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"You want me to go out on the morning walk????? .... LOL ... No Way!!!!" Heidi might make a short trip outside late morning but she isn't going to join me and Stella this early in the morning. I was surprised she was awake when I checked on her before leaving. Is Saturday morning a day of nothing, with words hard to find for the blog today??? Not sure.

It did look a little different across the highway this morning Is the water receding?

I think it is. If you look closely you can see two newly formed islands, a sure sign that the excess water is slowly but surely receding. It will be interesting to see how long it takes with the temperatures below freezing. Speaking of weather ... is it possible to write a post without any mention of weather or temperature, or what a meal was? It's an interesting observation.

Have you ever heard leaves being described as rocks? Well this morning every leaf I walked on or every clump dirt I tripped on, felt like a rock. The leaves could be flat on the ground with just a corner turned up and that felt like a rock. I am not sure they even broke off when I stepped on them. That is how hard the ground is frozen this morning.

Stella was acting about the way I felt when I sat down to write this morning. Not much going on. She wasn't eating deer scat and actually spent little time tracking scent. Had the frozen ground affected her walk or nose also?

That is a look of lack of interest and looking for something to do or to eat. She did not even attempt to veer away from me, making me wonder what was going on this morning. It was a beautiful morning with bright skies and sun. Yet, something felt different about it. Something that I could not put my finger on.

When she stopped suddenly and looked in the direction of the field behind us, I quickly looked in the same direction. In the past on mornings like this I would see deer standing in that field staring right back at us. They would be a fair distance away but they could hear or smell us and stared right at us.

Maybe out of boredom, or an urge to change things, or maybe she was getting cold ... she came running at me and passed me before I could get a second photo of her running.

Very little movement in the tall grass today, unlike the past two mornings. Yet what little wind there was, it was from the North and freezing cold.

There must have been little animal traffic last night while we slept. For the first time in a very long time she did not follow the tree line smelling possible scent left behind. This day has a feel of being different in some way. Of course after last weeks excitement with rain, floods, freezing temps, political discussions and any other 'crisis' in the news, it was hard to find things to write about today.

returned from the walk to a hot bowl of oatmeal, around 40 photos to look at, editing only a few, while scratching my head for ideas on what to blog about. The IRS was kind enough to send my refund electronically only four calendar days after I had a notice they had officially received it. Some of that will pay for my state taxes.

I found nothing worth watching on my free weekend preview of Showtime last night. Plus the two movies I was interested in paying to watch had come and gone. I could synchronize my DVR to my internet connection and watch any movie "On Demand" but I don't have a spare 2Gb of data to throw away doing it.

Today might turn into a day of College Basketball on tv. There are a few good match-ups today and tonight. I can squeeze in some book reading also. The hounds will not do much different from any other day .... eat lunch ... sleep, change spots and sleep some more. Stella and I will take the afternoon walk.

Do I even dare look at tv news or online news to find something to write about?

I saw before I headed outside this morning that ALL Performance Bicycle Shops will close March 1st. That is where I bought my mountain bike a few years ago. Besides the one mechanic, and one store manager, I was the only other person in the store. I wondered then "how long will they last", with a great location and ample parking. They had everything you need for a successful business ... except customers.

I resisted a very strong urge for fast food yesterday. I ran through the list of possibilities in my head and could come up with nothing. That's a good sign. Just a few months ago I would have been out the door and down the highway figuring out on the go on where I was going to eat. Now I hesitated and nothing sounded good.

Is it possible to have a successful campaign when you may have 20-30 candidates declaring for the Democratic nominee? I know the Republicans had 17 the last election. Will it make a different with the additional candidates? I thought 17 was too many a few years ago. I will say right now, way in advance, there is no one on that side of the fence that I will consider. I will take a look at the Starbuck's owner but I'm not sure he will get the chance either.

What makes people drive around road closed barricades like I saw yesterday. I am assuming and hoping they were only needing to get to their house between the barricades and flooded area. Yet, when I see photos in the Bloomington paper of a car with water up past the bottom of their door .... what were they thinking? Are people really that stupid?

Here is some good stuff for you:

Netflix made a PROFIT of $245M in 2018 .... paid ZERO in taxes.

Is Cory Booker really stable enough to run for President? He compared the Green New Deal with the Moon Landing and Fighting The Nazis. Only a few months ago he declared himself "Spartacus."

I saw this past week that Adidas pulled one of their new shoes off the market because .... drum rolllllllllllllll ... it was an all white shoe, during Black History Month. Really? That's the best excuse you can come up with?

How would people and the media respond to a White History Month????

Will any bill be passed in Congress between now and January 2021? (That's my own question)

Is it bad to refuse to stand up when my Apple Watch tells me it is time to do just that?  (Me again)

Apple and Google approve App from Saudi Arabia that tracks movements of women.  (Can you believe this?)

And the highlight of some of the craziness I listed ... 2020 Democrats who back the Green New Deal -- spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on air travel include private jets.

... so being the smart ass that I am I have to ask "Will they take the trains after all the planes will be gone in 12 years after this deal is approved?"

No worries ... the hounds and I are still sane here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana this morning!!

Heat Wave This Morning

What a difference 20° makes! It felt like a spring day as we stepped outside today even with ice around the door and a few snow flakes dropping from the sky. The flakes were so few you could barely see them but they were there. Stella didn't hesitate zipping past me

I hadn't checked the weather when we left so I had no idea what to expect. It's really handy to look at my watch and see 28° and cloudy without grabbing my phone. The Apple Watch still continues to impress me and I'm really happy that I made the purchase.

I couldn't find many words this morning after we got back, so I'll let the photos tell you about Stella's walk this morning. The Canon G9 X is my 'go to' camera now on these walks no matter what time of day it is or the type of lighting.

Stella doesn't like walking through puddles of water and obviously she feels the same about the ice on our path as she moved to the left of it to get around it.

I almost had to backtrack to go get her but about halfway there, she started to moved away from that spot that had a lot of data for her to collect.

There were no noises of any kind, nothing on the horizon so evidently she heard something.

You could tell she was pretty lazy this morning. She didn't roam too much, stayed on the path a lot of the time, got a little running in and is now ready for the weekend.

Although the single digit temps had left us, it seemed like the perfect time to put a pot of beans on the stove. I was in the mood for beans and cornbread for my late lunch or early dinner and to do it right that takes some time to cook.

With the beans cooking and the hounds fed, we checked the sunshine outside. As usual there wasn't a lot of activity after lunch. Heidi did her thing and then got some aerobic exercise trotting up the driveway, while Stella thought deeply about her next move.

Mid-afternoon Stella and I headed out for another walk. I was surprised to see light snow flurries because it felt so warm.

About the only difference in this walk from this morning's walk, Stella went on the right side of the ice instead of the left side. That just shows how much excitement we had going on today.

The day has been slow enough that I have thought about changing the template of the blog, going back to the "old school" format with a sidebar on the right on the home page and the post page. Of course that makes the photos smaller but with so many of you reading the blog on a tablet or from a phone, that would not make a difference to you ... the size of the photos.

I am probably wanting to change it just to have something to do. Who knows??? {I spent a few hours Saturday night looking for a different template with a sidebar on the right hand said and fairly large pictures. I made all the customizations I needed on the new design, hit the "publish" button and changed the look of the blog. By 12:06am, I turned my computer back on and brought the blog back to the design I had for the past few weeks. It will stay this way.}  :)

It's been a slow, quiet Saturday here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.