High Winds Energize Stella

First of all I hope all of my readers from the state of Mississippi made it through "tornado alley" yesterday without any damages to your home. I cannot imagine sitting through those type of winds. We have had tornadoes pass through this area but in all directions around us, in past years. Yet at 5am this morning I was bolted awake with a loud sound as if my driveway was filled with idling cars, trucks and motorcycles. No it wasn't a dream. I got up to check outside from every side of the house. I was hearing sounds from my house I have never heard before.

So when Stella and I stepped outside this morning around 10am the winds were howling but with the new app suggested by Maricacb a few weeks ago showed me they were only 19mph from the west and we might have a burst up to 38mph at times.

From the first step she took in the field, Stella was energized. She hopped her first few steps and then took off trotting out in front of me. I continue to give her the joint supplements so it's possible she was just feeling really good this morning. She ran a few different times during the walk.

While putting on my down parka I had decided I would take the Nikon D3200 this morning but by the time I headed outside I had changed my mind. I have fallen in love with the Canon G9 X Mark II after all the frustration I had setting up the manual settings. A reminder, that is manual settings but still shoots pictures with auto focus.

It did not take long to get use to taking  a picture by looking at the monitor in back of the camera instead of through a viewfinder. The much smaller size still gave me room to use it with a light pair of North Face gloves on. I'll post a review of that camera sometime today. I have it written but want to review it and add anything new I have found the past month.

As you can see Stella was pretty far out in front. She wasn't exploring scent this morning nor was she searching out and eating deer scat. She seemed to be leaning into the wind as she walked and trotted, which was coming from her left side.

This is looking back in the direction of the high cold winds. It's the Southwest and the normal direction that gives me most of my winds, big or small.  Like I have said a few times before, from my past, I am always concerned about those three Sycamore trees on the left side of the house.  In 2008 with straight line winds I had two Sycamore trees that size pulled out of the ground and blown down parallel to the house, covering the front yard.

This isn't a real good picture but I was trying to capture the blowing grass to show how strong the wind was. In between photos, the grass was almost bent over ground level before rising up to the level you see in the picture.

I barely caught Stella trotting. She did a lot of that this morning.

Again, I barely caught her ... I turned and she was almost past me.

You can see by her ears the wind is even stronger as we were at the back of the field. With all of that open space, the wind was howling, and very loud.

At times I will find those grocery store plastic bags blowing in the yard or this field. I always grab them, put them in my pocket and throw them in the recycling bin when I get home. This looked a little different from a shopping bag. I caught glimpses of a bright reflection as the wind moved it.

It looks like someone lost their Valentine balloon.

When I downloaded this picture it sure did bring back memories of a picture I took of Bertha in 2002. I was able to get that date from Bertha's picture file information. 17 years ago already, hard to believe how fast time passes.

I think Stella was as anxious as I was to get back home. It was freezing cold and we would be walking directly into the wind all the way home.

This picture may give you a better idea just how strong the wind was this morning.

Yet, she strolled through the walk as usual with the breeze blowing her ears.

I like to see her hopping and running by herself. In fact she tried to get me to play, which I did, but was unable to capture that with the camera. Did the high winds really have that kind of effect on Stella?

After our walk I did walk around the yard to see if there were any large tree limbs blown down last night. There was really not many more than from normal wind activity and none of the limbs were very large.

It was good to see all my roof shingles were still in place. Of course if had some wind damage I could file an insurance claim, pay my deductible and get a new roof put on. If nothing happened last night, it looks like I will be paying the full price for that roof when I decide to replace it.

It was just a fast trip outside after lunch. Still very windy and cold and neither hound was excited about staying outside. By the time I returned from the mailbox, they were heading for the door.

Heidi spent her afternoon rotating from this position on the couch, then running across the living room and jumping up in the big leather chair where one of her many blankets are located. That spot is only for sleeping, which she does quite well.

By late afternoon Stella was at the door wanting out, so I decided why not ... let's take a walk.

As you can see it was still quite windy.

With an early announcement of the new China Trade Deal, it will be interesting to see this spring how many of the fields in this area plant soybeans instead of corn. There are some amazing annual sales numbers for soybeans, corn and wheat if that deal goes through. I have no doubt it will. It's good to hear just how much it will help the farmers. I'll keep an eye out for which fields plant soybeans. They normally rotate between soybeans and corn each year but I have a feeling most of the fields will be soybeans.

My little Apple app 'Reminder' told me this morning it was time to download my annual credit reports from the three reporting agencies. I have all three of them scattered throughout the year, every four months. Today was time for the TransUnion report. It was good to see nothing out of the ordinary had taken place as well as seeing what few monthly payments I make were being recorded accurately. I use Annual Credit Report.

Hauwei's Mate X foldable phone is pretty amazing. I am pretty sure, in fact I am positive I will not spend the $2,600 to buy one once it is on the market. It's not only the price but I don't trust Hauwei as a company based on their past. I may be paranoid again but I have no doubt they have inserted tracking chips in their phones for the Chinese government.

Again, it's not that I have anything information they need or want ... it's the principal of them following me by a phone. Sure there are chips made in China for my Apple iPhone but I trust Apple as a company. When they said nothing like that had happened in their China facilities I believed them. Later it was proven to be true by an independent inspector.

The past week Firefox kept crashing during normal internet activity. I would send a report to them each time it happened. By Saturday I was tired of it and went back to Google Chrome after trying Safari on my iMac. Safari was just too slow.

I have started a 30-day journal about my change to the Keto Diet. Each day I am starting each post with total calories - carbs - proteins - fats in grams. I will weigh myself once per week, every Saturday morning. I will post that journal here for anyone interested, on March 24th. I plan to stick to it for 30 days no matter what. So far so good, low carbs and I have not been hungry all day.

This morning was my 2nd day in a row of drinking black coffee, although on my first cup this morning I added a tablespoon of heavy whipping cream. It tasted just like it would if you bought a latte without any sugar, vanilla or cinnamon at a Starbuck's store. One thing I have noticed after my first 24 hours of a strict diet ... I don't feel bloated and my stomach is smaller. After only 24 hours !!!!

After that initial excitement a few weeks ago for the new AAF Football League, I have not tuned in to watch a game. Maybe even as a football addict I need a break from any kind of football to prepare for next season, which starts in August for college.

Manny Machado finally signed for 10-years, $300 MILLION the other day in MLB. Since Bryce Harper is a better player it looks like he may get what he wanted or at least more than Machado signed for. Harper wants to be the first $400 Million professional player in any sport. As a sports fan .... I say that is ridiculous.

The MLB Players Union President is already talking about a players strike when their CBA expires in 2022. The last players strike was in 1994. I wasn't around then since I was floating around on deployment on the USS Vinson, an aircraft carrier. I will say if they do strike in 2022 that will put me one step closer to pulling the plug on tv. I am almost there now.

High winds, sunny skies here today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Winter Storm Was Rain

If you would have seen the local tv weather forecast last night with a tone of fear about the upcoming "winter weather" advisory, you would have expected the hounds and I would be buried under our biggest snow fall of the year. I hate "weather drama" from local tv channels to national weather experts and always take them with a grain of salt. Others go out and clear the grocery store shelves of bread, milk, and all the other packaged foods when these kind of threats occur.

Stella and I could tell it was going to be a very wet walk this morning. Where Sadie would have been sitting in the computer room entry giving me the stare down, forcing me to walk no later than 8am ... Stella was in a deep sleep, snoring, with legs and ears hanging over the foot of "my" bed a little past 9am.

She must have known the leafy path was too wet for her liking and her first step into the field was just off to the side of the path where it wasn't so wet, muddy and slippery.

This will give you some idea what the path looked like after a night of rain, instead of all that snow we were going to get after midnight. I was expecting at least some snow ground cover when we woke up but all I saw while making coffee, the car headlight reflections on a wet highway, clear of any snow.

This is not a good sign for the afternoon walk. Rains start again at noon and are supposed to be for the rest of the afternoon. I'm glad I did not apply Scott's Winter Lawn fertilizer this year otherwise I'd be mowing the first chance the yard was dry. Ask me how I know that?  :)

With all the rain and a wet field, Stella's desire for deer scat was nil. She spent all of her time with her nose to the ground or up in the air with nostrils moving as she tried to capture all of the scents she was finding this morning. With her being so meticulous in her 'data collection' the walk was a slow process ... at times one paw at a time.

I finally took a photo that shows you just how deep that gully is behind the wooded area. The neighbors that are behind my house and behind the wooded area, sits at the very top of this photo. You can see the elevation from their yard down into the gully. Luckily over the 21 years I've lived here there have been very few times where I had to walk down into that area to go get a hound. If I remember right only Harry and Sadie checked out the very bottom of the gully.

Either Stella was confused a lot this morning or she was just following what her nose told her. This would not be the first time where she would turn in the opposite direction of the walk to check something else out. Luckily this part of the path was not under water, muddy or slippery. Just very soft, but as we get higher in our 47' of elevation at the back of the field ... the path will get wetter.

Slowly but surely we move around the first turn and the back of the field looks like it's on the other side of the planet at the rate we are walking. I begin wondering if I should have brought a backpack with a lunch inside.

No deer scat but scent strong enough that I had to go over and tug at her collar to get her to move.

If there was any snow last night it would have been to the north of us and northeast. That is one thing nice about living in 'the tropics', we are about 75 miles south of the line of normal storm activity. That ranges from snowstorms, thunderstorms and tornadoes that always seem to follow I-70 from the west into the Indianapolis area

With the majority of the walk completed, Stella was still staying just off the side of the path. She was taking no chances getting her paws wet. Heidi would be tip toeing, Sadie would have charged through puddles and mud, Winston would have strolled on the path no matter how wet ... but Stella ... always bypasses any kind of ice, water puddles or over saturated paths.

Again ... reversing her stance in the opposite direction she was walking.

Just because I took a left at the "Y" you can barely see, using the old way home doesn't mean that Stella was going to follow me. She gradually veered toward the same part of the backyard we always enter at the end of the walk, the north part of the yard.

I checked the battery icon before we left and it looked as if we had plenty of battery left for the walk. Right after I took the 2nd picture on the walk this morning, the battery icon turned red and was flashing at me. So I turned the camera off and on between pictures during the walk and made it all the way to here. Right after I snapped this picture, the camera went dead and the lens retracted automatically. Perfect timing.

With rain predicted it will be another day inside. I am back to reading the huge book about Steve Jobs. Over the years I have tried multiple times of reading that book but have never completed it. I might find something else on my shelves that interests me. I do know one thing for sure ... I will NOT be reading the book by Andrew McCabe.

In my opinion he and others should be in jail not doing book tours. James Comey included.

This afternoon might be time to finally post my review on the Apple Watch Series 4 I bought January 4th. It does so much that I had to turn off some notifications and over the 6 weeks that I have used it I have fine tuned the information it provides into only what I want to see.

I still claim it's the best electronic device I have bought since my first desktop computer in 1995. I saw the other day that 1 in 4 adults now wear a smart watch of some kind.

Partly because I was sick yesterday and partly because I tried ... I kept away from tv news yesterday and last night. It was hard not to tune in to see what was going on, even when I knew what was going one. It's sad to think we have to listen to the same bullshit for the next two years and possibly longer, depending on who wins the election.

Vegas gives Trump 3-2 odds of winning. Harris is second at 8-1 and I think it was Bernie in third place at 10-1 odds. You may not remember or know, but up to the final day of the 2016 election Vegas oddmakers had Trump winning the 2016 election from day one, no matter what the tv political polls said.

Heidi has just woken up at 10:41am and strolled into the computer room where the water dish is located for her and Stella. She likes to hydrate herself right after her morning nap. When she is finished with 'inhaling' water, she will then move to her position on the couch for more sleep until lunch is served.  LOL Yes, I'm serious ... that is her daily routine. Plus she never stops for air while drinking water ... it's nonstop.

I feel much better than I did this time yesterday. Maybe I have flushed out that illness with all the water I have been drinking the past few days.

It's warm and wet here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana this morning.