Single Digit Temps Freeze The Hounds

I had failed to remember that starting Sunday night, the arctic winds would start blowing my direction and drop the overnight temperatures to single digits. I knew as soon as I opened my eyes and stepped outside the warm bedroom that something was different. I had turned the heat down in the living room like I do every night and with it being 5° outside it was just a tad below 60° inside. It was colder when I opened the door to let the hounds outside to start our day.

I tried explaining to Stella the morning walk was cancelled, no discussion would be allowed. I didn't see any reason to walk in single digit temps with the wind chill being -6°and a 10-15mph wind. Finally by 9:46am she had enough and needed to go back outside to do her thing. She started hydrating at her water bowl to let me know she was going outside.

Doesn't it look like the "Frozen Tundra" ???

It was so cold it took my breath away the first time I inhaled and as Stella started to walk she found it pretty hard to make the turn and hesitated.

At least she started moving in the right direction. I was hoping that she would go out in the field, dump her tanks and get back inside as fast as possible instead of wandering off down the path as if we were walking. I stepped behind the house to get out of the freezing wind that was blowing.

Even in 6° weather it's always good to stretch.

As she proceeded out to the field another thought occurred to me. I might have to walk out to pick her up and carry her back to the house if that icy frozen snow either froze her paws or got between her toes. If that were to happen, she would raise the affected paw up in the air and try to limp back home. 87 pounds was going to be a lot of weight to carry in icy conditions.

She had already peed but was looking for that special spot that dogs always do. She did a couple of figure eights and then ... decided the spot she was looking for was not out there.

She slowly took the path back to the house.

After making a right hand turn just before leaving the field, she did what she had to do in the field and then headed to the house without one word from me. For that type of reaction from her, she had to have known just how cold it was.

I could hear the snow 'crunching' as she walked. That is a sure sign it's damn cold !!!

Last night was 'movie night' ... while I watched A Dog's Purpose, Heidi was sleeping sitting up, keeping warm with Stella.

Yes ... she is sleeping, not just being caught between blinking her eyes. She was probably really exhausted after all of her exploration in the snow on Sunday afternooon.  :)

Stella was out for the night. She never moved even after I got up, turned the lights off and headed to bed.

Some have asked about the dark mode I spoke of the other day. The best example is the smaller screen in the upper left having the black/dark gray background. It is like that on my emails, and any dropdown menu. It really is easier on the eyes if you spend too many hours on the computer like I do. That is the desktop screen on my stand alone monitor.

I thought this Apple desktop photo was appropriate for a 'dark mode' ... Spring is on the way after these freezing temps leave by the end of the week.

Anyone else having problems with Firefox crashing unexpectedly this past week? It seems to be a regular occurrence for me lately. I tried that browser again last night and after the second time it crashed I changed browsers. I moved to Safari this time. It's been very fast this morning, automatically stops videos from autoplaying on news or sports websites without an add-on. I still have to use AdBlock Plus to block advertisements. With that add-on I get ZERO advertisements anywhere I go online.

Tom was complaining about this blog using cookies last night. I can't control that from my end. For those that don't know, you are the only one that control what or how cookies are used by changing your security settings inside of the browser you are using on YOUR computer.

The new banner at the bottom of my blog about WordPress using cookies set him off.
I personally added that banner to my widgets yesterday due to the amount of traffic I get from the EU countries and by law, that banner is required for visitors from EU countries. So I am just following protocol and using the EU banner provided by WordPress. I am being told I do not need this banner so in the meantime until I can confirm one way or another, I have deleted the banner.

We all have our own opinions about immigration into our country, whether it be legal or illegal. This article has the best ideas I have read anywhere. Too bad they are not in politics and could present their ideas. It's a good read for those interested.

If anyone thinks what Trump is doing or trying to do is something new .... this link will show it also happened in the Obama Administration. Scroll down to see it if you don't want to read the whole article.

It wouldn't make a difference if the blog author was in Congress ... there are enough politicians in both parties that don't  want any changes to immigration and want as many ILLEGAL immigrants as possible ... both Democrats and Republicans.

There are many steps in the process to impeach a president. Let's just say that last step would approve the recommendation for impeachment even after the next election, years from now. Do the democrats and some republicans really want Mike Pence as the next president? Think about that.

With the weather as cold as it is, I see no other option than a normal day here in 'the tropics' with a lot of book reading, many games of Mahjong on the MacBook Air on the kitchen table. While playing that game I glance out to the highway between games and am still amazed at the number of drivers I see drving the Toyota RAV4 ... on this US Highway in front of my house, that vehicle is a hands down winner of choice by a landslide.

As far as pickup trucks ... from my view, it looks like a tight race between the Dodge Ram and the Chevy Silverado pickup trucks, old or new models.

I saw in the Seattle Times this morning, a newspaper I read on a daily basis ... having a picture and an article about a new kind of ice cream you can eat late at night that helps you to fall asleep. How nice would that be? Would it be as good as Ben&Jerry's Ice Cream?

At least the sunshine is out and is bright today.

Up to 9° at 10:44am here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Snow Storm ?

We were warned last night on the local news that the hounds and I were to expect around 3" of snow today. Not only did they tell us the amount and the probability of it happening but stressed that most of the snow would happen south of I-70. That's us. In that case Stella planned to get an early start on the walk this morning before the snow would start.

With a slight wind out of the NW I could tell it was a lot colder than the 31° my weather app was telling me. In fact after a few minutes I was beginning to think I had not worn the right coat. My face was feeling like I should have put on the down parka instead of my lightweight down jacket. None of that bothered Stella though, she was into her routine of dumping her tanks early and then catching up with me.

We were out the door this morning like old times, a few minutes past 8am. With another
7 days to go before we move the clocks forward we will have daylight at 8am until then. What was I thinking ???  LOL Of course it will be bright daylight at 7am (EARLIER) because we are moving the clocks FORWARD !!!

I have a 192 movies recorded on my DVR, another couple of hundred DVD's setting on my shelf and still could not find a movie that interested me enough to watch last night. 250 channels offered on my DishNetwork package and I probably don't watch more than 7 or 8 of them. Instead, I sat for hours reading the book about Steve Jobs, then went to bed with anticipation of a lot of snow when I woke up.

About the time we made the first time I could feel it spitting a little snow. I could see some very small crystals landing on my jacket sleeve and the air is always colder once that turn is made. Stella was into tracking again today and not a lot of verbal herding was needed. I let her go on her own.

I know this is a weird angle for a picture but I was trying to get a picture of the difference in her coat, on top of her spine. My very first bloodhound Max use to do the same thing with his winter coat, where it is a little curly compared to the rest of her coat.

I think she noticed it was snowing a little harder ... she started walking faster with her head up, like she wanted to get home.

Not quite a trot but close. Was she getting colder? She trotted nonstop all the way to the backyard.

By the end of the walk it wasn't snowing that hard.

Of course with a light snow outside and temperatures that are cold enough to make my face and fingers feel frozen by the time we returned, there was no way Heidi was going to wake up to see what was going one.

Maybe that will be my plan for today. Watch the snow fly and take pictures every hour to show the progression. Of course 3" is nothing compared to what the northern states and the east coast got this weekend. No worries though, it is supposed to be back in the 50's by this weekend.

As you see I wanted an old style design for the blog. Basically I wanted a sidebar back on the right hand side on the homepage and the post page so you could see other links to check out without having to scroll to the bottom of the page. Plus I was in the mood for a different blog style. Luckily I was able to use all that data searching with my free data period before 8am. Stella woke me up again at 5am, not wanting out but wanting breakfast. When I finally woke up she was standing by the bed whining.

I already can feel that a siesta will be part of my plan of the day, later this afternoon.

It's only a light snow so far this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella Decides To Walk

The rain stopped, Stella stood up and looked at me. I put on my hiking boots but I still had no plans to take the walk. I was pretty sure that by the time we got outside with strong winds and sprinkled rain ... she wouldn't go too far.

You see she had to think about it and almost headed toward the door after walking back around the car.

Following the side of the house, keeping under the roof overhang to stay dry.

She went out into the yard, relieved herself and didn't hesitate to head back inside.

Again, follow the side of the house to stay dry.

At least with the strong winds and rain all night long, my Mini Countryman got a free car wash.

Heidi?  She might be awake but there is no way she is moving until lunch is served.

Oatmeal and blueberries for breakfast in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds March Into 2019

For someone that proclaims they are a 'night person' it was somewhat disappointing to find myself asleep before midnight. It was a sprint right after the last football game on tv to close the house down for the day, brush the fangs and head to bed. I had less than an hour to wait for the midnight hour and could not do it. Older or did the tv pictures of rain in Manhattan NY dampen my enthusiasm to bring in the new year? The hounds? ... they had been sleeping for hours.

This morning wasn't summer like yesterday, 62° ... but I am not going to complain with temps in the 40's. The 10-day forecast shows 40's to be the highs. I'll take that here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana during January. There are times I am just not into the white "Winter Wonderland" stuff, if you know what I mean.

Stella and I had some minor changes this morning to start the new year. For once she didn't lag behind much, spending most of her time out in front of me making it hard to take some photos from a different angle than I took most of time in 2018. I made a slight adjustment to my camera on this walk, right after the above photo

I turned on the auto-flash and really like the results since the morning around the 8am time frame has been dark and overcast. I did a little editing in Apple Photos but I like them much better than the normal early morning photos we take. I left the flash on for the rest of the walk, all the way back to the door.

I was reading Bedlam Farm this morning and Jon had an interesting post about how he stopped his Boston Terrier from eating gobs of crap in their barnyard. I am to the point of trying the can of "Pet Correcter" where I can either buy it online for delivery or take a trip to Bloomington's Pet Smart and bring it home immediately.

He didn't show a lot about how it worked in his short video but his blog article explained the process here. It sounds encouraging ... only took him thee days ... yet, bloodhounds are very very stubborn, so I might use the whole can and still not get positive results.

From the time I got up this morning throughout the walk, I have never heard a day quieter than this morning. People must have celebrated a ton last night and are trying to recover because after three hours or so of being awake, I have heard or seen less than five cars pass by on the highway. It's like the Twilight Zone here today.

My HughesNet Gen 5 internet speeds have mysteriously moved back to their normal speeds of 45Mbps on the download. That is so much different than 2-3Mbps I had last week when I called them. Yet I have been having a 'data leak' somewhere. I have been using over a gig of data per day where I usually top out at 700Mb per day, but many days less than that. Granted I have spent a lot of time changing the blog design recently, or changing browsers between Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox. Those automatic updates to the browsers are killers on data but needed.

Then again, all of that data usage may be caused by where my I am most of the time when the weather turned wet or colder. Plopped right in front of my computer ...

I mentioned the other day I was going back to Microsoft Excel. My 2011 version of Office was not going to work with the latest Apple OS update, plus Microsoft had stopped with their security updates. I did play around with the Excel charts I had on file, remembering how easy they were to work with ... when I found a surprise.

When I went back to Apple Numbers, using the same right clicks on my trackpad, I was finding similar menus and options that I had on Excel. Within minutes I had updated new charts on my 2019 spreadsheets. Not many of my spreadsheets have charts but I found these charts to be a motivation feature a few years back when I was paying off debt ... now used showing my savings.

It's been a few days since I started my new Facebook account. While I was checking the website on my iPhone last night during the commercials of the football game, I had a notification that an old friend from the past had sent me a Facebook Message. Facebook prevented me from reading that message UNLESS I downloaded their messenger app ... which I will never do.

I don't even download the Facebook app on my phones or tablets. That is giving them the keys to my personal data in more ways than just surfing the internet. I type in their URL on my tablet and phone, using their website to see my account instead of their app. For convenience I was awfully close to clicking the buttons they provided before I caught myself. Does that really make a difference? App or no app?

Last night on FS1 when they were doing a pre-game advertisement for the Northwestern - Utah game being played in San Diego, they had the Coronado Bridge in the background. I have probably driven or ridden across that bridge a thousand times or more but one trip in particular I will never forget.

I was taking a taxi in the early morning hours (2am or 3am) across that bridge to the aircraft carrier that was docked at NAS North Island in Coronado. During the time after midnight they had the orange road cones set up in the center lanes of the bridge in preparation for the daily morning rush hour a few hours later. Those orange cones and my loud yelling probably saved my life and that of the taxi driver.

As I sat in the backseat looking out the windshield, not talking to the driver, the taxi was going in a straight line running over those orange cones and heading for the opposite side of the bridge at a fairly good rate of speed. We were in the middle of the bridge, about halfway across. His taxi was scattering those cones all over the lanes on the bridge.

I yelled loud but did not scream .... the driver jerked the steering wheel, getting it back in the right lane in the right direction ... thanking me ... "I fell asleep, I fell asleep, thank you, thank you (over and over) ... I don't know who was happier, me or him.  :)

Like everyone else in the world, when one year ends it is almost automatic to look back on the year from your perspective. You might look inward in deep thought or look back at the good and bad memories ... most of the time with me, I do both. I will not go into details but I will say Stella's new chew toy of 2018 was not all of the bones and balls I had bought in the past for the hounds .... those are still laying besides the dog bed that Sadie slept on and Heidi uses for naps at times ...

No, Stella had something else she liked. By the evidence she leaves for me she did NOT ingest the pieces of hard plastic as she dismantled my clothes basket for laundry. She only chews on it when I forget to move it out of my closet, to outside the closed door of the bedroom when I am gone. Those cloth balls, or rubber bones ??? They stay lined up neatly in a row next to the dog bed, untouched.

I am not sure why but it was a nice change to close out the year. Some how I missed all of the recaps of 2018, whether it be the top stories of the news or sports, even the Top 100 countdown of music sold in 2018. Has the life of digital from tv to radios changed so much that people don't catch those recaps of the closing year? I use to love listening the to the countdown of the Top 100 Hits for the year.

Yesterday was "Fire Coaches Day" in the NFL. There was also one college basketball coach fired mid-season which is never heard of. When people hear the word "FIRED" they immediately think of lack of income, no job etc .. but that's for normal every day people ... not coaches at the college or professional levels. They all have "buyouts" built into their contracts ... so yes, they might get fired but they will be rich as hell as they plant that For Sale sign in their front yard.

Besides their annual salaries, which are all in the millions of dollars per year, they will pocket millions more with their buy-out clause. In college, the school may save on that payoff in the future years as they reduce the payment based on the fired coach's new tv job or coaching job's salary. They don't do that in the NFL or MLB or NBA ... it's just gobs of cash added to their bank accounts.

So why am I bring this up?

How would society react if tv sports channels or even news channels featured how man "white" coaches were fired and how does the league look with not enough "white" coaches on the payroll? Working with, or playing sports with people of different color, I have never cared if they were  black, white, yellow or red. I have had the same philosophy when it came to bosses I worked for. Color was not important ... it was "can they do the job or can they play the game."

What color their skin was, is not a factor in my eyes.

Should a "black" professional coach or college coach be able to keep his job after years of consistent losing, just because the league is pressured to have a certain percentage of African American head coaches? Why doesn't job performance be the only role and the color of their skin not scrutinized by the media? What does it matter what the color of their skin is? Winning is the #1 objective in sports ... you either win or you get fired. All coaches know that. I get tired of hearing color of skin being involved in sports or news.

I am already hearing from the political experts on tv saying that if the Democrats want to win in 2020, their candidate must be female and preferably "a person of color."

Stella had her own path coming home this morning. With the ground so saturated before yesterday's storms, I was surprised just how fast that standing rain water disappeared into the ground, including the field. Yet it was pretty soft on the path ... yet no water surfaced when taking a step.

Another day and night of college football starts at noon today. Looking at the tv schedule it looks like all five games will be good games to watch. BTW, that tv schedule is about the best I have found over the years. On Saturdays during the season, that list of games will fill a page and a half. I print them out and highlight the ones I am interested in, during the season. I always have to remember their times are an hour behind my time. It is perfect in finding what channels the games are on and much easier to sort through one row at a time, instead of an online scoreboard.

Let me know what you think of the photos with the auto-flash setting. I really think I like them better than the dark dull photos when it's early morning and overcast.

It might not look like it from the rain dust spots on the upper part of the Mini but overall that high wind and rain whipping through the carport yesterday washed the car very well. Even the smudges of Stella's dried hound drool were gone from the top of the bumper. Looking at this picture, I can't wait until I can start my concrete project next spring.

I plan to high pressure wash it ... then apply the garage sealant in gray paint. That's not all ... I am going to high pressure wash off as much of the green paint on the steps and the house foundation ... then apply gray concrete paint to them. I will also fill in that low spot where the water collects after 43 years of use. The concrete sealer I applied in the cracks last fall has worked out great.

Heidi was NOT up all night celebrating the new year ... she was only following her daily routine of sleeping right after breakfast. This is one of the few times that she will sleep on the dog bed I bought for her seven years ago, that Sadie used every night to sleep on. I still find it strange in a way that she rarely takes a walk in the field and doesn't even explore the field a little bit on her own. The front, side and backyard seems to be her preferred area.

My brain activity has decreased a lot lately. 10 hours or more of watching football on tv will do that. I can definitely confirm I am out of the market for buying the Apple Watch, at least for now. Cameras ??? I am still actively pursuing data on which one I want to buy.

I have even considered upgrading from a Nikon D3200 to the D3500. Not a lot of difference in the specs but I've been pretty rough with my D3200 in a way. I keep wondering if my picture quality would improve with a new camera.

Yes, I admit that as recently as this morning I felt the urge to change the design of the blog ... LOL AGAIN!!  From traffic reports I saw that the last three posts on the front page were never clicked on. So I reduced the number of past articles that show up from 12 to 9. I almost went down to 6.

I think it's because of the sports sites or even news sites online, they all have a white background, not a lot of trim in different colors ... they look less cluttered than the blog looks. If I do change it in the next few days if not hours ... I will still keep 6-9 past articles listed on the front page. I will also keep the same font as this blog has now, with any changes I might make.

My eating habits are quite disappointing after changing them a few weeks ago. I am not losing weight like I want to. I don't have all the 'good stuff' to munch on during the ballgames I watch and I am constantly looking for something to eat during those games. Those apples, bananas, nuts or frozen fruit does not work as a substitute.

I also cannot make up my mind on what percentage of calories should be carbs, protein and fat. I do realize that if/when I eat pasta, rice or beans I HAVE TO control my portion size ... otherwise the pounds are gained with each bite taken.

I am craving a pizza so bad that I might be learning why meth addicts can't stop. Don't even remind me about Ben & Jerry's ice cream !!!!  :)

Bring on 2019 ... all of us here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana are ready for the new year.