Rain Rain And More Rain

Evidently Stella knew something that I didn't at 5:03am. Her loud whine woke me up. I tapped my Garmin face to see the time with a bright white background. It was way too early to get up but I had a hard time convincing Stella of that. All three of us were up and starting our day 24 minutes later. I heard rain in the darkness as I opened the door to let the hounds out. It has not stopped five hours later ... Consequently it's a day of "rambling" and some long lost photos.

These first three photos show just how dark it was at 8am. Normally Stella and I would be heading out to the field for our morning walk. It looked like the middle of the night because it was so dark. The only way I could get a decent photo was to use the flash. Usually Stella doesn't like getting out in the rain but when you have to go, you have to go.

While I stood under the shelter of the roof overhang, I kept saying 'come on' but she had other ideas. She had to check out the scent the field cat left last night. 8am and darker than dark outside

I had to go through my photo archives to pull some out for this post. Back in October 2014 I wrote about this covered bridge near my house. During the winter months with all the leaves off the trees I can see a light that is near or maybe on the covered bridge, as I stand on my driveway, or while sitting near the large kitchen window.

I cannot remember the year but I think this photo was taken in 2016. I had glanced out the window of my computer room to see this deer by the property pole. That's where Stella walks by to end most of her morning walks. I didn't want to startle it, so I took what photos I could from inside that room, shooting a zoom lens through a screen window. Then I decided to sneak outside, quietly as possible. While I stood not far from the house, she stood staring at me, neither of us moving. She eventually turned and started bouncing/running back to the woods.

At that time Stella was still running as fast as she could after any deer she saw, along with Sadie .... so they were both left in the house, sleeping, while I took this photo.

While looking at different folders in my Photos program I saw one labeled 3200. I wasn't sure what that was nor could I remember the last time I looked in that folder. What I found were 3,200 photos with some of them going back 16 years. Possibly they were involved in transferring from Apple's iPhoto to Photos a few years ago. I also found a lot of photos I forgot about and had not been moved to each current folder that each hound has.

This is Arthur around 2003. What I found interesting was how his black hair on his back was turning dark brown to match his shoulders, head and ears. He and Winston had the same mother but Winston was born in the next litter or two litters after Arthur was.

When you see current pictures this past July, the field and yard will not look much different than it did 14 years ago in 2004. The few differences are, me using a different camera, the previous farmer use to store rolls of hay along the edge of the woods and coming in to pick up rolls of hay as he needed them during the winter. The current farmer that bales the field will take all the rolls of hay away to his farm about 15 miles away.

That is Bertha running in from the field. She might look like a heavier Sadie but no relation in any way. She grew to the age of 8 and never could get rid of her weight problem with different foods, different portion sizes and a lot of walks in the field. She was the bloodhound before I bought Sadie in August 2008.

From the time that Sadie arrived in August 2008, she always needed something to do. I can imagine the amount of time I spent away from the house in a normal work day just drove her insane. About the only thing I could find that occupied her, and satisfied that urge to be doing something all the time 24/7 were these kind of bones. She would eventually get each of them down to a size that was unsafe for her to chew on, so I'd throw them away and buy two more "monster bones". None of the basset hounds were interested in a bone that size.

I am glad I saw this picture in the folder rarely looked at. This is a rare photo in my collection which is now over 55,000 photos in my computer photo file. I think this was the spring 2017 with Heidi actually going on a walk with Sadie and Stella. No, that had to be in June or July 2017 because the field is cut and baled. As you know, Heidi doesn't take that many walks in the field, no matter how high or short the grass is. You can barely see the winding path we still take today.

Winston was a puppy in this photo. The photo information did not have the actual date that I took the photo so I am guessing around 2006, when he was only two years old. He loved the camera from his first day he arrived at the age of eight weeks. I have no idea what the look on his face means.  LOL

It was good to turn on the hot water lever on the bathroom sink last night and have hot water. Like anything else, you don't know how nice something is until you don't have it. It was strange though as I was finalizing the steps before turning the power back on for the water heater. I had a scare wondering if it was really a bad thermostat along with the bad heating elements that needed repaired. A bad thermostat would prevent my repair job from working.

Before I started, I never did the electronic checks that would have told me if I had a good or bad thermostat because in the past when I had no hot water, replacing the heating elements were always the solution. So it was a nice surprise to feel hot water not long after I turned on the power.

I had a friend that read the post about the water heater story last night, send me an email afterward, asking a question that would have made draining the tank much much easier. He asked why I didn't shut off the water source for the whole house, which is in the middle of my front yard, plus it's easy to shut off the water.

THEN ... I could have turned on the kitchen and bathroom cold water faucets, draining the water much faster and much better than the time it took with the hose. You know what is laughable about this idea and how stupid I was?

I did a similar act to get the last of the hot water out of the pipes ... I shut off the water source to the water heater with the shutoff valve on top of the water heater. THEN ... I turned on all three hot water faucets in the house to flush what was left of the hot water in the pipes from the hot water tank to the faucets.

I will remember that idea from my friend next December when I empty my water heater again.

I found out this morning how bad of shape I am in by the way some small muscles felt just from the little bending, and squatting I did while working on the water heater. Of course it depends on the way I look at it. Compared to others my age, I am in great shape. Compared to when I was riding a bicycle outside 5-7 days per week in my 40's, I am in terrible shape.

Which brings me to my thoughts and confusion on ways of eating and/or choosing how I am going to eat. It's hard to choose. Every doctor, dietitian, diet fad, medical research, journals, articles, etc .... have different ideas on the most healthiest way to eat. My friend and I are helping each other to stay with the eating limits we started a few weeks ago.

He started after talking to his cardiologist, I started AGAIN just because I was not feeling as energetic as I remember a year or two ago. Since I track everything on a spreadsheet it seems, I know exactly what eating plan I was trying to follow and when. Not really dieting but changes in the way I ate after reading about different foods.

You would think a panel of medical doctors, evaluating the top diets in US News & World Report magazine would be the people to follow. I spent many years eating the Mediterranean Diet, way before it ever had a name. As you know, as you get older your body changes thus what you eat has to change.

In my case some foods, and fruit that are considered healthy give me heartburn. So I quit buying them. If you were to read the most recent reviews in that magazine by those doctors, it would be considered unhealthy to omit those foods and fruit IF I were following the Paleo or Keto Diets.  Since I am making that decision on my own and find the heartburn goes away IF I do not eat those foods and fruit ... how can that be unhealthy? Would those same doctors consider that I am eating unhealthy?

Since May 2015 my best results after changing my eating habits occur when I decrease carbohydrates, increase fat and protein. That weird book from 23 years ago, telling me how to eat based on my blood type, gave me similar if not better results. Is that unhealthy?

In all cases I choose the "middle of the road." Some call it moderation but moderation throws me off the wagon of good eating onto the side of the road where ALL foods of any kind are now my diet. I cannot do that nor can I afford that as I move closer to 70 years old. I can't believe that is just three years and five months away. Damn, life moves fast. LOL

What is confusing to me personally is finding facts from medical doctors or videos showing that fat and protein are now the healthier way to eat. Where's the confusion in that? I have a family history of heart problems. Only on my dad's side of the family. His father, and my two uncles died at a very young age of heart attacks. My dad had triple by-pass at the age of 60. I've passed that age with no health issues of any kind.

I also know the his life and mine were two different things, health wise. He, his two brothers grew up where every day my grandmother cooked meals like it was a holiday. A lot of farm raised fat, protein and added homemade pastries, pies, sugar etc. That is just the way she cooked, even when I was growing up.

So high fat, high protein equals heart attacks ... or it use to.

Now in the past few years medical doctors are saying their new research in the years 2015 and on, show all of that is good for you. All that healthy food they told us to eat in the 1970s and 80's has proven to be the bad choice. Which to believe?

So as I eat my NY strip and use real Kerrygold butter on my baked potato that also includes real fat sour cream ... I wonder at times if I am just building my system up for my first heart attack? Or do I go with the current medical finding and keep eating like that? Who's to say that ten years from now they will say again, that is a terrible way to eat.

The only thing I can do, is research and know how I feel.

If I keep getting heartburn after a 1/4 c of oatmeal, guess what? I'm not buying it even if is known to be 'heart healthy'. If I feel full for the rest of the morning after eating bacon and eggs, with no heartburn and no urges to take a nap (like carbs make me feel), guess what? I'm going to keep eating that way.

I will do what I have done in the past and found positive results.

Read all I can about food, eating habits and consequences. Compare that research to my personal results, then add or subtract the food I am eating. Combine things from each source, sorting out the good and bad with the same goal of not only feeling better but also permanently stop eating processed food in any form (except bagged coffee). I'll cut back on grains (heartburn) and increase fruits (healthy carbs). Should I choose to eat fish over beef, chicken before beef?? I will still enjoy that occasional NY Strip and/or a 5Guy's burger and a Nick's Strom.

A few years ago when I merged my two spreadsheets that listed all the foods I could eat from the book "Eat Right 4 Your Type" by Dr Peter J.D'Adamo w/Catherine Whitney with the spreadsheet from the Paleo Diet .... many of those foods matched as duplicates. It was the list of foods I had color coded that caused me heartburn or made me feel lathargic, that stood out by themselves. Many of them were listed by doctors and dietitians as being very healthy and a requirement.

To me, if it was causing me heartburn it couldn't be healthy for me. Finding out my heartburn stopped once I eliminated those foods, told me I did not have a medical condition that cause it, it was different foods that caused it.

So what do we do when it comes to choosing a way to eat?

The other night when I was looking for a movie to watch that didn't deal with Christmas. It is not because I don't like Christmas movies, but that was all the tv channels were showing ... I pulled a movie from my shelf I had not seen in a while. "Steve Jobs"

I know many don't like Apple and especially Steve Jobs. I can understand those reasons just like I don't like everything I read about others in the tech industry. That led me to pulling a book off my self that I started reading years ago but never finished the 571 pages. After reading a long introduction and the first six pages of the book, it is already a book that I find hard to put down. It will be what I do the rest of the afternoon today right after I publish this post.

With it raining lightly non-stop, what better way to spend the day than with a book.

It's Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Mr. Isaacson has written books about Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Benjamin Franklin.

He pointed out he was not writing about Steve Jobs because he felt Steve Jobs was a Franklin, an Einstein or a Kissinger but he did find Steve Jobs an extremely interesting person. He was a little surprised after he was told that he had free reign to interview everyone good or bad and to write about all sides of Steve Jobs, good or bad. Jobs, requested Walter to be his author and he assured him that in no way would he edit the book or dictate what the book was about. It was to be open and truthful as possible.

I am at a point where I feel there was some other things I wanted to talk about but don't really remember. Since I was too busy yesterday with the water heater project and documenting as much as I could, I failed to log any ideas I may have had into the "Notes" program I told you about.

One thing before I go .... EDITING my blog !!!!

You would never know it after reading a new blog post, but I really do spend time proofreading what I have written. I even use the spell/grammar check that WordPress provides. Not only that, after reading my draft copy 5-6 times, I will look at the post in the 'preview' mode, just like it will look on the website ... I continue to make corrections there.

Then it shocks me, AFTER I publish the post for all to read ... I FIND MORE MISTAKES !!!!

I correct them although it might be the next morning before I catch the mistakes.

I apologize for a blog post(s) that look totally unprofessional with stupid basic spelling and grammar errors .... especially after the number of times I proofread what I have written. I'll try to improve editing my blog posts.

It's dark, gloomy and a very wet day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Changes Continue With Me

It was a day of changes Saturday as I made a couple of mistakes that I mentioned in my previous post. A lot of them were blog changes but some of the small changes with me still continued into this morning. I guess it's one of those moments where my brain might be in the overdrive mode, where I cannot make up my mind what I want in the blog design. Plus I can't make up my mind on what to do on anything. No big deal, this is a common occurrence with me.

I am going to try something different on this post, let me know how you like it. I am going to put a little commentary about the photos listed and will wait until the end to write what's on my mind or as I call it ... 'rambling'.



It was still fairly dark this morning just like the past two days. I planned on waiting until 9:00am before starting the walk but Stella had other ideas. I heard her walk across the hardwood floor in the bedroom from her 'after breakfast' nap. That plan of waiting an hour was gone as she stood at the doorway of my computer room, whining. It was 8:03am, her normal time.

She was in the tracking mode again this morning. Signs of deer traffic were all over the field. I could see fresh hoof prints that had dug into the ground through the thick grass. I like these mid-40's temperatures so early in the morning, with only two days before Christmas.

This warm weather isn't something new. It was Christmas Day just three years ago where Winston sat outside looking for snow and wondering why it was so warm. He had become paralyzed from the middle of his back and rear legs just six days prior. To this day it is still a kick in the gut when I think about it.

Instead of trying to keep Stella on or near my path, I decided today I would follow her. Her nose was right on point, in the middle of deer tracks, with those hoof prints I mentioned but also a couple of other signs I'll get to.

I am not a deer hunter, nor a deer expert but I am assuming with the way the tall grass was pressed so close to the ground, that is a place where a deer might have laid down to sleep? I'm serious when I ask that because I have no clue. I know my answer is just a few keystrokes and clicks away if I asked that same question on DuckDuckGo image search. I thought I'd show just how little knowledge I have when it comes to any kind of wildlife.

Here is another more prominent 'bed', only this time the grass looked like it was almost damp compared to the grass around it. Something had been laying here an hour or two before we got there. You can see the two hoof prints, looking as if it dug in as the deer tried to stand up.

A poor quality photo but shows that Stella is on the move. That is rare for her and I can assure you she will not move that fast on any afternoon walk. Never

I tried getting as far ahead as possible  so I could possibly get a photo of her running. By the time I turned she was already running at me and she was so quick I barely got this photo and the one below.

Obviously she wanted to get way ahead of me.

As I walk on the path you can barely see on the right edge of the photo, towards home, this small path crosses both of our paths moving left to right in this picture. It is the deer path from the woods, across the field, to the woods behind my neighbor's house.

As we slowly make our way home ... Stella isn't done with her exploration. Too many scents to smell and catalog in her computer database called 'the bloodhounds brain'.

I knew something was strange when she abruptly moved from the center of the field heading to the backyard over to the path I take back home. She rarely does that, so something is up.

While taking some other photos of the woods, sky and my house roof I did not notice she had moved left of the path into the "land of burs". This is blurry but will give you some idea what those burs look like attached to her coat.

I was trying to hold her with one hand and take a photo with the Nikon D3200 in my other hand. She was covered with them on the other side. She thought she was going inside with all of them attached. :) :) :)

Just like I said I would yesterday, after the IU game was over a little after 8pm, I slid back into my desk chair to play around in the blog "dashboard", looking for that 3-column theme and photos just as big if not bigger when the post is opened up to read. At least you can sort or filter the 300+ themes to choose from by what you want. Not in detail but just some basic things. I tried this ... "3-columns, page-wide images". The number of themes to look at went from over 300 to 86.

Long story short, by 12:35am I had a theme I thought I liked. It was soooo much different from this one but it did have the two things I wanted, 3-columns listing 9 past posts on the homepage and images that were even larger than what you see here Sunday.
(as of 10:18am)
Yet as I looked it over there was just something I didn't like. Was it the all black background or that the three columns did not line up exactly perfect because some of the thumbnail photos were different sizes? Stuff like that drives me crazy, similar to a crooked picture on the wall ... anybody's wall.

With the lights turned off, computer turned off and both hounds asleep, my overactive brain was wide awake and still working at warp speed. 15 minutes later I jump out of bed, lights on, computer on .... yes, I was changing the theme back to what I had at 8pm Saturday and right now (unless I change it again Sunday). {I changed it a little after 2pm on Sunday}  Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!

With the different theme design I had to quickly edit my last nine posts, taking out the feature image, then installing the 'excerpt' so the posts would be summarized on this themes homepage. This morning with some help from the Wordpress techies I was able to install some CSS code to remove the categories that were above the titles of each individual post.

Here is the 'sick' thing with me. The blog looks good to me. It's easy to read, it's bright and easy to navigate BUT .... I still have a small urge but big enough to have me look at other blog themes (design) and possibly make changes today. Somebody take my computer away from me!!!

Oh, that is not all I can't decide on. That slight confusion of never making my mind up occurred all day Saturday. I went back to logging in all my food, at least for now. This morning I brought out the small container of granulated sugar for two level teaspoons per cup of coffee. (interesting results).

Those results were immediate and surprising. I tried the sugar again because I didn't want to wait for a month or a year to see if there was a difference. I found out something before I even finished my second cup of coffee. By adding that sugar I was feeling a little indigestion. Enough to notice the difference from the past four to five days. I'll not be using sugar anymore in my coffee, nor will I buy anymore granulated sugar nor substitutes.

I even thought about starting a new blog that was subject specific ... sports!!! What am I or was I thinking ???? It has to be the 'winter mentality' that keeps me in front of this monitor bouncing from one idea to the next while I am doing something else. I need outdoor projects to do.

At least the hounds are sane and keep to their routines without much change. They are mentally stable and know what they want, what they like, etc. They don't bounce from idea to idea. They only get confused if it is raining outside and they have to dump their tanks. Their eating habits and sleeping habits never change although the spots they sleep might.

Hmmmmm do I post this now or wait until tonight with pictures of Heidi. I can do what I use to ... post mid-morning and then include any afternoon photos on tomorrows blog. See, it's questions like that make me move in circles. Don't ask what I want to eat for lunch, I have no idea and if I did I would not be able to decide. How screwed up is that?

It's
the last daythe 16th week of 17 weeks of the regular season in the NFL. I'll watch the Colts today and all the playoffs. I have yet to watch a College bowl game because none of the match-ups interested me. It looks like I'll start watching them about every day/night starting December 26th until the final National Championship game. That will stabilize my brain a little to where I will not have time to be making blog changes but I will have time to publish a blog post.

No worries, it's all good today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Basset Hounds From The Past

Here are the basset hounds I have had over the last 31 years. Living in Washington, Colorado and Indiana, these hounds were able to handle any kind of weather. One of these is a mix Basset Hound / German Shepherd ... can you pick him/her out?

Bloodhound Doesn't Understand "Heat Advisory"

Sadie had a pretty rough July 4th. Just like days in the winter when the windchill is below 0° and a walk is not possible, when the 'feels like' is 105° late afternoon and there is also a 'Heat Advisory' sent out ... she has a hard time understanding when I tell her "it's too hot, we cannot go for a walk today". She finally gave up and crawled into her usual sleeping spot for late afternoons ... under the coffee table in the living room.

Past hounds you may not know are below.

Heidi was the hero of the day I guess. She went to the door to tell me she wanted out in the middle of the afternoon and stayed outside a whole eight minutes before wanting back in. I wasn't going to let her stay outside longer than 15 minutes anyway. It's good that I no long see her ribs anymore like a few years ago with the mystery weight loss.

Stella has me a little confused every afternoon. She doesn't leave the driveway, doesn't relieve herself and is back inside soon as possible. When we take that second walk of the day, mostly late afternoon or after 8pm ... she will stand at the corner of the house and not move ... if I try to let her go outside, she trots to the field to start her walk. No worries though, that routine change within a couple of weeks ... hopefully.

Today was a bit strange as we started the day but by noon a text I received changed the pace and interest. The day took off like a rocket and really didn't stop until I sat down to put this post together. Let just say that right before I received that text I was going to blog about something entirely different and had just loaded photos to go along with that story or topic ... which you will still see and read about below. Looks like he planted soybeans this year across the highway.

Early this morning when I opened the door to let the three hounds outside first thing in the morning while I pour their morning kibble into their dishes ... a ball of heat, very hot air hit me ... I knew the morning walk was canceled right then ... Sadie did not.

We waited to go out right after they had lunch and you can tell from the photo that all three hounds are not really motivated to move too fast nor did they want to go anywhere ... so we didn't stay out long.

Heidi went over to the shade by the fence to relieve herself and ALMOST walked into the yard. When she decided it was too hot to go anywhere and it was too hot to lay in the grass to soak up some sun, she made an abrupt left turn looked up at me and headed toward the door.

The hounds might be rated on the AKC list #73 and #74 in the department of intelligence for their respective breed but they are smart enough to know it feels a lot better in the air conditioned house compared to outside.

Sadie was stymied. She had waited all morning for her walk. She pleaded with her stares for me to break down and take her out but it was just to hot to do that. The heat index was at 107° and with all the hounds being a year older I am more cautious than last summer on when we take the walks. She didn't even go into the field, glanced at Heidi and followed her to the door.

Of course Stella as usual was on her own schedule. This just shows how great of a house dog she is. Due to the heat she had been "holding it". So even with the heat as it was at noon, she stepped out into the field to poop because she knows I hate mowing over it. Then she walked back into the yard to pee just to give the yard a little extra nitrogen to keep it green.

I agreed with her, that I needed to mow. The hourly weather site told me it looked pretty good temperature wise to mow late afternoon or early evening. I ended up mowing around 4pm when I saw gray clouds outside, storms to the north of us and a pretty strong wind passing through. By the time I finished mowing the temps had dropped to 90° and we were able to fit in our afternoon and only walk of the day in.

With this morning being so slow and no plans of going outside I decided to pull some photos of my past hounds and post one each. These go back to 1975, a lot of them from the 1990's and some from here. I've had a lot of hounds but at the same time I've had basset hounds since 1987 ... every year since I have had at least one but more than likely two or more. I'm sure you recognize who that is ... Winston.

Gretchen was picked up through a rescue service in Bloomington Indiana when I was attending Indiana University in 1975. She was half basset hound and half german shepherd. You would think that I had the only one in the world with that mix .... but a frat house had the male named Nick. Gretchen use to get all kinds of smiles, laughs and photos taken of her whenever and wherever we took a walk.

In 1987 I got a call from the Oak Harbor Washington shelter telling me they had not only a basset hound but a beautiful pure bred basset hound. I could not believe a hound that nice would be in the shelter with no owner. She was not a volunteer turn in but had gone unclaimed the past 14 days. We found out within an hour after we brought her home why she ended up in the shelter .... she was a 'runner' ... if the door was open an inch she was gone ... like in disappear gone ... nowhere on the horizon.

We use to have to search for her so many times we named her Sadie after the Beatles song, Sexy Sadie "where have you gone".  In 1987 while living out by Ft. Ebey SP on Whidbey Island I bought a basset puppy from someone I worked with. Harry was my first basset puppy. He lived and traveled in Washington, Breckenridge CO and his last home was right here. He use to like to run off but would always come back. It didn't matter what time of day or late night ... if you let him out to pee, he was also gone but not every time.

Some of his naps were taken at the Oak Harbor BMV, the Oak Harbor Park down by the baseball fields and Bradfield's Landscaping just down the road from me. I can see the roof of their building from my window. ALL of these area's that Harry would sleeping, would call me and let me know that that Harry had wandered off and when I had time, he could be picked up by the desk or cash register counter ... but he was taking a nap so I could wait.

Barney was a Colorado puppy. He had spent time at my sisters for a while during a move I was making back to Washington. They flew him and Harry out to this house on Whidbey Island right on the water. So Barney did have commercial flying experience. Honestly he did nothing wrong ... didn't run away, didn't chew things up, did just normal basset hound stuff.
 

Arthur showed up right before I moved from Washington back to Indiana in 1994. He and Harry were pretty close but luckily Arthur was not a runner nor a wanderer ... he just liked to hang out. He loved kids in the neighborhood and didn't mind riding in cars ... so the 3,000+ mile trip in the 4Runner was not a problem for him.

No that is not Sadie, that is my first bloodhound Bertha around 2003, maybe 2002. I had another Arthur. This puppy was from the same breeder as Winston's, who I would pick up in 2004. Different couch but the same house as I am in now. Sadie and Bertha look a lot a like but they came from different parents and different parts of Indiana.

That's a grown Arthur a year or so later with Max (on right). Max was a rescue from the link on my sidebar "Basset Rescue" He was the biggest basset hound I had ever seen. He weighed 81 pounds and the owner told me "he only eats kibble if you put cottage cheese on it" ... while she said that I thought to myself "not in my house"  LOL

He could barely walk to the edge of the yard and field without laying down, on his very first walk. We followed the same path then as we do today ... a few years later he was down to 62 pounds and could do laps around that field. He spent his last 5 years totally blind by never missed a walk and would play with all the other hounds in the yard and field ... an no, he didn't get scoops of cottage cheese on his kibble but he got to lick out the empty cottage cheese container.

Maggie was a lot like Heidi in temperament. I took this photo when she was really sick with cancer. I had to put her down a couple days later. You'll notice the large lump on the left side of her throat, well that wasn't the only lump she had. She was my first two tone basset hound. As a puppy my niece walked her in the Apple Festival Parade.

I always say that the three hounds I have now will be my last. As you can see that might not be possible. I have had hounds since 1987 and sometimes I had up to 4 hounds here at this house ... that's too many. So we will see what time brings. About the time you think you will never have another hound as good as the one that just passed ... a different shows up and is just as great as the previous ones.

So ... what was the text that turned my day into something entirely different?

Nothing major really ... just a surprise text from Best Buy telling me my amplifier had arrived and was ready for pickup. It came in FIVE DAYS EARLY !!!! So I was pretty happy to jump in the Z4, turn on the AC and leave the top up today, for the 35 mile drive over to Bloomington.

I had it hooked up, checked out all the inputs like the CD player, Cassette Tape Deck and even my Turntable, before taking time to mow the yard. I plugged my tv into it so I do have the separate speakers now but it's not a Home Theater by any means, nor did I want that. It has a few watts per channel less than my old Yamaha Amp but like I read during my research, the human ear cannot tell the difference between 150W and 100W per channel. The receiver comes with all the wireless features such as AirPlay (Apple), Pandora, Spotify, and others.

For those of you that use the new Firfox Quantum browser I think I have found something you can use to wipe out those videos that automatically play when you go to a news or sports website. Videos were still playing automatically with uBlock, AdBlockPlu running. I even use FlashBlock Plus and the videos were still playing when I was on Firefox. That was one reason I would not use it.

I loved the new browser. I wanted to use it as my default browser but Firefox was a 'data hog' and I can't waste data based on what I pay for. So today I did a little more research since it was a slow morning and I found this:

How To Prevent Videos From Playing In Firefox

I followed their simple instructions after I clicked that link. Then I refreshed Firefox without restarting it (not needed) and went right back to ESPN and FoxNews to see if the videos still played ... zapped, nada ... no videos. So I did the next test of going back to all the websites I visit ever morning over coffee and wrote down how much data Firefox used with that new setting that prevents videos from playing automatically and it was less than Safari or Google Chrome.

Firefox Quantum is my new default browser.

That is about all for today ... everything is done around the house, the hounds are asleep again and my AC is at full steam ahead. Vinyl LPs really do sound the best compared to CDs or digital downloads.

The days right now really do feel like 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.