Sadie Gets Her First Walk In 3 Days

Cabin fever for all of us had maxed out by this morning. Sadie slept, had some lunch, went out to check the water levels, slept some more and then stepped into my computer room to give me 'the stare' ... it was time for a walk.

The ground didn't really look much different than it did 4 hours ago but I had come up with an idea that could get me to walk them. I'd put on my North Face snow boots. They are not big nor bulky, lighter than the hiking books, with more rubber over the top of the foot. I'd stay dry no matter what.

Stella stopped for a quick pee break and the trotted toward our path. Sadie didn't wait for us and was way in front, nose to the ground and extremely happy.

It was her first walk since the morning of May 3rd, before the rains came. It seems longer than that since it was nice weather. Even the temps at 60° felt warm.

With the grass taller only means they needed to put their noses deeper inside it. There are a lot of new scents after a rain so they both were quite active.

This is just to the start of the far right corner. Neither one of them stayed too long before they came exploring along the edge of the field. After another day in front of the computer reading and looking for some answers, it was nice to be outside again.

Stella followed her own pace today. It didn't matter what Sadie was doing up ahead, nor what I was doing. She wasn't running today but glided across the field enjoying her walk.

As you can tell the hay is not nearly as tall here as it is near the house where the hounds spent the winter fertilizing it. It also looks like Stella has gain a little weight this week.

Sadie found something interesting enough to hang back as Stella and I kept walking. There is never a worry about her because she will always run to catch up on her own.

This running is good for her. That dark spot on her lower leg is a place she licks every night before she goes to sleep. She has done that for years for some reason. It's never bare skin, just wet hair.

While we waited for Sadie to catch up, Stella stopped abruptly, sat down and looked in the direction of the neighbor's wooded area. Did she smell that big blonde cat? Something had caught her attention enough to perk her ears up.

It looks like she is walking away from us as we get to the backyard but it's a new habit she has had the past week or so ... she will always use the path to return to the yard instead of walking straight from the field's tall grass, unless she is not on the 'official' daily walk.

As you can tell, she was in no hurry today ... she must be resting to watch the Kentucky Derby tonight.

The water is slowly moving out. That is only part of the field showing, not a sandbar. It looks like the row of crops out in the middle of the water is stable ... maybe they don't have to do anything to this field but let the sunshine do it's work.

I ran a free app called Dr. Cleaner by Trend Micro to clean up all my junk files and optimize my hard drive. It found and deleted over 2Gb's of junk files. It has more features but I would have had to buy the professional version. Instead the website I mentioned in my last post called Make Use Of, recommended a free maintenance app that would analyze, repair and do some general clean up of the hard drive.

It reported there were no problems with my hard drive and did a little cleaning. I shut down the computer while we were on our walk and so far since we have restarted the computer I have not had those small frustrating issues I've been having the past couple of days since the restore of the hard drive.

So, I thought I'd wait to see how things workout before I do a clean install of my OS and start all over like it's a new computer. That option still is interesting to me.

The Kentucky derby tonight on a track rated 'sloppy' will open the large number of entrants up to where anyone can win. The days I use to go to the California race tracks every day, I never bet when the track was rated muddy or sloppy.

All the hounds are happy and sound asleep here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Cabin Fever Returns ... For All Of Us

 

It was one of those afternoons that we have not had in years, really I'm serious when I say that. There was nothing that felt right and nothing that satisfied.

Even the hounds were confused when they couldn't figure out where I had gone. I had slipped over by the burn pile, a few steps further in the corner of the woods to take a picture from that angle. Sadie thought I might have gone inside, a sure sign we are going for a walk.

Stella walked around in a complete circle and still could not figure out what happened to me. Was it a sign of things to come?

Sadie did what Sadie does best ... head to the field with her own interests. She could be an outdoor hound 24/7 I believe. Yet, she does like 'her' large leather chair with the ottoman to stretch out on to nap while I watch a game or a movie.

Cabin fever had already hit so bad by lunch time that Heidi not only made it outside, she hung around long enough for a photo shoot. That did not mean she was staying out long, after all, rain was on the way.

I know, I changed the content in the middle of a post ... kind of a test I guess and typical of this afternoon. I know some will disagree but I like the content before the picture.

After watching the water rise across the highway over the past three days I decided it was time to go over and just see how close I could get to the old steel bridge. I would have loved to have got close enough to take a picture of the water level under the bridge that had decreased to the lower half of the bank.

I knew I wouldn't get far down that single path of gravel and grass ... I can only assume that bank is at more than full capacity.

I and a few other readers have been wondering about the 'field of yellow' and what the plans were. They show up every year, are plowed under and corn or soybeans are planted in their place. I guess this year they decided to flood them out.

It keeps getting worse in the field that was fertilized, sprayed and planted early this year. That's not all of the water in that field and I'm sure he has lost some major money this year because of the flooding.

This isn't close to the worse I've seen. That happened in June 2008 when both fields were flooded. The water from the 'field of yellow' covered the highway and the water in this field was up to sign frame. It was like we were living on lakefront property.

We were only hours away of being shut off from town that time, with this highway being the last of four leading to into that were flooded out. Then a water way south of us broke and the water surrounding us and the town, drained like a bath tub and was gone within an hour.

So to battle this feeling of hopelessness this afternoon, I tried food, reading books, started a movie, channel surfed, played fetch with Sadie, tried different food, tried different books, started a different movie and channel surfed on tv a little more ... all for nothing.

I wasn't hungry for what I was eating, the books were boring, the movie was not interesting, and my tv had 250 channels of nothing to watch. Besides that, Sadie who loves playing fetch made only one run to pick up her Kong ball, only to bring it back to lay down with the ball between her paws. Heidi and Stella slept ... even my siesta wouldn't kick into gear.

We were stranded with nowhere to go.

By 5:30pm Sadie decided to try one more time to take a walk but with 4 hours of constant light rain or drizzle, she had no more interest in taking a walk and getting wet than I did.

Stella felt the first drops of rain and decided to be a statue instead. There was no way she was getting her feet wet on the fresh cut lawn. After two day of partial sunshine we were back to being water logged and bored.

Sadie has sat and stared at me for so long today that she looks like one of those bloodhound end tables that were hot sells on eBay a few years ago. Stella has decide to sleep right up next to the my desk chair in back of me, so close that I cannot move and will be trapped in front of my monitor. Heidi hasn't moved from deep inside her Marmot sleeping back with it 52° outside.

The forecast is not encouraging for the next 3-4 days ... maybe a roadtrip is around the corner?

It's not a nice time today here 'in the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Hounds Glad Storms Are Gone

I was warned the next storm coming our way Saturday night into Sunday, was going to be non-stop rain and the bite might be worse than the bark this time around. She was right ... it started to rain and never stopped.

Like I said on Saturday, before all of this rain showed up, I know for a fact that my gutters were clear and clean because I was on the roof cleaning them just a couple of weeks ago as I do every spring and fall.

When it's raining so much so fast, it has nowhere else to go than over the side of the gutter when it's full to capacity.

Luckily for the hounds, there were a few times where the rain lightened up enough that they would go as far as the yard and this one time the rain stopped completely. Yet with all the wet grass, they didn't go any further than this on Sunday. I doubt there are many pictures like this throughout the world of blogs ... LOL

By 9:00am this morning, the water in both fields kept rising. A few years ago they installed some of the largest drainage system I'd seen across their field ... right at the point of where this water is standing.

The winds were stronger than normal, it wasn't to 60° yet and the ground was over saturated but Sadie had to get out of the house. One day inside is one day too many for her. As I walked along the path with a little standing water, she took off.

Stella was showing some high energy this morning too. She was out as far as Sadie was but only to the left of the path looking for that same spot she wouldn't leave last week. Most likely that spot had been washed away. With all the rain it looks like the field grew a lot this weekend.

Once Stella hit the first turn she took off running for the far right corner. The few pictures I was able to take of her running turned out too blurry to post. With the winds blowing strong from the SW, I'm sure deer scent from the gully was filling up her nose.

In the meantime Sadie had locked on to something at the top of the gully before the turn that Stella was running past. The camera did not capture all of the movement she was doing, being quite agitated.

I had to call her name to get her to move. It's rare when I have to do that with Sadie.

By the time I had reached the back of the field, Stella had already trotted along the outside edge of the field across the far right corner and was headed down the backside of the field. She was sure that deer had crossed in that area.

Evidently the rains had washed away all the old scents, if that is possible, because both hounds were excited about what they were capturing with their noses. They were rarely together on this walk.

It's good to see Stella back to running. Each day she gets closer and closer to her old self. I'm anxious to see if her lost weight will also come back.

Looking at the clouds south of us during the walk it looked like it was going to rain here but the winds were blowing the clouds toward the east, the direction of this picture. With a little bit of sun and a lot of wind, I'll be mowing my yard by tomorrow afternoon.

I turned around to check on the hounds as I walked and both of them were dying to change course and head to the neighbor's wooded area. With a bribe where I named some food, they both turned and started running toward me. They were happy with what they got once they were inside.

The Monday has started off pretty fast after being cooped up in the house all weekend, even for me. By 10:30am we had been on our first hound walk, I had bought 80# of dog food and filled my own depleting food supply. Not bad since it was a 25 mile round trip to pick up groceries.

A couple of interesting computer / internet findings.

I was expecting to start the day with my first day of HughesNet counting my data. They gave me free data for the first 20 days after activating my account. Even though my installation was around 2pm that day, I figured my data clock would have started just after midnight.

I was wrong. Looking at their system data counter that I have access to with my account, they will not start counting my data until the exact time the installer called to activate the account, right down to the minute.

After twenty days I am still just as happy with my change from Exede to HughesNet Satellite Internet. It is just as fast at first day (48Mbps) and only lost it's signal one time over the weekend for less than a minute ... when the storms made the electrical power to my house flash off and on.

The other information computer topics is kinda strange. I almost added it to my blog post on Saturday but thought I'd wait to see if time cured it. Google has come out with a new log in screen and it worked perfect on my newer MacBook Air laptop but it didn't show up on my older iMac.

Not only that, but the way my blog was treated by the two different computers made it more weird. On the newer laptop that was showing the new Google login page, it would also keep me logged into my blog if I turned off Chrome. Google Chrome on the older iMac did not.

It acted like this for 3-4 days.

On my older iMac If I only turned off Google Chrome but left my computer on, I'd have to log back into my blog when Google Chrome was started again. At the same exact time when I restarted Google Chrome on my laptop and went to my blog, I was still logged in.

My only guess is that my computers were logged into Google Chrome on different Google servers and one of those servers did not have the update for the new log in page until 3-4 days later. Now, even after shutting off the computer for the night, I am still logged into my blog when it's restarted.

Stella is howling, Heidi is barking ... both letting me know I am late for pouring out their lunch kibble, so I have to go. They can keep time pretty well, even when it's Daylight Savings time.

Cooler, windy but no rain here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.