Sadie & Stella Play During Walk

We've gone from a hot bright sunny afternoon on Thursday, to overcast skies and rain this morning. The skies are here but the rain is not suppose to arrive until early afternoon. The day was so nice yesterday we had 3 hound walks, I mowed the yard/leaves and still had enough time to add a few more Mahjong games to the list of being finished under 3 minutes.

With the forecast of rain today I wanted to stay outside as much as possible yesterday. Two of our walks included the camera, the last one included just the retractable leash. With three walks and mowing the yard for 48 minutes, my Garmin told me I had a lot more steps yesterday than my normal amount.

I'm not sure if Stella tracks the number of steps she takes every day but I do know on those afternoon walks she is entirely different than her morning walk by walking as slow as possible and she has no interest in running anywhere.

We were on our way back, had made the final turn for home ... she continued to walk in slow motion, while enjoying the warmth of the sunshine at 66°.

Heidi even came outside late afternoon for her 3rd time for the day. I thought she was walking with us, but she only wanted to make a lap around the house and spend some time laying in the sunshine. She stayed outside relaxing even after the bloodhounds and I returned from our walk. That is her normal path when she comes outside.

This morning was a different story though. It was 45°, spitting a few drops of rain but not enough to cancel our morning walk. Both hounds were happy we were out and Stella decided early in the walk that she was making all the decisions today for Sadie and I.

We were about to get started when Sadie hears what I heard over in the woods to the right of our house. By the sound of it, a very tall tree cracked ... then made a sound of dropping to the ground. From the tree tops I could not tell where it was but that is the 2nd tree since the summer I have heard falling ... each sounding like a tall large tree.

As Sadie ran far in front of Stella and I ... I had to walk over toward Stella to 'herd' her back to our path. She was heading lower in the field, trotting toward the neighbors house ... ignoring every word I was saying.

Once she walked over to the normal path we take, she took off running for Sadie.

Both explored more than anything, falling behind me and then running past me to get ahead.

I am not sure what the reason was ... but Stella heading left in this picture, suddenly spun around as she walked away from us and let Sadie know she wanted to do a little wrestling this morning. It caught Sadie off guard and she was already on the defense.

Just as fast as they started, Stella then turned around and started running up the path made by the ATV, heading north woods, with a head wind providing all the scent she needed. I took off running and yelling her name because by her pace ... she was not going to stop.

Either she finally heard me yelling "No" or decided she had done what she had planned ... to get me jogging this morning ... she stopped and waited for me to catch up.

Just as I caught up with her and Sadie ... Stella took off running full speed down the path and toward the house. I had not seen her run that far for that long since her last deer chase sometime a year ago.

I didn't run this time ... I thought she would spend enough time snooping around for me to catch up and even pass her. She did not disappoint.

She had me and Sadie waiting for her to come back into the yard where I saw I had twice the amount of leaves on the ground than I mowed and l cleared yesterday afternoon. I am hoping for a weekend of high winds with hopes that the leaves blow all the way out of the yard.

I am still using Firefox for my browser. One website it does not work well with is Flickr. When I load my photos of the day into Flickr, the cursor hesitates and bounces around when I try to highlight the photos that I want to add to an album.

With having no interest in the three college football games on tv tonight, there will be no interruptions by switching channels to different games besides tonight's World Series game from Houston. I am hoping the Astros are the first team to win 4 games ... it's tied 1-1 right now.

Apple seems to be pushing out their macOS beta updates about every two days and we are up to #5 as of last night around 2:30am. They will continue to tweak things, improve and fix any reported problems ... before their make their next official release to all users. I had to sign up for the beta program.

For some reason this morning I am being hit big time on my phone with spam calls. How do I know they are spam calls if I don't answer the call?  I go to Whitepages, type in the phone number that is calling me in Whitepages 'reverse search' and it will tell me if it is a spammer. Then I add that number to a Contact I set up named 'SPAM' so when they call back in the future I can tell with a quick glance at caller ID if it is a legit call.

All of my spam email disappeared when I deleted my old old old blog gmail address 'houndsnrvs'. I was getting over 100 spam emails per day on that 6 year old gmail address.

It's a quiet Friday so far here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Loading the Rig and Downsizing Thoughts

I had to take time out today when I arrived home from work for something I wasn't excited about anymore. The yard needed mowed. The shrubs will get their annual trim tomorrow. This is an activity I use to really enjoy. I have a push mower and it takes about 45 minutes to finish, nothing major. Anymore it's a task I dread. Either its too hot and humid that you can barely breath or its cool and dry where there is more dust in the air, so it's hard to breath. I guess the real culprit could be me, being out of shape!  Anyway, I haven't enjoyed mowing much the past few years.

I decided earlier in the week that I would start moving things to the rig as if I were getting ready (I actually might be) to head west.  I did this for various reasons.  I wanted to see how it felt moving stuff out to the rig from the house and see if at any part of this moving I would feel hesitation or doubt. I also wanted to see just how much of my traveling list that I could fit in the rig. Before I get started it looks like I will have plenty of room for storage. The last thing I wanted to see, was how much stuff would be left in the house that would have to be sold, given away or taken to the goodwill.

Since 2011 I have downsized in different periods of effort (motivation) or as my mind changed.  I would say I am really down to just one room where I am sitting now. It has my computers, indoor bicycle stand with bike mounted, a closet full of my sports jersey collection, winter clothing and jackets and more stuff to throw away. I have downsized A LOT over the past year....still looks like a lot to go.

A lot of the furniture is spoken for when I leave, lamps, tables sold, other stuff sold and will be picked up when I leave. Tonight I see a lot of stuff that can be sold on eBay. I see some things that may be stored in a box somewhere.

In the meantime I have hauled a lot of stuff to the rig. I have a plan in mind that I will follow. I'll keep you updated on how this progresses. There should be more answers as I get into the process.

I will leave you with this though. I think at least the hounds are ready to travel fulltime. Why do I say that? How do I know?

Every night this week, I have left the coach entry door open as we do the daily hound walk through the hay field in back. On the return about 100' from from the yard I stop and unhook the basset and the bloodhound from their leashes...Winston, the old hound walks without a leash. So, EVERY night this week after being unhooked from their leashes, all three hounds sprint (ever see a basset run?) toward the house but all make abrupt left turns jumping into the open coach entry and all are inside the rig by the time I get to the door.

What do you think?  Are they ready?

Two days ago when I pushed the domain name to my blog I started getting hundreds of anonymous comments from spammers. I have had to adjust my comment setting to not allow anonymous comments. I apologize to those that are honest people but are blocked from commenting.