A Day Of Changes ???

As you can see I had a hard time coming up with a title for this post. It might even change before I publish it, who knows. It's one of those days. I mentioned yesterday I might change the look of the blog. Nothing happened until last night around 10:30pm. I turned off the movie Woodstock and sat back down in front of my computer. I looked at only a few themes, tried one, the same one I changed too for an hour a few weeks ago. I was basically too tired to make any kind of decision nor did I feel like putting in the time to make the small adjustments after I would activate the theme. So, I ended the night and started today with the same theme as always. Why do I need to change it all the time?

Winter will not hit us until Friday.  A long time blog reader out in the Kansas City area always likes to test the weather we get here in 'the tropics' before it arrives. So sometimes, not all the time, I will get a warning a few days in advance of what to expect. She is more accurate than any weather online radar or local tv weatherman. I don't think she told me about this though ... the fog. She did tell me that temps were half of that 64° I mentioned and that was true this morning. I put my wool socks back on, the sock hat, my gloves, but stuck with the light four seasons jacket as a test. After the first photo from my doorstep, the low battery light started flashing. Could we finish the walk with enough photos?

I decided the best thing to do was to turn the camera off after every photo I took. Some might say that would wear the battery down faster but I remembered from last time just how little time I had left after that blinking battery icon a few weeks ago. I didn't have more than two to three photos left after that. So I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Off, on, off, on, off, on for over 25 times. I liked the fog this morning. It gave the walk a little feeling of mystery as Stella and I walked across a field fully saturated. There is more rain on the way this afternoon and tomorrow. It could be perfect weather for making blog changes.  :)

I also went to bed last night with my Apple Watch battery showing only 13% left. Would that get me through the night? I decided to test it and knowing I would be awake and up within the next six to seven hours, I thought the 13% of battery life would be plenty. I found out this morning, a night of poor sleep took a little over 1% per hour. I had 3% left as I let the hounds outside for the first time today. So ... two batteries needed to be recharged as soon as possible this morning if I was going to be able to operate like I normally do. Sad isn't it ... an electronic life. But ... a good life it is. I love electronic equipment.

Another change took place very early this morning. It's the first time in maybe two years that I am feeding the hounds lamb and rice instead of chicken and rice. I made the change with hopes that Stella will itch less, since I cannot find any fleas on her and there are no signs of raw skin or hot spots from any kind of allergy. Who knows, maybe she is allergic to deer scat? That's a joke ... at least I think it is. I did ask myself, what happens if Heidi's skin allergies flare up with the change in protein? Well if that happens I'll immediately go out and buy the bag of chicken and rice for her and let Stella finish the bag of lamb and rice. Remember, the vet told me two years ago that in his study on dog allergies, dog food was the cause only 3% of the time. Maybe Stella's scratching is a habit since it seems to take place in the same areas inside and outside. Strange.

Another change this morning, I went back to my old blog on Blogger, Bhounds And Other Stuff, and took off the private setting then checked all of the settings in the dashboard. Google always does this, someway settings that I set a long time ago were changed. For some reason the ticks had changed to where search engines were not allowed to index the site. The comments setting was changed. The number of posts on a page had changed. I thought at first all of those happened automatically when I changed the settings to 'private' the other day, but after checking my other two old private blogs, that was not the case. You can go there to see the blog list that updates each time a blogger posts something new. On WordPress I can list those same blogs but they do not update each time a post is published. WordPress keeps the list of blogs or websites in alphabetical order. It's that list of blogs that keep telling me I need a blog template that has the side bar on the home page or at least on the page that has the post.

Not quite halfway through the morning walk and I still am able to take pictures of Stella and the fog. The technique of turning the camera off an on is working so far. Later I'll look at my screen on the Canon camera to see if I can tell how much battery life I have before I get the warning so I am not in this same situation again. While walking I am still thinking about blog changes, or taking photos around my local small town that has some pretty sad buildings empty for the past few years. They all tell an interesting story and one that makes you wonder if the economy is really as good as the experts tell us it is. Or are they possibly proving just how hard it is keeping a brick 'n mortar store profitable year after year in the world of e-commerce? In a few cases the old businesses have gone out of business because of the owner's death but a couple more told me they could not stay competitive with online e-commerce. Other's just retired and could not sell what they had.

I could have gone lighter on this photo but I wanted to keep the overcast sky with fog as the main attraction. The tall grass really is that color next to Stella and there is something about that tall power line tower that keeps me taking photos of it. Over the years I will see an occasional state helicopter flying above the lines, going southwest, checking the lines but in the 21 years I have lived here, I've never seen anyone doing any kind of maintenance or repair.

As I walk this field I feel many mole tracks scattered within the half mile walk. That told me years ago, no matter what I put on my yard to control yard moles, they will always be a problem to my landscaping ideas. I saw one surface on top of the snow one year but other that than I've never seen them. I've tried everything on the market to prevent them from destroying my backyard. I rarely see them in the front yard. I remember in 2014 I dug 6" deep in the flowerbeds, then laid out the black plastic or net to prevent weeds from growing. I covered it up with 6" of river rock in back, mulch in front ... only to see dirt pushed up through the mulch or rocks, above ground level from mole traffic. I hate those little bastards.

No AT&T tower to see today ... the PNW has arrived in 'the tropics'.

Stella did not run again this morning but she did to a little short trot to catch up and pass by me. I keep forgetting that she will be 10 years old this summer.

Just as I snapped this photo, the screen on back of the camera went black and the lens automatically retracted. I had made it on a low battery for over 25 photos and 17 minutes of walking. So besides charging my watch, the Canon battery and finishing my second cup of coffee ... I had two decisions to make. (1) publish this now or wait until later today. (2) spend a lot of time and a lot of data, looking for that one blog theme that I wanted to change to.

The only search words I will use to choose from those 308 WordPress themes are "page wide photos", so the photos will remain as large as they are now with a different design. Besides the large photos on the post page I am looking for a sidebar either on the home page and/or the post page, where I can list those blogs of friends that I follow out in the open, plus other information. This theme puts them at the very bottom of both the home page and post page. I'm not a fan of that placement. Traffic reports show that for some reason there are not a lot of clicks on the past posts on the home page where all the photos/posts are listed, compared to my older Blogger blog. Some of that is by the way the blog is designed for phones and tablets. With those you have to scroll to the bottom to see the other posts. I tried it the other day and told myself "I'm not doing that" and stopped.

So we will see what happens to the blog design today. Maybe nothing.

I still have books to read. I will NOT be watching the State of the Union address tonight nor will I watch all the expert opinions afterwards. That reminds me, the other reason I want a sidebar ... I have four new websites I want to have on the side of the blog. Two of them were mentioned just the other day and two others were sent to me by a friend a few months ago. I read those two very informative blog in my Feedly account. So it looks like I have something to do this morning ... blog design. That also answers option number one above ... post this now.

See how easy life in retirement is. No approvals needed. No meetings to discuss those options. No outsourced input. I'm in charge and that's a good thing here in 'the tropics'. No .... I am NOT putting that period inside that quotation mark !!! :) Besides I am not really in charge here in 'the tropics' ... the hounds are the ones in charge.

I read somewhere yesterday, ah yes, in Team of Vipers. It's very well written and the author is very conscientious about what he is reveling about his time working in the White House. All the reports, the news, the chaos that goes on under the Trump administration does not bother me and does not surprise me in the least. Like I said a month or so ago, I use to work for a family owned business and one of the owners of the company was a twin of Trump ... he acted identical to him. He made decisions the same way, some good some bad. I found it to be typical business. People forget or don't want to remember, a businessman was elected not a politician. So why should his administration be something people and news stations are familiar with or like all the past presidents? It's not complicated for me to see and I'm not the smartest person around.

Well Heidi has moved her sleeping operation from the bedroom into the living room. Stella has joined her with a few hours to go before their lunch. That will give my Canon battery plenty of time to charge. Like I said yesterday or in the past ... I really like that smaller Canon G9 X with the Nikon D3200 as a backup or for those days I need a change. :)

It's foggy but still nice this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

I Know I Know I Know

Some people say "never say never" ... I need to be one of those people. That saying is perfect for someone who changes their mind a lot, like I do. So ... YES THE BLOG DESIGN HAS CHANGED YET AGAIN!!! I put out a warning the other day that there might be some small changes ... but nothing like this !! While it's almost 2am and the hounds are in a deep sleep, let me explain the why and how.

The all white background I had been using was just too bright for me. When I added a slight bit of color, it didn't look right. Then the more I looked at the theme I was using, the more I didn't like it. (At least today) So before the ballgames started at noon on Tuesday I started playing around a little with some small changes and the same design.

After watching the Rose Bowl, I decided to 'get serious' about making some BIG changes to the way the blog looked. Maybe this idea also started when I changed my computer settings back to the 'dark mode' and also went into Firefox settings to change their theme to the 'dark mode.' It's easier on the eyes for the amount of time I spend in front of this computer.

Using the same design that I had for the past week, I made the background black but the post background was white and that clashed too much with the black background I wanted. I could have changed the white background by adding some CSS code but even if I did that, I still did not like that design.

I thought I had found a pretty good theme (template), with page wide images and the columns of old posts on the front page but I ran into the same problem ... the background of the post was white and that is not what I wanted. I wanted the page to be black or dark gray, completely around my photos

I have always known that photos look better against a black or dark gray background. Why would Apple changed their Photos program a few years ago to that same idea? Or when I would look at other blogs that had a black background, their photos looked really good. They stood out with the darker background surrounding them, compared to a light or white background.

So I thought I had it ... but again, I would have had to find some code or get the code from the WordPress CSS forums to change the white background.

I kept looking through templates.


I set three requirements in the WordPress theme search ... (1) Style: Clean (2) page wide images (3) Background: Black

Then I saw it. I clicked on a theme I had used two weeks ago based on the notes I had written in my 5x8 notebook next to my keyboard. It had everything I wanted. LARGE PHOTOS, a 'footer' sidebar and a front page that would show past post in date order, newest on down, with the date or time I had written the post.

I grabbed my iPhone and iPad Mini to see what the new design would look like. It looked great on each. There was one adjustment I had to do with the header image. I had to hide it and go with the plain color header because on the phone, the title could not be seen and there was a menu bar cutting right through the middle of the picture. Besides, a header image is too small on a phone to see it.

I might have to lighten this font color for the blog post. As promised I did keep the font the same as the previous two weeks. I had a few people let me know that it was easier to read, after I changed it. The fonts are the exact same font and the same size as before.

I will have to live with the three columns of past posts on the front page not being exactly even due to the slight difference in the size of the photos. I also have to insert a space between each photo where I have listed them one after another, without content.

I can live with both of those differences to have the most important stuff.

IF you have problems reading the blog or just don't like it ... let me know and tell me what device you use to read the blog. IE: phone, tablet or computer.

That was my thought process for changing the blog. I have always thought since the blog seemed to be about the hounds more than anything else, that the photos needed to be the main focus and they needed to be large for me and the readers that use computers.

In the meantime I am headed for bed. It's 2:32am and I need to get a few hours of sleep before Stella, then Heidi wake me up to serve them breakfast. Since retirement I have never used an alarm clock to get up, but why would I need one since the hounds always whine loud enough to wake me up.

It's been a good weekend of football in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Loud Explosion This Morning

It was a little past 6:30am when I sat down at my computer, with a cup of coffee in my hand. The room only lit by the light from my large monitor. I was on a mission this morning. I HAD to find a new blog design, which I will explain in full detail at the end of the post. ...... then BANG !!!!! It sounded so close to the house that Stella went from a curled position sleeping on the floor to standing and howling ... instantly.

I walked into the kitchen grabbed my hidden binoculars from the side of a bookshelf and looked out my large picture window toward the highway. A large pickup truck was pulled over to the side by the looks of it. I could only tell by its headlights that were still on and it looked like one of those new $64,999.99 trucks. I was pretty sure I knew what happened. It's not the first time in the 20 years I've lived here I've heard a loud explosion with the windows and doors closed.

Yet, at 6:40am it's very dark outside and I couldn't see anything in the highway or within the reflection of the truck headlights. Cars were still flying by this pulled over truck at 60mph plus. This is the main highway to either the interstate or the 3rd largest employer in the state of Indiana. They never slow down, even when I pull into my driveway.

This picture shows the weather forecast may be right this morning, rain by 9am, as if we need more water. It's better than freezing temps and snow though. BTW, it was a warm 46° this morning on our walk.

As I reached for my second cup of black coffee for the third morning in a row, it was light enough outside that I could barely tell what had happened. By the time Stella and I stepped outside to head out for the morning walk, I did not even have to zoom in with my camera to see ... the "annual deer hit". You will notice the black plastic auto pieces on each side of the highway. I'm sure there are a lot more than just those two pieces.

In the past these large deer have landed in my neighbors yard (last year) and all the previous hits before either landed in my front yard, in the middle of my driveway blocking my way out and more than 10 years ago one was actually slumped standing up leaning on my mailbox.

Sadie would have smelled the deer before I even opened the door and I would have had to really watch her to keep her from heading that direction. Stella??? Remember that Stella is basically a 'couch potato, not a 'tracker' ... she is only interested in food and sleep. So she walked outside like nothing was out of the ordinary ... just another day.

Within the hour that Stella and I returned, the state highway department had answered someone's call to pick the deer up from the side of the road. I guess you could stay they were standing by the "lounge water fountain at work", smoking cigarettes (not pictured) and taking a break before walking along the ditch picking up car pieces of that $64,999.99 pickup truck.

As I watched them walking north from where the deer landed. The point of contact between deer and truck was about 10' south of my driveway ... oh, almost every car, van, or truck that has hit a deer in front of my house in the past 20 years, are going 60mph or faster.

I doubt many of them pay attention to the highway warning sign as they leave town .... you know the one .... bright yellow, black trim, picture of deer and some words warning them that deer are in the area for the next EIGHT MILES. Anyway ... the $64,999.99 truck on a 8-10 year mortgage loan will need some body work done.

Any readers that are deer hunters will have to speak up on what I am about to guess. With the warm weather, high 40's and a million fresh deer tracks in the field right behind my house ... I am guessing the warm December weather is a factor in increased deer activity.

It was almost as dark this morning as yesterday with a 15 minute difference in time.

Now there are days where Stella follows her DNA and her AKC bio and she will track scent with the best of them. This morning was one of those days. I didn't hear any sounds like I would from Sadie's flapping jowls by inhaling deeply while she tracked but Stella spent most of the walk moving, with her head to the ground.

That is until now .... Standing 4-5 feet away I always start by "NO!!" ... she ignores me. Then I try my "Come On" ... she ignores me. Then I start my slow walk toward her hoping she will raise her head and take off running ahead of me on the path. ... she ignores me.

I slowly reach with my index finger and curl it inside her loose collar to lift her head away from that delicious nutritious but bad for her, deer scat. ... she no longer ignores me and takes off running ... sometimes crouching down like she wants to play.

It's just a game to her ... LOL ... she hears everything I say!!!

Yes it looks like rain is on it's way from the normal direction of the SW.

Still tracking ... I'm a little surprised at this part of the walk.

Like yesterday as we stepped into the yard, she stopped again, didn't move and watched me walk almost all the way to the house. By the time I sit down to download the photos from my camera to the computer, she is curled up sleeping so close to my desk chair I can barely move it out to sit down. That's her normal routine after a morning walk.

My ears have been ringing the past few days .... need more Vitamin D.

"You CHANGED your blog theme again!!!!!"

I had to. I loved that last theme I was using. After a week of looking it was the best one I found with one column and photos that were 6-3/4" wide if your monitor view was at 100%. Tablets and phones don't count since any theme is adjusted automatically for your device.

I didn't want to change that theme and even told a fellow blogger, friend, "I'll never change that theme no matter what." She laughed at me.

Around 6pm last night it only took one email from a long time reader to get me to realize something .... There were NO DATES near the titles of the listed blog posts!!!! There were no dates either at the end of the post where you will see categories, tags, 'make a comment' etc.

I went into the theme support page and didn't see anything about adding a date. Sometimes you will have the option of choosing the author's name, categories or tags near the title by rarely if ever the date. So I headed to the forum for that specific theme. I found my answer immediately ... dates will never be there and users cannot add them through the CSS editor.

I spent a few hours after the IU game I watched last night, trying to find a one column theme with dates but more importantly, photos that were as wide as the photos I had on the prior theme. Over 300 themes to choose from and by midnight I had not found one that would give me the design I wanted. I went to bed and had a solid night of sleep ... no worries.

After a sip of that hot black coffee this morning, before I did anything I added the 'archive' widget to my footer. I wanted to open that up and see if a date showed up. All it showed was the list of posts by month, for example "February 2018". I click on that month and it did list all the posts of that month, but they looked like the front page did ... no dates.

It's pretty amazing after the number of hours I spent this past week looking for a one column theme that had WIDE photos on the front page and individual posts, that I found one I had never tried ... all week!!!  Never tried, never even looked at.

What you see today is it !!!

The large Header Font ??? ... I have no choice. That font size also controls the size of the blog post title. It is one of the few if not the only font that fits my Blog Title into one line. IF I were to make that a smaller size font, the Blog Title would also be smaller and hard to read.

This design ended up pretty close to what I had before ... with WIDER photos !!!!

Things are getting back to normal again. No early wake up times. Blogging is also moving on it's own toward like I use to blog .... a post after our morning walk or sometimes late afternoon to recap the day. If I do one long post per day ... too many photos. (30+). So following my blogging plan of "writing when I want", I am pretty sure the first post of the day will be about the same time as this one, every morning, 9am to 10:30am range.(during the winter). A second post in the early evening will be optional, depending on how much excitement occurred during the day.

I'll also throw a short blog post occasionally where I have to get something off my chest, out of my head, whatever. Yes, I am still checking the tv news ... I eat TUMS while I watch any news channel. I see some interesting trends just in short time I have returned to the 'cesspool', that I will write about another day.

Blog followers by email ---- Do you get an email after every update I do???? (spelling & grammar corrections)

It's all good this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella Tests My Sanity

She looks so innocent doesn't she. Just a big, happy-go-lucky, loose skin ball of fun. Don't get me wrong with what I am about to write this afternoon. I love all my hounds, even Stella. I knew when I 'rescued' her in August 2015 what her issues were. I was going to be her 4th owner in her first 6 years of life. She is the most funniest hound I have had in 31 years of having a hound every year. Like some dogs and some dog readers, we all have our hidden issues don't we?

She was more than I had bargined for in the 'damage' department. Oh yes ... unbelievable damage. Some so destructive I would be embarrassed to post photos of it. (I never will) Her severe separation anxiety was a mystery until I found her original owner and breeder on Facebook. Basically to cut a long explanation short, you can read what happened to her here to cause her anxiety.

Some people say, like her previous owner, it takes a different type of dog owner to have bloodhounds ... they are so different in many ways from other breeds.

One of her habits didn't show up until her first freezing winter in 2015 since moving here. When I say obsessed I do mean obsessed. Even a gentle tug on her collar wouldn't work and sometimes a harder tug on her shoulder wouldn't work ... but she would never growl at me. She was like a 80 pound anchor that wasn't moving. This morning was the same thing. Here is her addiction ... deer scat.

Since I am not a deer hunter I had to do some searching on the internet years ago to find out what this stuff was. This morning was the first time I saw it this color. Most of the time they are deep black nuggets. This type could be from elk, llamas or deer. Here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, deer is the only possibility.

Where I could always let Sadie lag way behind us on the walk, knowing eventually she would be seen sprinting as fast as possible to catch up to Stella and I, I cannot let Stella lag behind like that. I tried one time only to find out she never came back home. A little more than an hour later I had to retrace my steps.

That day a few years ago I found her in back field over by the 'deer highway' in the far right corner. She was in the same position you see her today ... head down, inhaling as many of those nutritious tiny morsels as she could.

Needless to say, in today's morning walk the eating of deer scat was the objective in her point of view. No, not enjoying the quietness, the crisp temperature, or the sunshine just barely shows on the horizon ... her main objective was to EAT ... and that makes this short 12 minute walk seem like a lifetime.

Still with her separation anxiety only showing up a few weeks ago for the first time in 17 months, she is a fantastic house dog. She always goes to the door to go out, nudging the knob with her nose. If the handle was the lever she would open the door herself.

She will howl like you think a bloodhound sounds minutes before she is fed twice per day. Although, unlike Sadie, she is not a protector of the house. Any stranger at the door is her friend not foe.

There is no doubt you have noticed too many changes with how the blog looked the past few days. You will be happy to know this is the final design and I love it. I feel this will be it for many years to come like my other blog on Blogger, where I stopped blogging to come here.

It took some work to get everything the way I wanted it. Then when I thought I was finished, it had a hiccup this morning only pointed out by an observant reader. The Old Fat Man was trying to make a comment and couldn't see a way to get there.

While drinking my 1st cup of BLACK coffee to escape my sugar addiction, some smart Wordpress techie pointed out to me what I had forgotten to do. It was something at the start of every post, just like I was doing on my older blog. That was the simple click of the icon for inserting the 'read more' tag. That little modification will 'the OFM' and other readers an easier way to see where to make a comment and it gave me the front page that I was looking for.

I took this picture this morning looking directly into the sun. I decided to keep it, and post it because to me it looked cool ... it's hard to tell if it is sunrise or sunset.

After one week I see a system developing here. A little change from the prior blogging routine I had which was writing about what had taken place from 9am to 9am the next day, one post per day. Then sometimes weeks of nothing.

Here I planned on writing more than just about the hounds or the daily morning walk. I was going to move some personal thoughts to these pages and that would possibly mean multiple posts per day. I do have to resist sometimes not to post that 3rd post of the day.

Based on the traffic stats that Wordpress provides all of it's bloggers, I need to have that first post of the day to show up 5am-6am eastern time. People are clicking in early to read a new post but leave within seconds if they only see the post they read the previous day or even night. 'Schedule' is a great blog invention.

I also know that my blogging tendencies change based on seasons, the weather and my state of mind. So my plan is to write when I want, to keep those inner thoughts coming to blog pages. To prevent me from flooding you with my drivel I'll save them as draft copies to be posted at a later date. Like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter, I will be storing blog posts for the spring and summer.

Some will have photos, some may not. Some will be over the edge of logic and some may seem boring, even mundane. Some might make you mumble and shake your head and others might make you think. You choose.

For new readers, if you are into wild flowers growing in a field, or sharp pictures of butterflies, stay tuned-in here because that is a common theme in the spring and summers as we change from the frozen tundra here in the Midwest.

I will admit, with Sadie gone the blog's tone has changed a little. Heidi and Stella are the definition of the word 'laidback'. Heidi rarely takes walks in the field even in good weather. You've seen what Stella does, not much. Oh, when it's hot she will move to the backyard to take her siestas under the hot sunshine.

There are times I have to lay a hand on them to see if there is a pulse ... where Sadie was always looking for action and if there wasn't any she was just a thought away from creating some. Plus like I have said, I have not seen deer in this field behind our house in 13 months. I have seen them in the field across the highway a couple of months ago, but not here. So those high speed bloodhound deer chases are probably a thing of the past and nothing more than a funny memory.

That photo is about the best I can do to prove just how slow she walks right in front of me, to the point at times I stagger my steps not to walk into her. If I pass her, she will pass me back and resume her slow walking.

This morning was a little different. We had just entered the backyard upon our return when she stopped. She didn't sniff the ground nor did she look anywhere else. She just stopped like she was standing in concrete.

That small cord you see laying on the ground has turned into a 'marker', so I can find the anchor in the field that use to be used for Stella, Sadie, Winston and Heidi before I could trust them to roam tether free. I'll come up with a different solution by next spring for marking that anchor. you cannot pull out of the ground. It is made for horses and believe me, a shovel doesn't help getting it out.

As I got to the corner of the house I turned to see her not moving. What is this about ????  Ah, funny dog.

While I took a couple more photos around the house and sky, she needed one more scratch, making me wonder if there is something in the Glucosamine supplements that she is allergic to.

She finally decided it was time to come inside. While she slept I did my workout program, a few games of Mahjong on the MacBook Air with the best view in the house. You cannot give up working out just because you are not losing weight as fast as you want.

It was just a tad over 40° by lunch. I could see as soon as we were outside neither hound was too motivated to go too far. That was a good thing for me since I had just found out I had a lot of work to do on the pages of Winston and Sadie that are linked at the top of the blog.

The two different Wordpress editors don't play well together. Besides that I had copied and pasted both pages from my blog on Blogger in HTML format and pasted that here on the new editor so I could import photos and words at the same time.

That did not work this time. While checking the pages this morning for any errors many of the photos were not spaced and ran together where there was no content. I knew due to the formatting of the new editor my only choice was to start a brand new page for both on the classic editor and then reload all the images. (~100 each)

I was finished with both pages sooner than I expected and while looking at the hounds I announced to them this would be a "nail cutting, ear cleaning afternoon". No problems with Heidi, she likes getting them cut ... but her nails were too long when I got her in 2011 and I have never been able to get them shorter. The vets tried in September to cut them back while she was in surgery and didn't have much more luck than I have.

Stella was good with me cutting her nails when she showed up in 2015. No resistance until last summer (2018). At the last mini-second she jerked her paw, possibly tickled, at the same time I was pressing the nail cutters ... she yelp, I cussed, she bleed, and I had cut her nail toooo short. It all happened in a split second after getting three out of four paws completed. Today ... didn't happen ... she pulled a Sadie and took off running for cover.

You see that Heid's skin allergies have come back a little. That is normal for the winter months for some reason. That tells me it's environmental rather than food. Back in August 2015 I wrote in detail with photos about her skin issues she was going through. They just flared up the past few days.

Besides that not much went on. Stella stayed with Heidi behind closed doors in the bedroom without any breakout attempts. I made a fast trip to the library to look for some new reading material. No luck. I'll pull something off of my bookshelf to read.

Questions of the day --- Do you think it is safe to write the name of your town in a blog post? Some bloggers do, some don't. Is my paranoia showing itself?

What percentage of you stay home for the holidays? Who goes on skiing trips with the family? How many travel out-of-state? How many have Xmas dinners or go out to eat?

Just curious. I promise there are not any spreadsheets planned for those answers.  :)

Another bright sunny day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.