I'm In A Rut

For some reason in all this great weather, Walter and I rarely get out of the computer room. There the windows are open, a cool breeze keeps the ceiling fan off. He sleeps and I read the internet. I have not captured that annual spring cleaning feeling that I always get and end up doing a deep clean throughout the house. Why? Where's the energy?

Some Old Hound And Dog Photos

It might say it's 51° this afternoon but it still feels cold while having a day of light rain off and on with an overcast damp feeling to the air. So when I checked the photo import folder for recent hound and dog photos, I did not find any new ones since my last post. I felt like blogging today so I went back into my photo library and found a few older ones.

This is Heidi in July 2011. It was one of her photos on her adoption ad at Basset Hound Rescue. I made arrangements to drive up to met the foster mom and her in a parking lot in back of shopping center in Merrillville Indiana. She was happy to sit on the extended bed in the passenger seat for our 4 hour drive home.

Anti-Vax Canadian Protests

A friend sent me a video from Twitter yesterday to show me what was on their news. I didn't see anything on tv here nor the online news about it until this morning.  Yes, you see people on the ground and on the video I saw horses knocking them over and walking on them. It looked like some horses were stomping on those that were knocked down. This photo is from Canada ... Is this going to be a scene in the USA in the future? Will I be put on a list of some sort for posting it on a public blog? If you read Kunstler's blog on my sidebar he talks about a truck caravan forming in California with a departure date of February 23rd. I guess we will see what happens, since I have heard about that before as far back as November.

A Trip Through The Past

Once I had my new Samsung T5 External SSD as the source to my 557Gb photos library, I caught myself going through a lot of folders of photos. I wanted to see if everything transferred okay to the new drive. These folders are made by me, not the automatic ones by Apple. I will try to comment on each one, as my memory will get a workout.

Maggie only lived to 7 years of age. Once she was diagnosed with cancer, the disease spread faster each day. We had a little photo shoot at the house the last weekend she was home.

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.

Stella Ran More Today

When things don't go as planned you end up picking corn in the dark. I am not sure what the reason was for the delay yesterday afternoon but it turned out to be a very long day for whoever was driving the combine. By the time I returned from Best Buy around 12:45pm today, they had finished picking the corn and were loading the trucks to haul it away. Interesting Best Buy story below. You'll also see that Stella ran more today than yesterday and the past year.

For the camera to focus automatically on the combine in the dark I had to turn on the flash setting. That is one reason this photo of Stella looks brighter, but if you look at the next photo it was not even dark yet ... all three photos were taken within minutes of each other in different directions.

Heidi followed Stella outside to see what all the excitement was about but she didn't want her photo taken. She kept turning her head away when I pointed the camera at her. I barely caught her as she was looking from behind the wood frames in the carport. Notice the swelling on the side of her nose is gone.

Looking at my weather app on my iPhone it's nice to see we have only three more days of hot weather counting today. It will take an immediate 15° drop on Wednesday and continue to lower our high temps for the day from 65° down to 54° a few days later. Since it wasn't that humid this morning the temperature on our walk didn't feel that hot. Stella was not bothered by it and actually had whined earlier to come outside.

I may have mentioned here, can't remember, that the strap to my Garmin VivoSmart3 broke a couple of weeks ago. I didn't take long to go online and buy a replacement, same model3 instead of the new 4. I received it two days later and started wearing it. After the fact, I did an internet search on why that strap broke, was it common etc. The answers led me to the Garmin forum where the same questions I had were being discussed.

I sent an email to their support address listed not really expecting any kind of answer. Instead a few days later I received a reply telling me they needed my name, address, phone number and serial number of the activity monitor (what I call a watch). They shipped me a new replacement at no cost to me. I received it on Saturday, deleted my recently purchased unit from my Garmin Connect App and then synchronized my replacement with my iPhone.

So that meant if I wanted to get a refund for the one I bought 14 days ago I'd have to make a trip to the local Best Buy store. I headed over this morning to do the exchange and look at some cameras I was interested in again. It wasn't a normal trip though ... a little crazy.

I tried to get ahead of Stella in the first part of the walk after we made our first turn at the corner of the woods. She was lingering behind so it gave me a chance to get out in front so I could see if she would run to me to catch up, in a different part of the field. She did .... she ran hard. If you see her ears flopping or not in view ... that means she is running at a pretty good speed.

As far as cameras, which is the lead into my Best Buy story, I have always been amazed by the clarity and sharpness of Mark's photos on his blog BoxCanyon Blog. We have traded emails on photos, camera etc over the years. I started by asking what kind of camera he was using. He uses on the of the older models of the Canon PowerShot ELPH's. So I wanted to look at one of those today, hold it in my hand to get a feel of taking photos with it.

I also wanted to look at the Nikon Coolpix B500. While looking at both cameras on a shelf with a few other Canon and Nikon point and shoot cameras, someone asked me if I wanted to know what the best camera was on that shelf from 8 different models and two brands. Before I let him know, "not really" ... he gave me his opinion and without wasting a second told me he won his MMA fight last night in Milwaukee ... (250 miles from me).

What gave me a hint my enjoyable time looking around the store at things was about to turn into one big hassle? I couldn't escape him and even the Best Buy employee walked over and started playing along with this man's question and answers.

While the employee and I discussed the different cameras, this guy moved in-between us because he was the camera expert. While he talked I was planning my escape. I slowly moved away toward the Apple Watch and MacBook Pro table while the employee was cornered by the "MMA Champion" who had won a car, cash and showed me his bloodied knuckles.   LOL

I had just picked up the Apple Watch 44mm on display to get a feel for it. I found out my 'expert' was also an Apple Watch expert. I could not believe how fast he found me since the camera and computer departments are a good 40' apart. This time the conversation changed from the Benz he had won, to gambling casinos etc. Our conversation ended when he was telling me he had given the cash he won for fighting to his newborn child and had only $7 left until he received his DISABILITY CHECK next month !!!!! I had a feeling he was about ready to ask me for some money.   LOL

You probably get the picture.

Other employees stood and stared talking amongst themselves not really showing any kind of interest in getting this creep that smelled like he had been on a 7-day drinking binge away from me ... finally a Best Buy employee moved in between me and the 'expert' and I walked away. I was almost to the door to leave the store when someone said "what did he say to you" ... the voice of a Best Buy Manager. After I told him the story, he said he would take care of it. I didn't want to be around when the manager confronted him, so I got in my car and headed off for home.

On our walk this morning when I saw Stella raising her nose turning to the field behind us I didn't know that she would also start walking that way, even looking to see if she could get over the worn down metal fence. I saw no deer, no other dogs, nothing that would lead her into the next field, except what her nose was smelling.

I let her look around and she eventually started my direction.

Back to the camera discussion ... the Canon PowerShot ELPH felt too small in my hand plus it didn't have a good place to put your thump while taking a photo. I could see why some buyers had written reviews complaining of blurred photos. It would be easy not to hold the camera still for the perfect photos like Mark takes.

The camera I really liked was the Canon PowerShot SX-530. It felt lighter than the Nikon Coolpix B500 and felt more comfortable in my hand. Another big difference at least for me, the Canon ran on a rechargeable lithium battery, where the Nikon Coolpix used four AA batteries. I'm not a fan of AA batteries even if they are rechargeable. Of course by that time it was really hard to continue my analysis of both cameras with the 'expert' a foot away from me talking non-stop.

I already knew from my online research before I made the trip to Best Buy that the Canon PowerShot SX-530 was not in stock at the store I would be visiting.

While I made the 30 mile drive to the store I wondered what my sudden urge to buy a different camera was about. Was I tired of using the D3300 with a 18mm-200mm lens for 99% of my photos? I love my iPhone camera's photos but only for inside and low light conditions. Since I returned my Garmin and the Otterbox case I had bought a couple of weeks ago they gave my $50 reward back to me with a deadline of December something to use it by. So I could buy that Canon PowerShot SX-530 for $199 using the reward they gave me.

Stella started running toward me from the back of the field once she realized that I was getting too far from her. At this point of the walk, seeing her run hard two different times was good to see.

The ATVs did not return this summer. So the major ATV path from last summer has almost grown over. Stella needed to make sure and check out some scent along that path.

Once I told her "let's go home" she veered my direction and then stopped in the same spot of the path to scratch her neck.

So again she is in the same exact spot she was in yesterday when she started running toward me for her third run of the walk.

Like I said, IF her ears are not in view (laid back), that means she is running at a good speed.

She still wanted to show me she had prowling capability in case a cat or bird would be found in the field.

It will not be long before we start our 2018 Leaf Raking Project.

For the fourth time of the walk, she started running toward the house. Not a sprint but faster than a trot, more of a gallop.

I spent some time researching cameras by looking at the CNET reviews, customer reviews on the Best Buy and Amazon websites. The NFL games were on the tv but more of background noise than having any interest. For some reason today I didn't feel like watching football.

Heidi spent all day on the couch, then on both blankets in different locations to sleep the day away. She is really looking good, acting different than before her tooth surgery of course and never letting me forget what time breakfast and lunch are.

It's was another great day in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.