen my small kitchen light on from their house, as they got up at 5am. I do not have nor do I want a large curtain covering my large picture window in the kitchen that looks out through the carport. If I remember correctly that window is around 80" wide. It's the best view in the house.

Heidi is still in a deep sleep because the house is pitch black besides the light from my computer monitors and the small light above the kitchen sink. Stella is restless and confused as she walks in to the room to see if it is 8am but can tell it's only 5:30am. She has to be asking "Is it too early to eat breakfast???" Then she walks back to her dog bed and goes back to sleep.

Let me know what you think of my new "I don't give a shit" policy. Am I on the right path?

Single digit temperature highs are on the way here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.

8 Days Until March !!!!

Sunshine always makes a difference, no matter what the temperature is nor what month it is. It just makes a difference. I had not even started my first cup of coffee when I could hear the birds outside singing to each other like it was a Spring day. It was 29°. Again we all started our day later than a few weeks ago but none of us minded sleeping an extra hour. I couldn't stop reading one of the books last night, just picked up from the library yesterday. Can you guess which one kept me up past 1:30am reading?

With the high today going to climb into the middle 40's, all of the frozen puddles of water were starting to melt in the yard. Although the large puddle inside the carport remained water. I was happy I chose the North Face snow boots to wear this morning. I use them as my rain boots also ... because I am cheap. LOL

Stella had her own plans this morning. She veered off the return path and headed to the middle of the field. As long as she was heading in the general direction that I was on the path, it was okay. I kept an eye on her while I enjoyed the great morning, a little past 10am. The air was filled with different kind of birds chirping away, the sky was blue and the sunshine was bright. A perfect morning.

I was wearing layered clothing with my light down jacket, not the parka. I really didn't even need my gloves but wore them anyway. As I walked, so did Stella at a pretty brisk pace.

Slowly without any input from me, she gradually moved toward me and about the time I got to the first corner, she cut me off, walking in front of me over to the brush area next to the woods. She was so close to me when she cut in front of me she almost stepped on my boot !!!

After I moved out in front of her, I glanced behind me and didn't see her!!!! She had walked down into the woods maybe 6' before I barely saw her. As I walked over to find out where she was plus prevent her from getting further into the woods and then down into the gully, she turned and walked toward me like nothing happened.   LOL

As we moved into the part of the field that was no longer frozen but extremely saturated, I could still hear the sound of the leaves and long grass breaking with a crunching sound with each one of my steps. Water came up along the sides of my boots with each step. Stella stayed just to the side of the path to keep her paws dry as possible.

I let her move along the back edge of the field at her own pace. I walked up ahead of her and had moved over to the path that Stella was walking on.I had not walked along the edge of the field in back for many months. It was also drier up there compared to the path we use every day.

I was able to take the same photo of the turkey farm and AT&T tower but it looks so much different today because I was standing at the edge of the field about 20' closer to the tower. In my eyes it makes a huge difference while I used the same zoom setting as I always do. I could not believe how different it looked.

When I told her "let's go home", she was happy with that and headed out on the path, with a few stops along the way. She is such a funny bloodhound. No plans, no focus, and walks as if she goes from moment to moment without any thought of a plan. To say the least, she is a pretty laidback bloodhound.

This does not happen often ... she beat me to the yard this morning.

What is she thinking ????

LOL ... I have no idea. Classic pose for Stella, obviously in deep thought.

With the morning so nice, she and I spent some extra time right there in the north backyard. I picked up some new limbs and tossed them into the overgrown brush area. This is the area I'd like to light a match to and burn about 20 years of dead limbs, dead leaves and give the ground some new area for new growth.

See .... she can be a nice bloodhound when she want's to be. She isn't stubborn all the time. How can you resist that kind of look?? Yes ... she does get everything she wants, at least 99.9% of the time.

For new readers or first time visitors ... that fence post and rolled barbed wire has been there since the mid 1940's based on the story my dad told me.

Stella still continuing to move to her right to finish her walk along the side of the house.

Just because it was beautiful outside Heidi still had sleep to catch up on and wasn't happy when I woke her up. Later she came out, inhaled some water and went back to sleep on the big leather chair. It's the same chair that Winston use to use, then Sadie and now Heidi. It's a great comfortable chair and I sit there sometimes for hours reading.

With the great sunny day outside at noon you would think that the hounds would have gone outside and stayed for hours enjoying the great weather. I was willing to stay outside that long. It was up over 40° and sunny. I think you will find the following photos shocking. I'll let them tell the story. No .... neither went any further than the photos show.

Heidi seems to like Oikos Triple Zero blended greek yogurt. The brand by Greek God's is a little too sour for her and she will not lick the last of the container. As you can see with the Dannon brand she has no problem burying her head inside the container to lick the bottom of the container. I always share it will both hounds.

I like Plochman's Mustard but I hate their container. I keep the nozzle clean so it spreads the mustard evenly. The problem is the mustard blocks the opening of the container and prevents the flow of any mustard, no matter how clean the nozzle is. So to fix that .... I poured half the Plochman's container into a French's mustard container, which never stops the evenly smooth pour when the container is squeezed. Is that politically correct to do in today's society?  (joke)

That just shows you some of the exciting activity around here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. I tried again, giving the hounds a chance to go outside to enjoy this weather but Stella did not wake up and Heidi went outside just long enough to pee and came back to the door.

Because of that I can almost assure that there will not be enough hound activity this afternoon to blog about. I will not get many more photos than what I have right now. Therefore I am going to post this now as my only post of the day instead of waiting until 6pm, thinking or hoping I'd have more photos to add.

So which book kept me up until 1:30am, where I had to force myself to put the book down and go to bed?

Hero Dogs by Wilma Melville with Paul Lobo.

I started the Bernie Sanders  book first yesterday afternoon because I was really curious what I would find. I started the book with an open mind and read 79 straight pages. It was interesting because many of the things that he wanted "his movement" to accomplish ... Trump has done since January 2017. Granted, Bernie wrote this book and what he wanted before the 2016 election but the fact still remains a few things have been accomplished by a man he hates.

Although I had read 79 pages without stopping, two names of people that he respects (in his own words) made me stop reading and my first impression of Bernie Sanders was correct. This is a man I want nothing to do with. Those two people? ... Linda Sarsour and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (my favorite dingbat)

Like all the other far left Presidential hopefuls, he wants to tax the rich and give more free services to those in need, middle to low incomes or those not wanting to work, plus of course ALL immigrants, legal or otherwise. Yet with millions of dollars in his bank account, and three luxury homes, I find it hard to believe that Bernie would like to give himself that same tax increase.

What he preaches against he has ... wealth.

Would he make the last ten years of his income tax returns public like he wants President Trump to do? Would any of the screaming Democrats make their tax returns public? Doubtful. Including Trump they have all followed the US Tax Code, I have no doubt about that but I also beliew a few people walked away paying nothing in taxes just like Amazon because they have top notch tax accountants.

Here's a tidbit about Bernie ... enjoy reading it:  Bernie's A Fraud !

Jussie Smollett ???   I can't stop laughing. What "a piece of work" .... let's see just how far they follow the letter of the law because I can bet my ass if that was me, I would be convicted as a racist, hate crime offender and would be behind bars the maximum amount of time allowed. Just mailing that hate crime letter to himself should put him behind bars based on Federal Law. Prove to me that I am wrong with that assumption.

A beautiful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. I'm going back to my book.