Two New Posts Back To Back

It's out of the norm but I am posting two new posts back to back due to each of them having a different subject. The first one is below this post or over to the right sidebar it's titled "Took A Mid-Day Drive". 

Right after the FJ was parked and the driver's door opened, as I climbed out Heidi was right behind me and moved as fast as she could into the following position. I guess she didn't have enough room in the passenger seat to do that and may have been holding that scratch for quite a while.

I could tell by the temperature while letting all the hounds out of the FJ after our return, that the field might be dry enough to get a walk in before I started my afternoon sports marathon on tv. It was dry enough and off we went. Heidi stayed back inside to let the ointment do it's thing without taking the chance of getting it wet.

I believe the hay in the field is growing by the hour and pretty soon once the bloodhounds are off the path about the only way to see them will be their tails. When it got too high in the past, Winston use to boycott the walks and would stay back in the yard howling and barking as we walked away.

I glanced back at Stella and at first she was nowhere to be seen and had stepped into the wooded area ... that's out of bounds for her. When she heard her name she came out of the wooded area to walk along the edge like nothing had happened.

I'm glad to see some ribs on Sadie, that means her exercise 2x per day and portion control on the dog food is working. She still has a few pounds to lose.

What ever it was that caught their interest, Sadie took off trotting and immediately rolled in it. It worked out ok, it was nothing that needed to be wiped or washed off. With my upcoming televised sports this afternoon I did not have time to give a bloodhound a bath ... especially since I would have never gotten her in the tub. She hates baths worse than getting her nails cut.

She also acted like nothing was wrong when I called her ... everything was okay to her.

With it getting fairly warm, Sadie trotted for the house and headed straight to the water bowl.

In the meantime my afternoon ended with the Reds game tied in the bottom of the 9th while the NASCAR race had 11 laps to go, NHL playoff game was on NBC and the Formula 1 race had just started on NBCSN. I ended up taping the F1 race. I need a 2nd tv.

While it looked like the perfect day in weather, we had a severe thunderstorm blow through but passed just to the south of us. It was the only small storm on radar in the whole Midwest ... it ended up raining lightly here with the sun shining while Stella whined ... because there was thunder.

Sunsets are nice here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Took A Mid-Day Drive

While we waited for the grounds to dry out enough for a walk, I had the urge to take some photos of the local area. So we piled into the FJ. The hounds took their usual seats with a destination a few miles west where the land goes from hilly to nice and flat.

Even Heidi was ready for a little drive. She wagged her tail and trotted to the door when I asked if she wanted to go for a ride. That is rare for her. Sadie and Stella are a different story ... they want to go all the time. They never hesitate to jump in when the back door is open.

A little blurry on this next photo, but I was holding the camera up while driving, shooting blind and not knowing if I was even getting Heidi in the photo. I couldn't pass posting it even with the blurriness. She doesn't pose like that in the car often.

I think you can tell a difference right away from our drive in the middle of April. The farms are larger and the land is flatter. All of this is just a few miles west of us. With all the recent rain it was too wet to see anyone working their fields today. There was standing water in a lot of the fields we saw.

I was hoping those were snow capped mountains I was seeing behind those out buildings ... but they were just clouds, telling me I was still in the Midwest.

Like the movie Hoosiers ... yes, a lot of barns have basketball GOALS not RINGS (Ted Cruz) nearby. The local small school in this area is a combination of three different schools and has had numerous basketball players play for Indiana, Purdue and Butler at the D-1 level.

I was pretty sure where this road would end up, it was nice to get off the highway.

I like the design of this house, with the added brick for the porch foundation and the bottom of each post ... the decision was whether to crop out the dumpster but I wanted to keep as much of the house as possible.

Throughout the drive we saw a lot of these natural gas stations.

At least this line of train cars were parked but I have been stuck in traffic at the railroad crossing for this train that seemed to have gone on for miles.

With all the recent rain plus some this afternoon after these photos, their sprinkler system will not be used for a while.

Maybe next time I'll turn in and get some close up shots of airplanes at our local airport. Yes, I'm serious ... it's an airport.

Surprising but about this time I was shocked to hear both of my bloodhounds were whining. We were not even close to Dairy Queen nor any kind of bbq smells. I took that as they were wanting to cut the trip off short and head home.

So we did.

Stella Howls For A Walk

Yesterday didn't amount to much and I could not even dream up anything to blog about last night. At one time yesterday it was raining so hard you could not see. Of course when that happened I was doing 65mph heading down the highway to the store to replenish supplies.

The shopping trip was successful although a little higher cost than I like. You would think they could wait at least a couple of weeks before they raise the cost of most foods I buy. It was good to get back home and see that Stella had continued her streak of no damage while I was gone. It's been a while, longer than I can remember, that she damaged something with her separation anxiety.

During the times where the rained stopped the hounds would go outside to see if there was even a chance for their walk. Since the morning walk was cancelled they were starting to get a little cabin fever. It doesn't take them long to get bored with inactivity ... they are not like the commercial you see at times with a bloodhound laying on the porch.

Since it was always wet Stella didn't get much further than the cut grass of the yard.

Sadie just stared and knew what the rain had done. She could tell there wasn't going to be an afternoon walk.

With just a glimpse of sunshine, Stella took that as it was time to go. She started howling for the walk as it was too late to be begging for food. She had lunch hours before this happened. With her howling, Heidi started her barking routine thinking a third meal was being served.

This morning was a different story. It had rained most of the night. I could tell by the light highway traffic this morning that the pavement was still wet, therefore the yard and field was going to be even wetter than yesterday ... but the sunshine was out ... so that is promising for later this afternoon's walk.

Neither hound walked outside the yard. Not even a nose to see if the field was wet. We did attempt it though. When I saw standing water after walking about 5' into the field "the game was called" and we returned to the house, to write this blog post.

As you can tell from all the weeds in the driveway I have decided not to use any weed killer like I had thought about doing this year. With Heidi's skin situation I did not want her to be around any yard chemicals like that. She goes in the front yard most of the time but will walk and lay in the driveway when it is hot as sunny. The bloodhounds like to put their noses to the ground with Stella taking naps on the drive ... too close for chemicals.

So even though I would prefer a clean driveway like I had after pulling the weeds last year by hand ... this year I will keep them as short as possible with the weed eater and let the sun kill them later on this summer.

So with the standing water in the field there wasn't much they could do but return to the house for their daily morning siesta. Yes ... even after not being able to walk, both of them are sound to sleep with Sadie snoring.

I had two exciting moments yesterday not counting the blind rain storm at 65mph. It dealt with the SanDisk camera card. On the side of my iMac are two slots. The first one is a larger slot of DVDs or CDs and right below that is the slot for my camera card.

It's one of those actions you do everyday a few times a day so it's a habit where you you don't really pay attention when sliding the card into the slot. Only yesterday that almost cost me a card full of photos. I would have lost just the new photos taken since I download all of them to my hard drive.

How would I have lost them?

I slid the small camera SanDisk card into the slot for the DVD/CDs!!! It went all the way inside, behind the felt ... gone!!! I was actually shocked that I didn't go crazy when it happen but immediately wondered how was I going to get it out without seeing it. I took a steak knife thinking that was long enough to get back as far as I needed. The teeth of the knife was able to grab the top side of the card and I could slide it out enough for me to pull it out.

You would think that would be enough excitement for one day but "Murphy" was bored with all the rain and he had decided he was going to make my day with nothing but screw ups. With the SanDisk card in hand I went to slide it back into my camera only to see and feel I had put the card in BACKWARDS!!!!

Luckily I was able to pull that out with needle nose pliers with no damage to the camera or memory card.

So far this morning "Murphy" has taken the day off ... he had enough laughs yesterday. With the sunshine out and having the itch to go somewhere I think the hounds and I are headed out for a photo exploration.

No wind, no rain and sunshine here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.