Stella was ready to go this morning for her walk. It had been raining some overnight but had stopped just in time for me to have a couple of cups of coffee, and breakfast for the hounds. By the time I was ready and stepped into the backyard Stella had started the walk and was in the exploration mode. She seems to be exploring more and more lately.
My hiking boots had not dried out from yesterday morning's walk. No sunshine means no dry boots.
I noticed a lot new spots of grass that had been mashed down overnight and some were showing distinct hoof prints.
She checked a couple of different places that lead into the woods and deep gully.
I think you can see we were in for another dark and overcast day. I had a lot planned for today inside. Clean, sorting and recycling the computer room closet the other day motivated me enough today to look at the hallway closet and two file cabinets packed with paper files back to 1993. The cabinets were only two drawers. The other cabinet had old CD's for Microsoft Office 2000, old printers and scanners I no longer had, back-up files, zip drives, and the old 3/5 floppy disc. Any CD's that had backup information I cut in two and put each half in a different bag of trash.
I tried some different settings on the camera this morning. After seeing the photos I will have to do a little more reading before I start changing settings again. In the meantime I'll go back to no flash auto focus.
I went through almost every sheet of paper in my filing cabinets, checking papers that had my name and social security number. Those went into my stack to be burned this fall with the leaves and brush. I filled a 32 gallon trash can with paper that was be recycled. Other stuff I put in the trash. So by 2pm I had made two different trips to the recycling center for my 2nd container of recyclables and two large bags of trash, costing me $4.
As you can see the field and my boots were pretty wet this morning, not halfway through the walk.
In the drawer with old CD's I found CDs and manuals for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, a F-15 flight simulator, a F-16 Flight simulator called Falcon 4.0, Microsoft Flight Simulator 1998 and an all-time favorite game ... Sim City 3000. I will either bring out my old Windows PC and use that computer for the simulators and Sim City or I will look on eBay and Craig's List to see if someone is still buying software that old.
It has been a little over a week since I decided I was going to start using my 10 month old iPhone 8+ without a case. I like how it feels without a case. One thing I have noticed the past week is when it's in my hand or I am heading for the car I am more aware of the phone in my hand and also more focused in not dropping it. Yet I will get tired of it eventually and put it back in a case.
All through the walk this morning Stella seem to think there were deer in the area or we had just missed them.
There has been a cat, a squirrel or some sort of animal in her yard while she sleeps at night. Maybe a raccoon.
I even attacked the closet where the washer and dryer are. There are two shelves that have anything from paint, cans of spray paint, quarts of oil, car polish, leather cleaner, WD40, window cleaner, spare light bulbs, etc ... I pulled everything down, put new shelving paper (vinyl) down and then put everything back on the shelf in order with labels facing to the front. A lot of stuff was put in the trash, if empty it went into the recycling bin.
Maybe the red mum is going to make it even with cool temperatures and a little rain.
After lunch I let both hounds outside to wander on their own while I was finishing my last bit of closet sorting. Later Stella was standing at the door looking inside to be let back inside but Heidi was nowhere in the front yard and wasn't waiting with Stella.
I grabbed the camera and found her over in the north part of the yard where I think a field cat has been hanging out at night. Both hounds have the same interest in the same spot, two different times during the day.
I started calling her name but she didn't realize that I was standing by the field taking these photos of her. It looked like she thought I was calling her name from the carport door.
There is some basset hound speed right there.
By the time I was leaving for my second trip to the recycling center she wasn't moving from that blanket and was not interested in riding in the passenger seat.
Mid-afternoon Stella was walking around the house whining. That is the new way of letting me know it's time for a walk. It was a little earlier than we usually take the afternoon walk but if that is what she wanted to do, then we would get it done early. Evidently I understood her whining correctly because she trotted straight to the field.
She ran in a couple of different parts of the walk today.
The ears tell you how fast she is running.
I also took two large plastic tubs of Sports Illustrated magazine to recycling. 13 years ago when I was selling full-time on eBay I was making a pretty good profit selling old sports magazines and game programs. Then overnight a company loaded about 5,000 magazines and game programs with a set price less than $5 each ... the market for mine was gone just like that. I double checked the other day to see of some of them were worth anything. By the time I would take pictures, write the sales ad, load them into eBay, then package them and ship them IF they sold ... wasn't worth my time.
Cleaning out the computer room closet last Friday I found some boxes my mom had given me. She had kept about everything that dealt with my time growing up. In all of that stuff I found a bunch of old felt team pennants but the 1967 Boston Red Sox, the 1968 Detroit Tigers and the 1965 Cincinnati Reds pennants had color team photos built in. I'll list those on eBay.
During all of this cleaning I found photos that I thought I had lost, some of them were prints of Sadie when she was a puppy. Some way this box of photos got separated from the one big box I have with all photos and older 35mm slides.
I guess the next thing I will do is figure out what I am going to do with my 2010 21" iMac that has the bad hard drive and still sitting on my second desk. I would need a tool to take the front of the monitor off so I could install the new hard drive. I am not sure I want to spend the money for the tool and a new hard drive just to resell it. I am not sure I would even break even after shipping costs ... Brand new computers at the store are cheap anymore and it would be hard to beat those prices.
I have a few more things to look through and decide whether to recycle or throw away. The fact is these old family keepsakes would be thrown in the trash most likely once I die ... so why keep them around stored out of sight in a closet??
I got so much done today that I shut it down around 2:30pm today. The hounds slept for the rest of the afternoon. I went back to reading my books and watching some college football games from Saturday that were being played at the same times that I was watching other games. One tv show I really like watching is Dateline on Friday nights. I tape those episodes and usually watch it during the week.
I just remembered to get that old PC working, nothing is wrong with the hard drive, I need a cheap monitor and a keyboard that plugs into the computer. They didn't have wireless capability when I bought that Dell desktop sometime around 2007. Instead of doing all of that, I'll probably just recycle it. I have a lot of electronics to add to the recycle pile ... but everyone seems to be charging money to recycle electronics now, where a few years ago it was free.
It was dark and overcast all day but I got a lot done in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.