Stella Starts A New Routine

I am not sure if Stella's change today is a routine yet, but I'm hopeful.

After missing the walks yesterday due to rain I figured today that Sadie didn't need to wait for me to finish my 2nd cup of coffee before we walked. I could have it when we got back from our walk.

The first surprise was Stella charging out in front of us, leading the walk. In the past few weeks she never left a spot about 100' behind me in this picture. Still, there would be plenty of chances up ahead to see if she would be distracted by a scent ... or the woods behind the neighbors house.

That didn't mean she trotted all the way. She still had to stop a few times and check things out but I will say her 'eating' today was non-existent. Sadie on the other hand, was high energy and spent most of her time off the path, charging through the thorny bushes along the edge of the field.

I remember when she was only a few months old she was doing that and caught a thorn with the inside of her ear. The thorn cut her ear open like a sharp razor blade, luckily not all the way through but enough it needed stitches. The scar is barely visible today.

About the time I turned to see where Stella was, she sprinted by me and caught up with Sadie. It was like old times, just like walking last summer where Stella made the full walk every day.

Sadie was pretty intense today with the deer scent. She was focused and was having a lot of fun charging through the brush.

As we were walking the back edge of the field, Stella was heading our way. It was good to see that she was getting in some exercise instead of spending her time in one spot eating deer scat. It was also a pleasant surprise.

She still had plenty of places to check out, but was moving most of the time. I've been feeding her a little extra kibble each meal hoping to put some weight back on her. She was getting too thin.

Without saying a word, she came running toward Sadie and I.

I could tell by the way they were acting that it wasn't long ago deer had been moving in this direction. When Stella stopped and looked over the fence toward the field behind us, I could the deer had jumped the fence and headed that direction. In the past I have actually seen the deer do that.

She was very interested in walking in the 'no fly zone'. As she walked that direction, she would stop and sniff the air. The deer scent was thick today. I kept calling her name and that kept her somewhat in control to where she would walk out there but in my direction.

This next picture is pretty far away from me. She gradually walked in the direction of the woods to the north. She was almost in a 'quiet' mode so I would not hear her and she did get pretty far away before I said something to her that was not only funny but got a strange response.

I said "do you want me to put you on the leash" and she immediately started walking toward me. I couldn't believe it !! LOL Then she got on the path to the left of me, right next to me and started walking as if I had put the leash on her.

We were not quite to the corner where we veer left to head home when Sadie sprinted past me and Stella followed. She never stopped to look in the direction of the woods behind the neighbors and never headed to the middle of the field. She followed the path all the way home as if she was on the leash.

With temps in the mid 30s it still felt nice outside and the sunshine was trying it's best to poke out through the dark clouds. After having a high of 56° yesterday, the forecast is showing high 20's by tomorrow and then back up to the high 50's by the weekend.

I know all of my book reading right now is a 'winter thing'. Once it's warm outside and sunny I know that I will be spending most of my time outside this spring and summer. The list of things to do is much longer than last year. So it will be back to the warm weather routines for the hounds and I.

I checked eBay and Amazon last night for the Absolute Black mirror caps for the Mini Cooper. Absolute Black is the official name for the color of my car. No luck, which I find just amazing. Since I see other pictures of the same car in different colors, many of them have black mirror caps. It must be something you could order as an option when you bought the car brand new.

I am going to check with a couple of body shops I've used in the past, and see if I can set up an appointment for them to paint the ones I have. I think I am a good interior and exterior house painter but I have never done well spray painting anything. Therefore paying someone to do a professional job is the best option for me.

Not much is planned for today but it is beginning to look like the perfect afternoon to pickup the latest batch of fallen tree limbs and add to the burn pile. So far the burn pile is much much smaller than this time last year.

I've been having a strong urge lately to go play some craps at the casino. It might be hard to believe but when I get these urges that never go away, the results are pretty profitable. They don't happen often and my last trips to the craps table was over two years ago. Yes, I add what I win or lose to my spreadsheet tracking expenses and income.

For all the readers that are working, it's 'hump day' for you and another 'day off' for the hounds and I here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Day Cancelled Due To Rain

It actually started last night with different periods of hard rain. At times it sounded as if I had a metal roof on the house. Directv signal was knocked out for short time as well as the Exede satellite internet.

That didn't matter. I was deep into my newest book, a novel by John Grisham called The Summons. I'm liking the large print. It's an older book and hard to put down so it was another night I had to force myself to stop reading to get some sleep ... it was 3am.

I was out cold and never heard another drop of rain the rest of the night, in fact I didn't hear anything. No weird dreams, no waking up in a sunlit room ... just solid sleep. You can always tell how much rain and how windy it was during the night by looking at the floor of the carport then next morning, to see it was pretty active.

It was good to see the car cover was still on the Z4. Halfway down each side of the cover are two grommets where I connect each with a bungee cord that goes under the car. That keeps the cover from blowing off when the wind speeds are extreme. Ask me how I know that.  LOL

Sadie and Stella went out this morning for just a short time. Stella did not have any hesitation in returning to the house after she took her bathroom break. Sadie in the meantime was trying to figure out the mole traffic which has destroyed not only my backyard this year, but the front yard this winter. I'm killing the grub worms in March, chemicals and all.

Stella normally has her tail lowered, rarely up and curled like Sadie so when she had her tail up and pointing out I couldn't believe how long it was. When you see the bottom half of her tail is black from a parent being a 'black n tan' bloodhound, it is pretty easy to see why the original owner named her "Dipstick". Plus there is a story from the couple I got her from that she did get into some oil in the garage while they were at work.

Once back inside the house, it was time to continue the book with Heidi and Stella exemplify what kind of day it's been. I've been keeping my house between 60°-65° but today is one of those days it might be 62° outside and inside the same but it feels much colder. Heidi needed the Marmot sleeping back to keep her warm.

Later we took a short break outside but it was lightly raining, the sky to the west didn't look any better. It might be 62° but the weather experts say it will be a high of 28° by Thursday. Where's global warming when you need it?

Lately when thinking about my spring to do list, I've change my mind about planting grass along the old 75 year old wire fence and hill at the corner of the house. Due to keeping the hill from moving I'd like to keep all of the roots of the trees in the ground, along with the concrete blocks the Amish house builders threw into the hill 40 years ago.

I have enough problem with 'ground swell' as it is besides pulling up all the roots and planting new grass. I don't think just planting grass on this hill would hold it. All the underground water in that field leads right to my backyard.  I might throw a few handfuls of wild flower seeds over this area to mix in with what grows back to give it some color.

After posting the pictures of the Mini Cooper yesterday without the stripes here and on the Mini Cooper forum, I have had a surprising number of emails and forum replies. Everyone has some pretty good ideas on how to move forward.

One interesting idea was to put two solid wide stripes only on the hood in dark gray and on each outside edge a very thin red strip. The majority of Countryman owners on the forum suggested keeping the red mirror caps and the brake inlets, then doing a couple of mods to accent the red.

I originally thought of making it black as possible. Now remember all the ideas I speak of, have pictures online or on the Mini Forum showing me what it would look like before I make changes. I also thought of putting on door handle caps that are black. They sell those along with the chrome trip around the headlights and brake lights. Many paint those chrome trim pieces.

One forum member even suggested painting the thin piece of chrome around the car called the 'belt line' red.

Interesting about the color black. I thought it would be quite easy just to order a set of mirror caps in black and then sell my red ones. I was wrong. Even the official Mini accessory site does not list black caps as an option. So I guess from the pictures I saw online, those were special ordered at the time they bought the car or were painted later.

The thing is I am still a fan of chrome and to me there is just enough chrome there to make the car look good. Until I was looking through 5 different sites last night that sold Mini accessories, I didn't realize those red brakes you see behind the black wheels cost almost $1,500.

I also found the exact stripes I took off, in a kit for $117. Some have suggested putting them back on, only on the hood and rear hatch door. Some think only on the hood would look okay while others say forget the stripes and make it as black as possible.

Speaking of cars, I noticed the Toyota dealership that took my blue FJ in trade back in October still has it on their lot for sale. They just had their 3rd price reduction and it is now priced the same as what they gave me for a trade in. I'm surprised it has not been sold yet, since they installed new OEM catalytic converters plus fixed anything they found to replace.

The hounds probably miss riding in it. But I like the Cooper Countryman and it still gives me all the room I need plus better gas mileage. It's quite comfortable.

Well I am headed back to my book. I think I can finish that tonight. Thanks to all that have suggested books to read the past few days. I have included every one on my list of books to read and have found a few of them available in my library. If they are not available I can have them sent here within the state library system.

I see just a little blue sky trying to peek outside the clouds but it's way too wet to take a hound walk today here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

A Rare February Outdoor Activity

The hounds and I survived Super Bowl Sunday yesterday. I did not deviate from my diet, had no urges for a junk food or a chocolate shopping trip.

But a little over an hour before the start of the game I decided to start something I had been thinking about doing for over a month because my curiosity got the best of me.

I guess it was one of those times that hit me, where I am either changing blog templates, building a new blog, maybe even trading cars ... yet I didn't want to do any of those things. Over the past three weeks I've been thinking of removing the red stripes from my Mini Cooper S Countryman.

Before we get into that story, lets move to the hounds. Their normal activities were not canceled because of the work I got done today. In fact by the time I finished with the car at 1:15pm, all the hounds had been fed twice and the bloodhounds just completed their second walk of the day.

Don't let this picture fool you. It's not taken after I had my daily two cups of coffee. This is Stella and Sadie looking at me first thing in the morning wanting to go on a walk. I needed some coffee first.

They were not happy about my decision but they eventually started down the path to the house. By the time I had poured my first cup, both of them were laying down in one of their many favorite sleeping spots.

I wanted about an hour so the temperature would move to over 40° by then. As you can see, Stella is ready for another new week. Will she have any routines change? They usually last only a few weeks before she moves to a different routine.

The walk starts at like all the the others. It's fairly warm but I wore a light pair of gloves, my jacket and ski cap. It was suppose to be pretty warm today and I wanted to start and finish my car project today. Looking at the sky though I did not see any way we were going to get into the 50's like they predicted.

Sadie and I continued our walk, leaving Stella behind.

As I glanced back to see Stella I realized I had forgot the 6' standard leash this morning. Maybe I could get by without it, plus I knew I wasn't walking back to the house just to get the leash.

The weather forecast shows 3 of the next 7 days the temps will be warmer than mid-50's and one day may reach 62°. I'll take weather in February any day of the week.

Sadie was at a good pace and was covering a lot of ground. I turned around one time to find her, thinking she had gone into the deer area on the right side and out of sight. I called her name and didn't see her anywhere on the horizon ... because she was standing right behind me.

Stella was in her normal position and I could see her moving in the direction of the woods. I yelled her name a few times but she kept her slow pace toward the neighbors.

As I approached her, she glanced up and started walking toward me. The leash was not needed since she walked right beside me all the way to the house. Too close for pictures and too slow for my pace but I was happy to see she had the motivation to head our way.

It was warm enough to do what I wanted to do with the car. I had spent weeks looking at pictures of other Mini Cooper Countryman owners on a forum. Many of them had taken the stripes off of their car. I talked to a couple of guys that did it and it did not sound like there would be any problems to the paint underneath the stripes, if I chose to do it.

All I needed was a heat gun, some 'goo-be-gone' and patience. The slower I peeled them off the less sticker residue would be left behind. I also checked the original window sticker list of standard equipment along with the specification for the car in that specific year and model to make sure the the red stripes were not listed as standard equipment.

Like I said I started last night right before the Super Bowl but I didn't complete all of the hood. I had enough off to where I could tell if I liked the change or not. So I wanted to start this project today by 10am and figured it might take me all day to take them off, use the goo-be-gone and then wash that off. One way or another I was going to get everything done today.

In a way the red stripes do look good against that black background but a lot of the times I thought there were just too many of them. It was the first thing you saw instead of the body design of the car. Also all of the Countryman's I had seen without stripes, no matter what their color ... I liked the look of those.

Here is a before picture when I bought the car in early December 2016.

After ...

As I was taking pictures during and after the process, I realized that it might have looked okay if I had taken off only the stripes on the doors, leaving the ones on the hood and rear door. But the more I looked at it the more I liked having no stripes.

By the time I washed it and dried it with a chamois I was sold on the look. Those red mirror covers might be changed to black ones in the future. The problem is, they are more than I want to pay, $200 for the set. I am not a good 'spray painter' if I were to paint these or buy the generic OEM where I can paint them at $55 a piece. So the red mirrors and brake cooler intakes may stay red. 

I sat and looked at it for a while before doing the back door. I decided it would be best with "all or nothing" with the stripes. I had seen a picture of one on the forum for these cars, where they had left the stripes on the back door while removing all the other strips on the doors and hood. That looked good on the white car with black stripes.

Here you can see those red brake cooler intakes. Another thing, I never cared for was the design of the front hood stripe. If that had been two solid stripes then they might have stayed on.

Well the hounds are sound to sleep. I have a John Grisham book to start and a full stomach from the pizza I had for a mid-afternoon lunch at a local establishment. I even had enough left over to bring home with me for a snack later on.

It is suppose to rain later today and tomorrow but knew that when I washed the car. I wanted to get all of the goo-be-gone solution off of the car. That stuff worked fantastic in getting all the sticker residue off. Plus I wanted to see if any of the stripes had caused the paint color change under the stripes.

All the paint and clear coat looks perfect. When it's warmer than 45° I'll give it a hand wax. I wonder how many drivers thought I was crazy as they drove by and saw me washing my car with rain on the way and a cool 43°.

You didn't think I could do all of this work without some supervision and final approval of my job did you? Sadie inspected it gave me her approval of the job and let me go to lunch. Stella of course had to touch the car with her nose leaving a long string of bloodhound drool. I was able to wipe that off before it dried ... it's the worse stuff once it dries, totally amazing stuff.

You have to admit here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana, washing a car by hand is a rare outdoor activity in the month of February.