All They Wanted Was Their Walk

Due to staying up too late watching baseball games on the west coast, this past week I've gotten up to let the hounds out and fed them breakfast every morning at 'their' normal time, but would go back to bed. Sleeping 2:30am - 7:00 am is never a good deal.

So this morning was no different and by the time the first cup of coffee was consumed the skies were clear blue and the sunshine had returned in full force. We start the slow climb to 76° these next few days.

The hounds ate their first meal as fast as ever and then immediately went into their 'stare down' wanting to walk. At 7am it was still too wet to walk anywhere, plus I was going back to sleep. Is that too much info?

As soon as that first cup was consumed both bloodhounds were standing like those bloodhound end tables you may have seen being sold on the internet. I knew they were ready to go ... wet ground and all. Yes ... it was still very saturated with all the rain we got yesterday. The higher we walked the wetter the ground became.

With the day off and all that rain to wash away the old smells and giving them new smells to explore ... the hounds were not only high energy, they were all over the place on this walk. So many places to go that they were almost in a frantic state as they scrambled back and forth along the walk.

At this point in time I was sure they had locked into something and would never stop running. Luckily I did not see any deer on the horizon but they had found plenty of the deer tracks to make them almost take off over the edge and down into the gully. A quick loud yell helped them change their minds.

Once again Stella had a mind of her own and I didn't even bother trying to get her to move. I just kept walking. Little did I know she would find another 3-4 places to stop along the way home.

They may have started running together but something caught Stella's interest ... over toward 'the no fly zone' which goes from the back of the field and anything past 10' toward the left if I am looking toward the back of the field.

This pose always confuses me ... since any bred of dogs don't see well, what does she see?? Or is it her nose that is getting her to pose like that?

Once again I was not going to even attempt to yell to come on because she was going to ignore me anyway. It's the DNA of the bloodhound breed. Sadie stood watch for a while, looking back at me and then back to Stella. She decided it was time to leave Stella and came running toward me.

As usual once Stella figures out no one was with her ... she came sprinting and just brushed up against my leg at full speed. I have to watch her up until the very last second and dodge if needed because she has at times hit me at full speed and didn't even flinch.

Living proof the walk was wet ... the Nike's are not waterproof.

I'll continue some reading about the online biz I mentioned yesterday but with weather being so nice today, I'll be outside most of the afternoon enjoying the weather. I need to get up on the roof today and check some spots after the high winds the other night. I also need to do a little more on that fence that I keep trying to repair.

Some things are changing in the online sales business that may make my decision pretty easy to not pursue it and continue to be a retired "slacker" ... which I can handle.

Amazon and eBay are in the process of making it impossible to sell products and have them drop shipped from the supplier. I always liked that type of drop ship business because I would have 3,000 - 10,000 items listed in both stores plus a separate website and would not have to spend a dime on inventory ... until a sale was made and then paying for only the item that had sold.

In addition to those changes, the NFL doesn't like their officially licensed merchandise being sold on Amazon and eBay, where it cuts in THEIR BILLION dollar business, so they are attempting to ban those sellers and threatening the suppliers. If one pro sport wins that battle you can expect the NBA and MLB to follow suit. Here is the article that discusses it. Sure counterfeit products are part of the problem but all of my suppliers are authenticated and legit.

So ... I am beginning to think it might be a lot nicer sitting back in the sunshine drinking ice tea after a fresh cut yard ... enjoying 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Response From Kickstarter

I received good news today, at least as a start on Kickstarter. I've read good stories about this site so last Tuesday I went over to the site to find out what I could and if I had a "project" that would fit their requirements.

I had a little different project from their norm, so I emailed them for clarification and received their reply today, confirming that my project would fit in their project model and that I could moved forward with my idea.

I had an idea that I have had set up for a years and in the past I had emailed these out to family, friends and co-workers when they requested them. The word got out what I had or did for my own personal enjoyment and/or analysis, so more and more of the information I had was passed out for free.

Recently I had been thinking of ideas that would generate online income. I was looking at ideas I could sell online, electronically and not dependent on me being in a certain location or even have internet connection. From 2005 - 2008 my fulltime job was at home, selling autographed sports memorabilia online via Amazon, eBay and my website. I had 4-5 blogs that tied into these websites to generate traffic. I didn't ship anything from my house since all of my inventory was at the authenticator's location. They would drop ship the order as I received a sale.

Sounds pretty simple and it was great between those years but it also amounted to 7 days a week and long hours. I was making enough income to live on and work from home. Due to the economy change in 2008, plus a change in policies from my suppliers, business decreased rapidly. After going back to a 40 hour a week job in 2008, I ran my online business part time until 2011. Those part time hours still amounted to over 20 hours per week in addition to my 40 hour per week job. When I was doing the business full time I was working 7 days per week and anywhere from 6-16 hour days.

I loved it though, sports is my thing, so the hours added up and it didn't matter. I loved all the work I was doing and it never seemed like a job.

With the urge to travel and with an expectation of not being able to be connected to the internet all of the time I began to look at other options in generating income this past month. I am not sure if this idea will work but I'm going to try it and find out.

I have most of the set up work completed and will only have to write a project description to add on Kickstarter. Once I get things set up on Kickstarter, I'll post the link and go into more detail what my project consist of here in a blog post.