To Early To Say Winter Is Over???

Since I last posted we have experienced a little bit of everything. Good and bad weather, a head cold, temps that were single digits as highs then almost 60° a week later. All of us did a lot of sleeping, a little eating and recently more book reading. So really, not a lot going on. Everything is normal.

Snow Arrives

When I left you yesterday I had some ice, it was raining ice droplets but nothing major. Then around 2:30pm things changed. It started snowing and didn't stop until around 7:30pm. I went to bed with snow icons on my weather map every hour until 8am this morning. That seemed strange for this southern area. Luckily it stopped soon after I checked the patio. Those paw prints were not even covered with snow when we woke up this morning.

Watson's First Snow

Watson's day started at 19° and no snow. Where was it? The forecast was for 1" to 3", with snow between daybreak and 11am. Henry and Walter experienced snow last year in Sierra Vista. The only difference is that snow would be gone within two hours after it stopped. This snow will be here longer but the rain this weekend will wash away any snow that is left. Like all the other hounds I have had, most likely the snow would energize him and of course since he eats everything, he will try to eat it.

My Brain Cells Go On A Trip

I knew this morning when I saw the small creek had flooded into the fields, the chances of Stella wanting even a late morning walk would probably not happen. Heidi let me know that she was not staying outside any longer than needed because it was April 20th and 42° with light rain.

Usually when Stella is in this stance she is not going anywhere and is only waiting for me to confirm her decision by walking past her to let her inside the house. It took less than a minute for her to let me know we were going nowhere this morning.

So after pouring my second cup of coffee trying to wake up from my late Friday night of watching the Reds pull out another win in San Diego ... my brain cells floated away down memory lane. Was it the weather outside trying to make me forget it was officially spring or was it something else. I typed realtor dot com into the address bar at the top of the screen and started looking at houses for sale.

That happens when the weather is bad but it normally happens during the middle of winter when it's freezing snow and 7° outside, not Seattle weather in April. Now before you get too excited there is only one area that I would look at with the hounds in tow. All of the other places are for when I get older and might be boundless ... or I am tired of doing yard work or freezing my ass off in the winter.

While looking at houses, condos and even apartments for rent in one specific location, I did this the rest of the morning missing lunch and into the early afternoon. That is how curious I was. A little after 2pm the hounds acted like they wanted outside and I too needed to relieve some of my 'cabin fever' so we were off.

I didn't know that Stella was planning on take an early afternoon walk but that was nice.

She wasn't waiting for me as she silently snuck away while I was checking on where Heidi was at and what she wanted to do. It was 47° but felt colder and a light sprinkle of rain. For the second afternoon in a row, Stella took a walk in a light rain. That is history right there.

Long time blog followers have been on this 'trip' before and heard the same commentary as I move from state to state, large towns to small and from north to south. Today I covered NM, AZ, CO, NV, WA and CA. I reminded myself the reason I was moving was to see the sunshine as many days possible in a years time, with temperatures as high as possible for as many days as it could.

Another words, I need weather in southern Arizona or southern California to do that.

After living in Carlsbad California for close to 10 years I know what the weather is like and that May is the month of fog while December tries to get all the annual rainfall in one month. That's fine, it's not single digits. I have to watch myself though when I look at familiar neighborhoods because where I use to live I cannot afford. Plus I am not a fan of California's political leadership. I went from the coastal towns, looked at La Mesa and as far east as Borrego Springs.

Depending on locations in that state determined whether I looked at houses, condos or possible apartments to rent. Of course this would be years down the road without any hounds. I will admit though, good memories living in that area do cloud my thinking when I try to justify I could live there again.

I also looked again in my old stomping grounds on Whidbey Island, WA. I then reminded myself the reason I was looking to move was for good or great year-round weather. Whidbey Island is beautiful with the Cascade mountains only an hour away by car, Seattle a few hours away with today's traffic and Ft Ebey SP just minutes away. I also enjoyed the 10 years I lived there.

I did glance at Colorado, the two towns I lived in the early 90's and a couple that sparked my interest a few years ago. Yet, if I want snow and cold winters, I can stay where I am.

When I think of small towns in southern Arizona there is always one thought and not what you might think. No it's not immigrants traveling through the area but what will the water availability be like 10 or 15 years from now? I'm serious. Out there in rural small town Arizona water is more valuable than gold and seems to be disappearing in some mysterious ways.

Still the thought of being warm during the winter made me feel better ... then I remembered seeing the snow somewhere in southern Arizona where RVsue lives. Maybe what I want is winter or year-round weather is no longer possible. No ... Florida is not an option.

If you had not noticed in the photos, Stella started our walk taking the return path and then cutting over to the regular outward path in this next photo.

It might sound strange considering where I live now and from the pictures you see on the blog but I can see myself living in one of those small townhouses in Borrego Springs, CA. I always have a good feeling when I look in that area and at that property. A few of the townhouses have been for sale over 550 days.

La Mesa CA interests me because I could use public transportation and get to San Diego Padre games only 12 miles away. I'd have great winter weather and a lot of activity would be within walking distance. Maybe an over 55 complex might be the way to go in that area.

I could go as far east as Escondido or Vista or San Marco in northern San Diego County. Of course when I rode my bicycle through all of that area in the late 1970's it was all orange groves and now it is wall to wall houses. I remember when I flew down to visit friends in that area in 1994 I didn't like all the changes and the huge population/traffic explosion ... so I moved to Indiana, where I am now.

Of course all of this brain cell tripping could be just a case of things "always look greener on the other side of the fence" or it could also mean in a few years I will be ready to pack up and get out of cold winters.

So what location would I be looking at when the hounds would be coming with me ?? New Mexico. I've looked at a couple of towns since 2010 off and on. I saw the other day NM is now one of the three states that are popular with retirees. Ara over at The Oasis Of My Soul has given me a lot of good information about the town he lives in.

Like anywhere in any state, all towns large or small have their own plus and minuses. Compromise is a needed feature anytime you move. I can say though that everywhere I have lived in my life I have really enjoyed my time there. I have never lived in NM but have traveled through it numerous times by car, VW Bus and bicycle.

It does get cold in that town and they do get snow in Alamogordo but rarely more than an inch or two and it is usually gone within 24 hours. If you want snow, the mountains are 20 minutes away. I have always enjoyed the time I have visited towns in the high desert.

Like I have said many times though, where I am now is perfect for the hounds. I cannot beat this 7 acre field anywhere that I look at property out west. I also enjoy a lot of the benefits living in this area. I'll not list everything but this small town had a higher livability rating than any of the towns I have looked at out west. Now if I can just remember what that website was called that gave every town or city a 'livability' rating, I could check out some more information.

Another telling sign is, when I get in moods like this and consider different moves, it usually takes me only one walk through the field to pull those run-away brain cells back into formation where I can think logically and find out this place is hard to beat. I like hot and humid weather, it's just being delayed this year.I will continue to look at property just like I did this morning.  :)

Yesterday was my first day in a very long time that I ate food without logging it into my phone app and then later manually inputting some data from that app into my spreadsheets. I had no problem getting through the change. I bought nothing different when I shopped for groceries yesterday.

It is the late night baseball games that is killing me this past week. Last night the game went 11 innings which put us past 1am. I also think looking at the city skyline during that game in San Diego and remembering just how many Padre games I use to attend, in a different stadium, may have brought on those thoughts about moving back to the San Diego area.

The thought of living in southern California again, maybe in a condo with no yard work, does spark my interest more than it should.

It will be interesting to see what Stella does in a few days at the end of her walk when the weather is sunny, no rain and back to the high 70's. Will she still walk as close to the house as she can or in the middle of the yard where it will be nice and warm.

Luckily the Reds game starts an hour or two earlier tonight but I still might need a short siesta this afternoon if I am going to make it through another 9 innings of baseball. Otherwise I'll make a new cup of coffee, log back into realtor dot com and let my brains cells take me on further travels.

Seattle winter weather 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.

The Hounds March Into 2019

For someone that proclaims they are a 'night person' it was somewhat disappointing to find myself asleep before midnight. It was a sprint right after the last football game on tv to close the house down for the day, brush the fangs and head to bed. I had less than an hour to wait for the midnight hour and could not do it. Older or did the tv pictures of rain in Manhattan NY dampen my enthusiasm to bring in the new year? The hounds? ... they had been sleeping for hours.

This morning wasn't summer like yesterday, 62° ... but I am not going to complain with temps in the 40's. The 10-day forecast shows 40's to be the highs. I'll take that here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana during January. There are times I am just not into the white "Winter Wonderland" stuff, if you know what I mean.

Stella and I had some minor changes this morning to start the new year. For once she didn't lag behind much, spending most of her time out in front of me making it hard to take some photos from a different angle than I took most of time in 2018. I made a slight adjustment to my camera on this walk, right after the above photo

I turned on the auto-flash and really like the results since the morning around the 8am time frame has been dark and overcast. I did a little editing in Apple Photos but I like them much better than the normal early morning photos we take. I left the flash on for the rest of the walk, all the way back to the door.

I was reading Bedlam Farm this morning and Jon had an interesting post about how he stopped his Boston Terrier from eating gobs of crap in their barnyard. I am to the point of trying the can of "Pet Correcter" where I can either buy it online for delivery or take a trip to Bloomington's Pet Smart and bring it home immediately.

He didn't show a lot about how it worked in his short video but his blog article explained the process here. It sounds encouraging ... only took him thee days ... yet, bloodhounds are very very stubborn, so I might use the whole can and still not get positive results.

From the time I got up this morning throughout the walk, I have never heard a day quieter than this morning. People must have celebrated a ton last night and are trying to recover because after three hours or so of being awake, I have heard or seen less than five cars pass by on the highway. It's like the Twilight Zone here today.

My HughesNet Gen 5 internet speeds have mysteriously moved back to their normal speeds of 45Mbps on the download. That is so much different than 2-3Mbps I had last week when I called them. Yet I have been having a 'data leak' somewhere. I have been using over a gig of data per day where I usually top out at 700Mb per day, but many days less than that. Granted I have spent a lot of time changing the blog design recently, or changing browsers between Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox. Those automatic updates to the browsers are killers on data but needed.

Then again, all of that data usage may be caused by where my I am most of the time when the weather turned wet or colder. Plopped right in front of my computer ...

I mentioned the other day I was going back to Microsoft Excel. My 2011 version of Office was not going to work with the latest Apple OS update, plus Microsoft had stopped with their security updates. I did play around with the Excel charts I had on file, remembering how easy they were to work with ... when I found a surprise.

When I went back to Apple Numbers, using the same right clicks on my trackpad, I was finding similar menus and options that I had on Excel. Within minutes I had updated new charts on my 2019 spreadsheets. Not many of my spreadsheets have charts but I found these charts to be a motivation feature a few years back when I was paying off debt ... now used showing my savings.

It's been a few days since I started my new Facebook account. While I was checking the website on my iPhone last night during the commercials of the football game, I had a notification that an old friend from the past had sent me a Facebook Message. Facebook prevented me from reading that message UNLESS I downloaded their messenger app ... which I will never do.

I don't even download the Facebook app on my phones or tablets. That is giving them the keys to my personal data in more ways than just surfing the internet. I type in their URL on my tablet and phone, using their website to see my account instead of their app. For convenience I was awfully close to clicking the buttons they provided before I caught myself. Does that really make a difference? App or no app?

Last night on FS1 when they were doing a pre-game advertisement for the Northwestern - Utah game being played in San Diego, they had the Coronado Bridge in the background. I have probably driven or ridden across that bridge a thousand times or more but one trip in particular I will never forget.

I was taking a taxi in the early morning hours (2am or 3am) across that bridge to the aircraft carrier that was docked at NAS North Island in Coronado. During the time after midnight they had the orange road cones set up in the center lanes of the bridge in preparation for the daily morning rush hour a few hours later. Those orange cones and my loud yelling probably saved my life and that of the taxi driver.

As I sat in the backseat looking out the windshield, not talking to the driver, the taxi was going in a straight line running over those orange cones and heading for the opposite side of the bridge at a fairly good rate of speed. We were in the middle of the bridge, about halfway across. His taxi was scattering those cones all over the lanes on the bridge.

I yelled loud but did not scream .... the driver jerked the steering wheel, getting it back in the right lane in the right direction ... thanking me ... "I fell asleep, I fell asleep, thank you, thank you (over and over) ... I don't know who was happier, me or him.  :)

Like everyone else in the world, when one year ends it is almost automatic to look back on the year from your perspective. You might look inward in deep thought or look back at the good and bad memories ... most of the time with me, I do both. I will not go into details but I will say Stella's new chew toy of 2018 was not all of the bones and balls I had bought in the past for the hounds .... those are still laying besides the dog bed that Sadie slept on and Heidi uses for naps at times ...

No, Stella had something else she liked. By the evidence she leaves for me she did NOT ingest the pieces of hard plastic as she dismantled my clothes basket for laundry. She only chews on it when I forget to move it out of my closet, to outside the closed door of the bedroom when I am gone. Those cloth balls, or rubber bones ??? They stay lined up neatly in a row next to the dog bed, untouched.

I am not sure why but it was a nice change to close out the year. Some how I missed all of the recaps of 2018, whether it be the top stories of the news or sports, even the Top 100 countdown of music sold in 2018. Has the life of digital from tv to radios changed so much that people don't catch those recaps of the closing year? I use to love listening the to the countdown of the Top 100 Hits for the year.

Yesterday was "Fire Coaches Day" in the NFL. There was also one college basketball coach fired mid-season which is never heard of. When people hear the word "FIRED" they immediately think of lack of income, no job etc .. but that's for normal every day people ... not coaches at the college or professional levels. They all have "buyouts" built into their contracts ... so yes, they might get fired but they will be rich as hell as they plant that For Sale sign in their front yard.

Besides their annual salaries, which are all in the millions of dollars per year, they will pocket millions more with their buy-out clause. In college, the school may save on that payoff in the future years as they reduce the payment based on the fired coach's new tv job or coaching job's salary. They don't do that in the NFL or MLB or NBA ... it's just gobs of cash added to their bank accounts.

So why am I bring this up?

How would society react if tv sports channels or even news channels featured how man "white" coaches were fired and how does the league look with not enough "white" coaches on the payroll? Working with, or playing sports with people of different color, I have never cared if they were  black, white, yellow or red. I have had the same philosophy when it came to bosses I worked for. Color was not important ... it was "can they do the job or can they play the game."

What color their skin was, is not a factor in my eyes.

Should a "black" professional coach or college coach be able to keep his job after years of consistent losing, just because the league is pressured to have a certain percentage of African American head coaches? Why doesn't job performance be the only role and the color of their skin not scrutinized by the media? What does it matter what the color of their skin is? Winning is the #1 objective in sports ... you either win or you get fired. All coaches know that. I get tired of hearing color of skin being involved in sports or news.

I am already hearing from the political experts on tv saying that if the Democrats want to win in 2020, their candidate must be female and preferably "a person of color."

Stella had her own path coming home this morning. With the ground so saturated before yesterday's storms, I was surprised just how fast that standing rain water disappeared into the ground, including the field. Yet it was pretty soft on the path ... yet no water surfaced when taking a step.

Another day and night of college football starts at noon today. Looking at the tv schedule it looks like all five games will be good games to watch. BTW, that tv schedule is about the best I have found over the years. On Saturdays during the season, that list of games will fill a page and a half. I print them out and highlight the ones I am interested in, during the season. I always have to remember their times are an hour behind my time. It is perfect in finding what channels the games are on and much easier to sort through one row at a time, instead of an online scoreboard.

Let me know what you think of the photos with the auto-flash setting. I really think I like them better than the dark dull photos when it's early morning and overcast.

It might not look like it from the rain dust spots on the upper part of the Mini but overall that high wind and rain whipping through the carport yesterday washed the car very well. Even the smudges of Stella's dried hound drool were gone from the top of the bumper. Looking at this picture, I can't wait until I can start my concrete project next spring.

I plan to high pressure wash it ... then apply the garage sealant in gray paint. That's not all ... I am going to high pressure wash off as much of the green paint on the steps and the house foundation ... then apply gray concrete paint to them. I will also fill in that low spot where the water collects after 43 years of use. The concrete sealer I applied in the cracks last fall has worked out great.

Heidi was NOT up all night celebrating the new year ... she was only following her daily routine of sleeping right after breakfast. This is one of the few times that she will sleep on the dog bed I bought for her seven years ago, that Sadie used every night to sleep on. I still find it strange in a way that she rarely takes a walk in the field and doesn't even explore the field a little bit on her own. The front, side and backyard seems to be her preferred area.

My brain activity has decreased a lot lately. 10 hours or more of watching football on tv will do that. I can definitely confirm I am out of the market for buying the Apple Watch, at least for now. Cameras ??? I am still actively pursuing data on which one I want to buy.

I have even considered upgrading from a Nikon D3200 to the D3500. Not a lot of difference in the specs but I've been pretty rough with my D3200 in a way. I keep wondering if my picture quality would improve with a new camera.

Yes, I admit that as recently as this morning I felt the urge to change the design of the blog ... LOL AGAIN!!  From traffic reports I saw that the last three posts on the front page were never clicked on. So I reduced the number of past articles that show up from 12 to 9. I almost went down to 6.

I think it's because of the sports sites or even news sites online, they all have a white background, not a lot of trim in different colors ... they look less cluttered than the blog looks. If I do change it in the next few days if not hours ... I will still keep 6-9 past articles listed on the front page. I will also keep the same font as this blog has now, with any changes I might make.

My eating habits are quite disappointing after changing them a few weeks ago. I am not losing weight like I want to. I don't have all the 'good stuff' to munch on during the ballgames I watch and I am constantly looking for something to eat during those games. Those apples, bananas, nuts or frozen fruit does not work as a substitute.

I also cannot make up my mind on what percentage of calories should be carbs, protein and fat. I do realize that if/when I eat pasta, rice or beans I HAVE TO control my portion size ... otherwise the pounds are gained with each bite taken.

I am craving a pizza so bad that I might be learning why meth addicts can't stop. Don't even remind me about Ben & Jerry's ice cream !!!!  :)

Bring on 2019 ... all of us here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana are ready for the new year.