When It Rains It Pours

When I posted last it was in between thunderstorms and today it is after a week where the majority of days and nights were nothing but rain. It shows we have a few days to absorb all of the water before it starts again. I wonder if there will be any dry days in between storms this spring to mow the lawn or should I just let it go.

No matter what the weather is or was ... I have to admit my interest in blogging is waning daily.

We did take walks during our absence, in between the rains. Their paws and belly were always wet by the time we returned to the waiting towel outside. They didn't mind being dried off nor having their paws cleaned before going back inside. Most of the walks did not include the camera and if we walked at all due to weather, it was always once per day.

All of the photos except the ones of Heidi were taken this morning. As you can see the field on the left side of that single lane road is flooding ... the difference in these two photos is only 17 minutes.

Heidi has enjoyed the warmer temps but there is no way she is going to get her paws wet ... she continues to wait for Spring.

Honestly I am not sure how much longer I'll be blogging. As you could probably tell this past month, my lack of interest. I've been spending less time on the computer and enjoying it more. I know that feeling will only increase as the temperatures outside get warmer. I'm doing other things now during the day instead of sitting in my desk chair, so we will see I guess.

They tell us to expect a wetter than normal Spring and Summer here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Rain Has FINALLY Stopped !!

I've seen the water levels much higher than now, a few years ago, but I am not sure that was worse than now. The standing water in back of my house was more than my underground drainage system could handle. It just shows how much water is moving underground in the field, which slopes towards my property. Yet ... THE RAIN HAS FINALLY STOPPED !!

For the first time in two days, Sadie and Stella walked out into the field. It will still be too wet to take any walks today and maybe even tomorrow since it's suppose to start raining again after midnight before blowing out of the area for a few days.

Sadie didn't stay long but was able to explore a little in the field. About all she was doing was finding that one spot that all dogs look for when they have dump their tanks.

It is May 5th and this is not what I had in mind for my May weather. Wasn't it just a week or so ago where we were touching the mid 70's and thought summer was right around the corner?? I am not a fan of this kind of weather.

By last night I think we can officially say the wild yellow mustard flowers (weeds) are gone. It will be interesting to see just how long it will take to dry that field out enough where heavy tractors, and planters can work there.

That same field runs up next to the highway. All water, but it still did not crest and go over the highway like it did in June 2008. I've seen hard rain fill my culverts and flood my driveway near the highway but nothing like that happened this week.

I think it's safe to say all of that work they did early in getting their field fertilized and planted before May 1st is now a tax write off as a loss. That water also stretches to the right where the majority of the field is located.

This is from yesterday afternoon. The rain had let up enough for the hounds to take a break outside. I was going to pull out the 3-step ladder I have and reach over the top of the gutter to unplug whatever was blocking the downspout. That was not why it was flooded, the downspout was not plugged and all I heard was large amount of water flowing down from the gutter.

It takes a lot of rain to get to the point. I have 6" black corrugated drainage pipe that runs the full length of the house in back right below the edge of grass and rock/gravel toward the bank.

Again, when the top of the driveway gets this flooded, there has been a lot of rain going on.

Yet Sadie was happy to be back outside. I had to call her to come back in from the field. Stella was already standing at the door wanting back inside. Heidi was still hibernating inside her Marmot sleeping bag.

I was still having some problems with Google Chrome today. I find it's a common problem after looking on Google search ... it was freezing when I tried to scroll on a webpage and preventing any kind of curser movement. So as a test I decided to read and find out how to clean up the files inside my Safari browser. I stopped using it months ago because it was corrupted and was deleting all of my bookmarks each time I turned it off.

It was a quick fix, deep inside 'Library' system files where Apple does not want users to go. Safari is now my default browser again, not freezing my computer and not using as much data as Google Chrome based on what my Activity Monitor is showing. It is also very fast loading the pages.

Here on top of the hill we don't have it bad at all compared to other people in the local area. With one of the main rivers in the state of Indiana running outside of town, many people have had their homes flooded, bridges and roads are closed due to being under water. It's times like these that I am happy we lived about 80' up on a hill.

Hard to believe it's Friday. It's been a strange week to say the least. I hope to pull the ladder out of the shed and get up on the roof later this afternoon. I saw this morning some small sticks sticking up from inside my front gutter. That is what is causing all of that water to come over the front edge into the mulch I have in front of the carport.

It's extremely wet here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana but at least the rain has stopped.

Cabin Fever Returns ... For All Of Us

 

It was one of those afternoons that we have not had in years, really I'm serious when I say that. There was nothing that felt right and nothing that satisfied.

Even the hounds were confused when they couldn't figure out where I had gone. I had slipped over by the burn pile, a few steps further in the corner of the woods to take a picture from that angle. Sadie thought I might have gone inside, a sure sign we are going for a walk.

Stella walked around in a complete circle and still could not figure out what happened to me. Was it a sign of things to come?

Sadie did what Sadie does best ... head to the field with her own interests. She could be an outdoor hound 24/7 I believe. Yet, she does like 'her' large leather chair with the ottoman to stretch out on to nap while I watch a game or a movie.

Cabin fever had already hit so bad by lunch time that Heidi not only made it outside, she hung around long enough for a photo shoot. That did not mean she was staying out long, after all, rain was on the way.

I know, I changed the content in the middle of a post ... kind of a test I guess and typical of this afternoon. I know some will disagree but I like the content before the picture.

After watching the water rise across the highway over the past three days I decided it was time to go over and just see how close I could get to the old steel bridge. I would have loved to have got close enough to take a picture of the water level under the bridge that had decreased to the lower half of the bank.

I knew I wouldn't get far down that single path of gravel and grass ... I can only assume that bank is at more than full capacity.

I and a few other readers have been wondering about the 'field of yellow' and what the plans were. They show up every year, are plowed under and corn or soybeans are planted in their place. I guess this year they decided to flood them out.

It keeps getting worse in the field that was fertilized, sprayed and planted early this year. That's not all of the water in that field and I'm sure he has lost some major money this year because of the flooding.

This isn't close to the worse I've seen. That happened in June 2008 when both fields were flooded. The water from the 'field of yellow' covered the highway and the water in this field was up to sign frame. It was like we were living on lakefront property.

We were only hours away of being shut off from town that time, with this highway being the last of four leading to into that were flooded out. Then a water way south of us broke and the water surrounding us and the town, drained like a bath tub and was gone within an hour.

So to battle this feeling of hopelessness this afternoon, I tried food, reading books, started a movie, channel surfed, played fetch with Sadie, tried different food, tried different books, started a different movie and channel surfed on tv a little more ... all for nothing.

I wasn't hungry for what I was eating, the books were boring, the movie was not interesting, and my tv had 250 channels of nothing to watch. Besides that, Sadie who loves playing fetch made only one run to pick up her Kong ball, only to bring it back to lay down with the ball between her paws. Heidi and Stella slept ... even my siesta wouldn't kick into gear.

We were stranded with nowhere to go.

By 5:30pm Sadie decided to try one more time to take a walk but with 4 hours of constant light rain or drizzle, she had no more interest in taking a walk and getting wet than I did.

Stella felt the first drops of rain and decided to be a statue instead. There was no way she was getting her feet wet on the fresh cut lawn. After two day of partial sunshine we were back to being water logged and bored.

Sadie has sat and stared at me for so long today that she looks like one of those bloodhound end tables that were hot sells on eBay a few years ago. Stella has decide to sleep right up next to the my desk chair in back of me, so close that I cannot move and will be trapped in front of my monitor. Heidi hasn't moved from deep inside her Marmot sleeping back with it 52° outside.

The forecast is not encouraging for the next 3-4 days ... maybe a roadtrip is around the corner?

It's not a nice time today here 'in the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Hounds Glad Storms Are Gone

I was warned the next storm coming our way Saturday night into Sunday, was going to be non-stop rain and the bite might be worse than the bark this time around. She was right ... it started to rain and never stopped.

Like I said on Saturday, before all of this rain showed up, I know for a fact that my gutters were clear and clean because I was on the roof cleaning them just a couple of weeks ago as I do every spring and fall.

When it's raining so much so fast, it has nowhere else to go than over the side of the gutter when it's full to capacity.

Luckily for the hounds, there were a few times where the rain lightened up enough that they would go as far as the yard and this one time the rain stopped completely. Yet with all the wet grass, they didn't go any further than this on Sunday. I doubt there are many pictures like this throughout the world of blogs ... LOL

By 9:00am this morning, the water in both fields kept rising. A few years ago they installed some of the largest drainage system I'd seen across their field ... right at the point of where this water is standing.

The winds were stronger than normal, it wasn't to 60° yet and the ground was over saturated but Sadie had to get out of the house. One day inside is one day too many for her. As I walked along the path with a little standing water, she took off.

Stella was showing some high energy this morning too. She was out as far as Sadie was but only to the left of the path looking for that same spot she wouldn't leave last week. Most likely that spot had been washed away. With all the rain it looks like the field grew a lot this weekend.

Once Stella hit the first turn she took off running for the far right corner. The few pictures I was able to take of her running turned out too blurry to post. With the winds blowing strong from the SW, I'm sure deer scent from the gully was filling up her nose.

In the meantime Sadie had locked on to something at the top of the gully before the turn that Stella was running past. The camera did not capture all of the movement she was doing, being quite agitated.

I had to call her name to get her to move. It's rare when I have to do that with Sadie.

By the time I had reached the back of the field, Stella had already trotted along the outside edge of the field across the far right corner and was headed down the backside of the field. She was sure that deer had crossed in that area.

Evidently the rains had washed away all the old scents, if that is possible, because both hounds were excited about what they were capturing with their noses. They were rarely together on this walk.

It's good to see Stella back to running. Each day she gets closer and closer to her old self. I'm anxious to see if her lost weight will also come back.

Looking at the clouds south of us during the walk it looked like it was going to rain here but the winds were blowing the clouds toward the east, the direction of this picture. With a little bit of sun and a lot of wind, I'll be mowing my yard by tomorrow afternoon.

I turned around to check on the hounds as I walked and both of them were dying to change course and head to the neighbor's wooded area. With a bribe where I named some food, they both turned and started running toward me. They were happy with what they got once they were inside.

The Monday has started off pretty fast after being cooped up in the house all weekend, even for me. By 10:30am we had been on our first hound walk, I had bought 80# of dog food and filled my own depleting food supply. Not bad since it was a 25 mile round trip to pick up groceries.

A couple of interesting computer / internet findings.

I was expecting to start the day with my first day of HughesNet counting my data. They gave me free data for the first 20 days after activating my account. Even though my installation was around 2pm that day, I figured my data clock would have started just after midnight.

I was wrong. Looking at their system data counter that I have access to with my account, they will not start counting my data until the exact time the installer called to activate the account, right down to the minute.

After twenty days I am still just as happy with my change from Exede to HughesNet Satellite Internet. It is just as fast at first day (48Mbps) and only lost it's signal one time over the weekend for less than a minute ... when the storms made the electrical power to my house flash off and on.

The other information computer topics is kinda strange. I almost added it to my blog post on Saturday but thought I'd wait to see if time cured it. Google has come out with a new log in screen and it worked perfect on my newer MacBook Air laptop but it didn't show up on my older iMac.

Not only that, but the way my blog was treated by the two different computers made it more weird. On the newer laptop that was showing the new Google login page, it would also keep me logged into my blog if I turned off Chrome. Google Chrome on the older iMac did not.

It acted like this for 3-4 days.

On my older iMac If I only turned off Google Chrome but left my computer on, I'd have to log back into my blog when Google Chrome was started again. At the same exact time when I restarted Google Chrome on my laptop and went to my blog, I was still logged in.

My only guess is that my computers were logged into Google Chrome on different Google servers and one of those servers did not have the update for the new log in page until 3-4 days later. Now, even after shutting off the computer for the night, I am still logged into my blog when it's restarted.

Stella is howling, Heidi is barking ... both letting me know I am late for pouring out their lunch kibble, so I have to go. They can keep time pretty well, even when it's Daylight Savings time.

Cooler, windy but no rain here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.