More Rain On The Way

This small bird did not mind Stella being about 5' away from her and Stella didn't mind the bird being on her driveway. Luckily Sadie was out in the field eliminating any chances of a bird chase.

It doesn't look good for this field with another inch of rain predicted by the end of this afternoon and even more tomorrow. Luckily the yard was dry enough to mow yesterday and much earlier than planned. I was finished by 1:30pm and spent the rest of the afternoon with ice tea and a good book.

I don't know, maybe it's because my 'free' data period has changed with the move to HughesNet to the hours between 2am - 8am. I don't have unlimited data like I did with Exede's 'free' period which took place between midnight and 5am but I do get an additional 50Gb of data per month. Whatever the reason, lately I've been asleep before midnight and up and moving by 6:30am.

With that earlier than normal wake up time, Sadie was at my desk an hour earlier this morning wanting her morning walk. Or maybe she knew the weather forecast. Stella was still asleep and Heidi is never walking that early nor with the field grass that wet. We took off a little past 8am.

Sadie took off right from the start of the walk. She wasn't waiting for me or Stella today. With it being this early, the field was extremely wet and my hiking boots were soaked only a short distance into the field.

It was nice to see Stella trotting past me up and heading up the path. It might be just my wishful thinking but I can tell a difference this week on top of her back and between her shoulders, where it is filling in where her spine and shoulder blades are not as visible as before, if at all.

She was in continues motion this morning with her nose to the ground all the way around the first turn. She only stopped once for less than a minute and moved on.

Sadie was the same way. Where she had stopped a few days ago deep in the green bushes after the first turn, she didn't today. She was on that deer path with her nose to the ground locked in.

Then they both picked up something pretty strong and they were off ... running full speed around the far right corner. I wasn't able to catch them on camera until after they made the turn.

With them moving this fast, I was concerned they were heading into the gully or back into those woods, which also drops in a steep drop off.

You have to wonder just how strong that scent is for them to take off like that and then imagine what they are thinking it is. From what I have read in different books, all of this scent tracking they do is their way of identifying what and who has been in the area.

Sadie went toward the gully and stopped, only to look back at me to see if I was coming after her. She did not move from that spot. She had found something to eat.

Stella headed the opposite direction, with both of them chowing down on some natural protein.

This morning I wanted to see what they would do if I did not go after them. As usual, once Sadie realized that I was walking away she came running full-speed to catch me.

She never stopped running and blew by me to the back edge of the field.

Stella was not moving. I thought briefly that it might be one of those days where I walk all the way home and then drive the Mini Countryman back to this location to have her run back to the house, following the car. I did that last year with the Toyota FJ.

I kept walking and used the zoom lens at 200mm to look through the view finder to keep track of her. You can barely see her in the center of the picture.

This is shot at 50mm, which is the view that my eyes are looking at. She is still there in the center of the picture next to the edge of the woods. Sadie was looking in that direction waiting for me to give her the command to "go get Stella" but I wanted to keep walking and see if Stella would run full-speed to catch us.

Sadie and I had made the last turn home and when I glanced over I didn't see Stella. I started my slow walk in that direction calling her name. It was then I saw her at the edge of the field and woods behind the tall grass.

The three pictures I took of that walk and finding her were not in focus ... so this picture shows where she thinks she is going to continue the walk in the normal direction instead of walking back with me to the path we were on.

Again, it wasn't warm this morning, mid 40's and as you can see that rain is coming from the southwest. Radar was showing the storm front was about 200 miles away when we started the walk.

That is Stella in the lead and her sly way of quietly sneaking off to the right toward the neighbor's woods as if I cannot see her. She actually thinks every time that she is going to get away with it. She seems to like the words "over here" and returns to the path when I say that to her.

Before going inside Sadie needed to checkout my lawn mowing from yesterday, one more time.

Stella slowly returned to the yard following every inch of the path and not veering off. She was back to sleep behind my desk chair within minutes after coming inside.

I am now on the clock so to speak with HughesNet. I'll still be using my Excel spreadsheet to log in my daily data use. With the graph I inserted I can tell if I am using too much data as the month progresses. After their 20 days of free data for new customers, I will get my full allotment of 20Gb for the last 10 days of my billing period.

Their webpage that shows my data is much better than I had with Exede and shows the balances on my monthly allotment and the 50Gb's I get every month between 2am-8am. It also tells me how many days/hours/minutes before the next reset.

As it gets darker outside as I type this, it looks like it will be another afternoon inside reading while the rain pours outside. It's typical spring weather with a good chance of rain every day until Sunday and then six days of nice sunshine.

I have finalized my 'to do' list on a Word Document and a lot of items will be completed once the temperature are up in the 70's. Nothing hard but time consuming, regular annual maintenance that goes with house ownership.

I am adding a new blog to the sidebar, from an online friend of mine. Who would have ever thought of pelicans spending time in Minnesota while it's still cold, but here they are ... click here.

I have realized that most of the things I put off doing around here isn't really procrastination like I thought. I looked back through my blog and found that I like doing the 'to do' items when it's hot weather day after day. The hotter the better. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Dark and dreary this morning in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Stella Was Running Full Speed Today

Stella continues to get better. She did a lot of running this morning, some at high-speed. Plus when there is food around, she wants it, even if it's mine.

With the high winds and the cool temperatures yesterday, nothing was done outside. So as I sat at my kitchen table playing a lot of Mahjong and reading some books I noticed the water level across the highway was increasing, just like they forecasted. These next two pictures were taken a little after 1pm on Monday.

It makes you wonder if the owner on the left knew something we didn't, thus had not done any plowing to prepare to plant his field. I do not live near a river, only a small creek. Also, this is not the worse flooding I've seen since living here.

By this morning you can see that the water kept rising over night. It will take a lot of time before that field is dried out enough to run heavy farm equipment through there.

Like I said yesterday, a few years ago they installed some of the largest drainage pipe across that field in the same are the water is flooding this morning. There is more water farther right of the picture behind the neighbor's property. I wonder how much money was lost with the crop under water?

With plans of waiting for the sunshine to dry out the yard enough to mow this afternoon, we still had time to do our morning walk. Actually the grass and ground were dry as we walked. I'm not sure where the sunshine is and there is a long way to go to increase the temps 20° to get to the forecasted 65° today. That's Sadie deep in the growing grass.

Stella started her walk with a slow trot, then concerned me as she veered to the left and started to jog away from my direction. I had two hounds going two different directions. I had a feeling the walk was going to be a little more challenging for me, than the normal routine.

When I called out to Stella "over here", she abruptly turned to her right and started heading to the path I was on. In the meantime Sadie decided that she would be the one hanging back today. I did not even want to look at what she might be eating.

It was rare to see Stella out in front of the walk with no Sadie.

Sadie wasn't around because she was this far behind us. While I turned to follow Stella, the sky looked too gray and the feeling of rain was there but hard to imagine. There were just a couple of spots on radar that rain looked possible within hundreds of miles and I was under one of them.

As always Sadie came running to catch up with me. She rarely if ever has let me get out of her eye sight. Except when she has chased deer, then it does not matter where I may or may not be.

She ran right past me and headed toward the corner in back. I wasn't sure what her plan was today, nor Stella's ... I just kept walking and figure they would decide when and where they were going.

I am hoping to seeing Stella's ribs disappear and I wonder if it is too soon to believe that picture of her.

With storm clouds blowing south of us in a easterly direction, it was good to see blue sky and sunshine trying it's hardest to poke through the clouds. I have a feeling though, today is going to be a day of a lot of overcast sky and I may be mowing the yard later today while wearing a jacket or a thermal shirt under a sweatshirt.

This were going pretty normal at this time. Both hounds were in view. Nothing out of the ordinary was expected. I saw nothing in any direction that would cause the hounds to run away from me. What I forget sometimes, is that it's their nose and not their eyes determine where they go.

So I have to admit I had mixed emotions when I saw Sadie taking off in a sprint toward the neighbor's wooded area. There was nothing there I could see that would make her do that. The good thing was Stella took off after her running full-speed to catch up with Sadie.

These next few pictures are zoomed and a little blurry but show how fast she was running.

Whatever it was, they were not going to stop. I had to tuck my camera in my hand and take off running after them. We were not quite to the wooded area. They both turned to trot toward me once they saw I was getting close. Maybe they were wanting me to get some exercise because the rest of the walk ... they both walked to my side only a few feet away, like nothing happened.

I tried to get ahead of them for a final picture to end the walk. They both finished their walk with a fast sprint.

It's good to see Stella getting some fast paced running in this morning. The lump on her left ischium is gone and was not evident on Monday. She is back to hogging space on the couch while she sleeps. She moves Sadie out of the way to get closer to me begging for my food. She is howling even louder for her breakfast and lunch. All good signs that she is feeling better.

Nothing planned this morning except wait to mow the lawn this afternoon. I might post some later tonight if I have any more pictures. I'd like to move back to posting once per day at the end of the afternoon.

Cool and windy in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Hounds Glad Storms Are Gone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of interesting computer / internet findings.

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

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

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

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

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

It acted like this for 3-4 days.

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

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

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

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