Hounds Decide I Needed To Work

I'm not sure what I would do if I didn't have Sadie getting me away from my morning coffee, out of my desk chair and out into the field every morning. She will always sit quietly at the doorway into my computer room. While sitting straight and proud, almost like a pose, she will give me her stare down letting me know that it's time for a walk. This also happens throughout the day no matter where I might be.

It's going to be another beautiful day here in the tropics. I've adjusted to the colder temps and have waved bye to summer. I love hot weather but I do like the change of seasons. There is a little bit of good in every season and each has it's highlights with likes and dislikes. The hounds? Same stuff different day and I'm not sure they even care about the changes.

You might notice my photos lately on these morning walks are a little bit brighter or better quality. I have had some strange adjustments to the Daylight Savings time change we did last weekend. Where I should be getting up an hour earlier I seem to be going to bed an hour later and getting up later. That slides the morning walk from around 9am to 10am or later, thus the change in lighting for taking pictures.

Whenever I see Stella ahead of Sadie on these walks and/or Sadie venturing into the heavy brush between the field and woods, I suspect there has been a lot of deer traffic in the early morning hours. The local news on tv and in the newspaper is saying there is an over abundance of deer in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. Some of the state parks are closing to the public, only open to deer hunters to thin out the herd of deer roaming in the area.

When Sadie was staring at the woods earlier in the walk I thought I could even hear the footsteps of deer moving over the leaves that had fallen to the ground. I listened really closely and thought it would be the chance to walk into those woods, look down into the gulley to see if I could grab a picture or two of them. The sound I heard though was not deer but the sound of falling leaves.

The worn path on the taller brush near the back of the field shows where deer move from this field, jump over a very short old metal fence into the field behind us. Stella was sure this is where they went sometime before we got there. She is right. I remember about 7 years ago in December, Sadie as a 2 year old took off  running in this same exact area, over that fence and into that field running as fast as possible for deer she saw. the 5-6 deer were out sprinting her by a mile but she thought she could catch them.

I couldn't catch her and it wasn't long before she was out of my sight. So I ran home to drive my truck around the the back of the field I had last seen her. I thought she might be sneaking around the huge turkey farm or at least see her wandering back home ... she was nowhere. I looked for an hour, it started snowing again and no sign of her. A little after 1pm I hear something hit my aluminum door in the carport ... there she stood ... 4 to 5 hours later. Needless to day she slept the rest of the day and almost missed her late afternoon meal.

So far Stella's periods of disappearances have lasted no longer than 45 minutes to an hour. She doesn't like to miss any meals and food is her real motivation for anything she does inside or out.

It's always interesting to observe the routines of all three hounds. They change their routines at times but most days I don't have to say a thing and they repeat the same walks day after day. As you know Heidi disappears from this blog and outside until cold weather is over ... she has always done that since I picked her up in June 2011.

Even when we are on the 'alternate' path home I can see other narrow single paths of worn grass where the deer run at night. Maybe I need to buy and set up a couple of field cameras to capture the wild life between midnight and 6am.

For the second day in a row the moon was back again. I noticed that Al up in Canada on The Bayfield Bunch blog took the same picture I did of the moon yesterday. It's times like these I wish I had a longer lens to get closer to the moon.

On the way back this morning the hounds kept drifting further away from me. I was getting down to two choices. Either leave them and let them do what they wanted knowing they would eventually come home or walk over to Stella and tug on her collar to get her back toward my direction. Many times she will start moving once she sees me heading her way.

Yesterday afternoon I did attempt to rake some leaves but those first few that flipped over with the rake was showing moisture on them. I would prefer to rake them completely dry so they will burn faster and better. Today might be Day 1 of the 2017 Leaf Project. Until I looked at past blogs for the post about our Leaf Project, I thought we were late this year but that is not the case. In 2016 we were raking them this week. In 2015 we were getting all the leaves taken care of in late October.

Here is the 2015 Leaf Project Supervision Crew.

Stella lagged behind at the end of the walk but nothing major. She stepped inside the yard and had to stop for one of her back scratching exercises. Once she saw Sadie and I almost ready to make the turn into the carport, she came running.

A tentative plan was to rake the leaves once they dried out a little more, possibly this afternoon. While the hounds took their lunch break outside they decided that not only were the leaves dry enough to rake but the grass was tall enough to mow. If I mowed first would it mulch the leaves good enough to get me out of raking?

Stella has been staring off into space a lot lately as if there are new places she would like to check out if only I would let her, or if only there wasn't a highway in that direction, if only ....

Sadie checked for some fresh soft mounds of dirt to eat since it rained this past weekend. You can also see with her standing in the yard just how tall the grass is after a weekend of rain. I've been told the ground is still warm although the temperatures have dropped, so mowing season may not be over yet.

I'm posting this because I like it and it's just a little bit different for a photo taken in the middle of the day.

For doing yard work you cannot beat weather like this.

I still wasn't happy with the amount of leaves left in the yard after mowing. I need a new rake since my old one was missing a few teeth after I had the plastic rake to near to the fire last year. I headed to the local hardware store and picked up a new one. Of course when I got home I had to try it out, so that is the 'clean' area you see. The wind was blowing from the south as I raked into it. So it was a good place to stop and wait for better wind conditions before raking the rest of the yard.

The heavy storms on Sunday washed out some of my old mulch, so a short trip to the landscaping biz where I bought a few bags of new Cyprus mulch to add today. I had to work fast because Sadie kept disappearing on me today but would come running when called. She was always too far outside her boundary.

It's good I stopped when I did. As I sat in front of the computer afterward with a cold glass of water, I had an email I needed to reply to for confirmation. One of the parts for the Z4 has to come from Germany and is delayed. My other parts are in route and due to arrive early next week. That gives me time to finish the leaves for the year.

Tomorrow I will trade parking spaces with the FJ, which will give me more room to work. I'll either drive the Z4 up on ramps or jack it up high enough to slide some jack stands underneath it. I am thinking the jack stands might be the best option while I am working under the car.

At a website called realOEM.com I was not only able to find a detailed diagram of the parts I needed but also where they go and what screws, nuts, plugs or clips go with each part. I've printed those out. With the help of those diagrams and some YouTube videos I have a clear picture of what the process will be to replace the damaged parts under the Z4.

I enjoy this type of work as long as it's on occasion and not a job. It just proves how old I am sometimes when my knees and back don't enjoy being in different position under a car to reach to connect a screw or snap in a part. I've made sure I have enough Ibuprofen in stock.

It was a great day today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... much more done than expected.

Sadie Drags Me Out Into The Cold & Rain

I knew if I did not decide to take this early morning walk, then Sadie would not leave the doorway to my computer room and would keep staring at me for hours on end. We woke up to rain, earlier than normal and dark inside the house. I felt energized and didn't hesitate in starting the day a few minutes after 7am. When it's cold and rainy outside, is there anything better to do with a hot cup of coffee and a brain full of words to type ... than to blog?

Quite a difference from yesterday when I spoke about my mind being a black hole and finding it hard to put any words to print. Was it the early morning starting time? Hot coffee? Or the 7 hours of good sleep? I'm not sure but I found I was doing things without a lot of thought or analysis.

The hounds didn't think or analyze .... they hit that field and took off running.

Another thing I didn't put a lot of thought into was what I was going to wear in 33° weather and light rain. The weather radar looked clear at the moment but it had been raining the first two hours we were up. I didn't hesitate to grab my Columbia winter parka today and putting on my snow boots that have been doubling as my rain boots.  I wanted to stay warm and dry and didn't care it was only November 1st.

When I started the walk I knew for sure what I was wearing was perfect for this weather. I was not only warm but dry as I started hearing drops of rain hitting my parka. It was strange to me that as dreary the day looked, I felt as good as I do when it's a hot sunny summer day. Why the change in moods.

Sadie had already disappeared around the first turn. Stella was trotting to catch up with her and I was pretty sure they both would end up where they were yesterday. With the rain becoming harder I wasn't going to let Stella hang back today. We had to make this walk fairly fast in case it started to pour.

I was right. As I made that first turn they were there in the same spot as yesterday.

I kept walking and kept repeating "let's go" and was actually getting some kind of response from both of them. So it did not surprise me to see Sadie run up along the right side of me. I was even more shocked to see Stella right behind me as I turned to see where she was.

I probably have too many blurry pictures today but in a way it catches the hounds as they are running, sometimes faster than the auto focus on my camera can bring them into view.

The rain was light but loud against my parka sleeves. When you are dry and warm it really doesn't matter how much it rains. The hounds didn't mind getting wet nor did I.

It looked like Stella might decide to stay in the field all day unless I called her name. She wasn't fast but she slowly walked toward us and eventually caught Sadie and I.

Once Sadie tapped noses with Stella, they both took off in a trot heading home.

Just because we get close to the yard doesn't mean the walk is over. If either hound finds something interesting to check out further they will and it doesn't matter how hard it is raining. The little color of the leaves are gone today. The leaves have fallen but plenty are still on the trees. They will keep me busy raking them, or blowing them, or leaving them. (greg's suggestion)

Stella gave me a look as if she was telling me "yes, I know it's raining ... but" she follows her own pace as usual.

It's an old parka but it still works. It has survived heavy snow, hard rains in all kinds of single digit temperatures. Why upgrade?

I was able to do some software updates this morning before 8am. That puts me in the range of using my extra 50Gb of free data I get. I did not plan to use a lot of data today because I am very close to using all of my monthly 20gigs that I pay for. I had gone back to Google Chrome a few days ago and once again .... it nailed me with an unexpected update with Google Chrome Helper running in the background, an update you can no longer change from automatic to manual.

Just in a blink of an eye 386Mb zipped through my available data just like that. For those of you that have unlimited data that doesn't sound like much but when you pay for only 20Gb per month that is about half of your daily data budget. It didn't take me long to export my Google bookmarks to my desktop and then open Safari and import all of my updated bookmarks, using Safari again as my default browser.

Is it hard to believe it's already November 1st, it seems that summer was just here a few weeks ago.

In my post yesterday Greg suggested a new invention of "Castor Oil for Writers". Maybe that is why I feel in the mood to write.

I had an insurance adjuster show up yesterday to take a look at the damage under my Z4. He pulled out his new iPhone 8 to take photos under the car. I offered to jack up the front of the car for easier access but he didn't mind crawling on my freezing concrete floor to check out the damage. Being a fellow IU football fan we both agreed just how frustrating it was to follow IU football year after year with below average results.

I'll get an itemized list of for the repair estimate. My friend tells me that he has had great experiences with USAA insurance when a claim is filed.

I've added a couple of old blogs I use to follow on the left sidebar. I am probably back to my original list of bloggers for you to take a look at if you want. There are some that have great photography of where they are or have been. Everyone seems to be in a different place in the USA or Canada and that's what makes it interesting when reading their updated posts.

A few of you have asked where is Heidi, if she's okay ... she is, buried deep inside 'her' Marmot sleeping bag and isn't enthused to have her picture taking. She has officially declared winter is her for her. I have a surprise for her on Sunday ... it's suppose to be above 70°

The World Series will end after tonight with Game 7. If you are a baseball fan, no matter who your favorite team is, you have to admit it's been an exciting World Series ... although I am not a fan of the 'juiced' baseball ... I prefer pitching duels with games like 2-0 or 3-1 instead of 13-12 with similarities to playing MLB on PlayStation 4.

Sometimes I will turn on the tv to sports talk shows. It will be on in the background but a lot of times those shows don't last long before I turn off the tv. Why does every show in sports or news turn into having loud arguing with each other ... even if they were hired to present different points of view. Yelling and arguing does not improve viewership as ESPN has found out the last year or two, more layoffs to occur.

There were other things I was going to 'ramble' about in this post but they have evaporated in my mind ... I can't remember anymore stuff to write about.

With it raining again there will not be much planned for today besides the usual ... some internet surfing, games of Mahjong, some reading and a possible siesta ... speaking of ... maybe it was that 5 hour siesta I had yesterday afternoon that made me feel so much better today. It could have lasted longer and into the the baseball game, but the phone ringing woke me up just in time.

With Sadie and Stella wrestling inside, it's a good day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Test Winds From The NW

With yesterday afternoon having light rain off and on, we didn't do much. The hounds slept, I played Mahjong and started a new book. You'd be surprised how much faster a day like that goes compared to the days I worked. The hounds and I were in for a shock this morning and it was coming from the Northwest.

I could see by the way the hounds were sleeping last night, it was getting quite cold outside. How do they know that? Their sleeping positions change from being stretched out in the summer to curled in tight balls during the winter. Heidi is the only one that demands a blanket.

So when we glanced at Intellicast weather radar this morning, I saw that 'light blue' of snow had moved across the northern part of the state 150-200 miles north of us. We dressed accordingly and started our first walk of the day a little past 10am.

For some strange reason it felt warm, no wind as we started. In fact it felt too warm for the light gloves I was wearing. With Sadie taking off on her own and Stella veering off on her own to the left of me ... I continued to walk under skies that looked like snow was on the way. (not in the forecast)

I decided while putting my coat and hiking boots on that Stella would have free reign this morning. She took a path that was totally unexpected ... she followed Sadie and I for most of the time.

I could tell by their nose activity this morning, there was a lot of deer traffic while we slept. Both hounds stopped at numerous places to smell and identify what was in the area.

It was about right here that I felt just how cold it was. Even though the cold freezing winds were coming from the NW or left side of picture ... I had not felt anything until I got to the first turn. Had the neighbor's woods blocked the wind?

The wind a was mid-January freezing type wind. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago I was making this same walk at the same time of day in cargo shorts and a t-shirt??? How many days until Spring??

Sadie charges past me at a high rate of speed ... she loves this field. I've been letting her out on her own in the afternoons for close to an hour. She can explore and roam as she wishes. I do check on her by looking through my binoculars just to make sure she is within view behind the house and not in the field to the north of our house. (too close to the highway)

She never cares if Stella is with her not ... she will explore the field in detail.

Just as I made the final turn home, I could barely see Stella walking across the field heading north while we were going in a southwest direction. I just assumed I'd find her over by the neighbor's woods and kept walking.

Out of nowhere, Sadie bolted in front of me and started running to the right of me while I was looking for Stella up ahead of me. There were no birds launching from ground level. I didn't see any deer. What made her do that?

It wasn't until my camera lens focused on Sadie that I saw Stella. She was not up ahead of me by the woods but way off to the right side of me past the main "ATV Racetrack" ... I cannot remember a time she had been in that part of the field ... except the deer chase she was on last year.

Of course neither one was going to leave that spot with me just calling their names. I walked all the way over to them and about the time I reached them ... they both headed back toward our path without me saying a word.

We took the normal path home all because Stella had decided that was the way we should go today. She likes to make her own decisions.

I was not quite to the yard when I turned to see where the hounds were, possibly getting a picture of both of them from the front of them instead of the back or side of them.

Here is Sadie rolling in something but was fast enough the camera didn't catch the full roll. She jumped back up and looked at me to see if there was a chance of another roll ... luckily I saw nothing nor smelled anything that she might have rolled in. She ran up to me very proud after her gymnastics exercise and let me know she did not stink nor was there anything to wash off her soft coat.

So another successful Saturday morning walk ... freezing temps ... and a full day of college football along with another World Series game tonight. Luckily a lot of the sports channels will replay some of these games this week so I will not need to tape them while watching another game.

Here is a 'highlight' from this past week. I took this with my iPhone camera and forgot I had the 'live' setting turned on. I don't know if that feature will show up on the blog but from my computer I could not only see a 3-4 seconds of her but HEARD her licking the bottom of the ice cream container.

Sometimes when you can't get to that last drop of ice cream, you just have to dig a little deeper.

I have a cluster of good games on at 3:30pm and maybe a clear schedule for the MLB game at 7:30pm before my late night Pac12 games that start at 10:45pm. It's a typical Saturday for a 'sports addict'.

Firefox took a call third strike for me this morning and has  been put back on the self in my apps folder. Their icon is no longer on my 'dock'. It's a consistent problem I've had with them over the years and one of the reasons I always stop using them.

• Some websites do not have correct format, while those same websites show up correctly in Safari and Google Chrome. 
• Sometimes the sentences on websites run together. 
• Columns were incorrect on the football tv schedule I printed this morning. The website did not have the proper format and single lines were wrapped into three and for lines inside columns.
• This website looked correct on Google Chrome and Safari. 
• The schedule printed perfect from Google Chrome.

So I have made the full circle this morning and have gone back to Google Chrome. 

I have an insurance appraiser coming to my house next week to tell me what it will cost to fix the Z4 grill and shields underneath the car. I have a good body shop a mile away from me, one that I know does good work. Of course the insurance company tells me they recommend body shop that is 30 miles from me which will guarantee their work plus they will pay to tow the car. 

I have priced out what I think needs replaced with BMW OEM parts and the total cost is not quite what my deductible is. One way or another the Z4 will be fixed but I am interested in what cost the appraiser comes up with.

The way TV is viewed in today's world is changing rapidly. I will not list all the companies that you and I know are getting into streaming tv shows. That is all good, except when you live in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, in a rural area, all of those that offer unlimited data to do this 'streaming' is not available in my area.

I wonder what changes will be made in the next 1-2 years because in the past 3-6 months the number of companies advertising their tv services is increasing rapidly. Like "YouTube TV" ????

That is about all I have for today. I have to wonder if it is just a coincidence that after I posted pictures of my burn pile burning last week, then was reminded about the California Wildfires by someone making a comment on that post ... that my blog traffic dropped around 50% this past week, starting the day after those fire pictures.

Interesting.

Still ... blog traffic does not determine how exciting days are here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.