Hounds Take A Late Thursday Walk

Due to the temperature today we decided to take the early evening version of the "Daily Hound Walk". Maybe I should change the title of the blog to that.

Reason being, I haven't discussed my RV thoughts nor had the urge to buy one in so long I can't remember the last time. As far as the other part of the title "Other Stuff" I haven't had the urge to blog lately including my last post on Sunday.


As with all past summers, when great hot weather arrives I find myself doing more things outside for most of the day instead of being in front of a computer. Before I know it the the time is near 8pm and I don't have the urge to blog. A few weeks ago I was blogging early in the morning and even later that day but the early mornings now are me taking the Z4 out for a drive while the temps are cool and the air is cleaner. I love those morning drives.

We've been getting in our hound walks a couple of times per day but even some those walks were all 'natural' without bringing the camera. Overall though, I just haven't felt like blogging the past week or so. There is less computer time available with me doing other things. The things I do during the day is just not good blogging material ... it's just life in 'the tropics'.

Tonight it felt cooler than the temps being listed on WeatherBug and the hounds were happy with that. I was happy there wasn't any gnats to bother me and that the tall grass was dry.

The hounds did a lot of sniffing around but they were always too late for the rabbit or the bird taking off from ground level. Here Stella is in the exact spot the rabbit ran into but a few minutes too late. She can smell the rabbit but cannot see it.

I finally got her to start in our direction and we all moved on.

Once again they are a couple of minutes late to see the bird taking off right in front of me, close enough I almost stepped on it. They were excited but didn't see anything so they headed home.

I know it's getting hot when Stella stays on or near the path I am walking, plus her pace is slow ... all she is thinking about is getting back inside the house where she will lay down and fall asleep literally within minutes.

About the time the last bloodhound walked through the door tonight, Heidi decided it was time for her to go outside ... although she turned down my offer to go outside as we were starting the walk. Her times outside have mostly been long enough to pee and poop ... but there were a couple of days this week where she went to the door to be let outside and then laid in the sunshine without the bloodhounds nearby.

She is doing well. It's been 10 days since her last Epsom Salt soak and as a test I have not applied any of the water/vinegar mix since then. I started seeing new hair growing, plus first thing in the mornings her skin was looking great so I thought I'd go with just the food and nothing else. She is back off the grain free food and is eating kibble with chicken and rice ... showing no signs of skin allergies due to the dog food change.

I know it may be hard to understand for those that read blogs but don't blog themselves, and there's nothing wrong with that, but for example it has taken me 1 hour and 3 minutes to get this far. That start time was from the time I slide the camera card into the computer to download the photos. Lately, even an hour is more time than I want to spend in front of a computer when it's still nice outside. So I guess time will tell if the urge to blog more will come back.

I could blog on a weekly basis or even on those days where I am "rained in" but I do know when the sun is out and the temps are high ... it's just hard for me to sit in front of a computer very long. I like being outside doing something.

The weather has been great this week in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella Was Fine While I Was Gone

All of the storm predictions didn't happen Saturday but it did rain hard and long with raindrops going straight down. With added wind I was happy that I had decided to put the car cover on the Z4.

With that type of day, the hounds and I hung out inside. They slept, I read books, played Gran Turismo 5 and watched the IndyCar race in Detroit.

I didn't take hardly any photos and there was nothing really blog worthy yesterday. Today was a 'normal' day and nice enough to get outside. The hounds were up early, like before 7am wanting to eat. You would think I was starving them by the amount of excitement and energy they have when I get ready to feed them.

I decided today to get in a hound walk before their lunch and before I took a nice Sunday drive with the top down under overcast skies. Heidi still did not want to go for the walk and she had moved all of her blankets into a prime location ... she has been 'living' there the past week.

Even with the chance of a wet field Sadie, Stella and I were on our first walk of the day a little after 11am. Rotating two different pairs of shoes is working out well with the field wet almost everyday until early afternoon.

With all the rain we had yesterday I was expecting possible muddy areas and wetter than normal but that didn't turn out that way. It was much wetter last Thursday morning.

As usual the hounds were happy to get out and had their noses buried in the deep hay all the time. I let them go at their own pace and where they wanted. Both of them did very well running loose and I didn't have to yell to keep them from running off.

Out of curiosity I changed my camera setting before these next photos. I wanted to see if it made a difference. So, with a few clicks on the menu I went from Auto-Area to Single Point. I think I can see a slight difference in the focus of the hounds instead of the surrounding area ... like the tips of the hay.

Sadie found something she that was so good she didn't even look up at me when I walked by her. I did not turn to see what it was as I walked past her.

I was in the process of getting a really good photo of Stella running ... the SD card was full. So we finished our walk this morning with no other photos. Since I have them backed up on my computer plus a external hard drive ... I reformatted the card after downloading the photos on this blog so far. With the size of photos, the 32Gb card holds about 8,000 photos. My file date showed me the last time the card was full was last November.

I had planned yesterday while it was running that I was going to take the Z4 out today for a drive. It would be another test for Stella's separation anxiety although the last 7 out of 8 times she has been perfect. I still set up the room for her to succeed though, taking no more chances with her escaping.

I was back home after a drive lasting an 1 hour and 8 minutes. Nothing had been destroyed, chewed on or moved in the bedroom. With the cool temps in the low 70's today, I left both windows open about 3" but I also put a pedistall fan in front of one window in the rotating mode and moved the bed out to the center of the room with the small camping locker blocking the bed from the other window. They had plenty of room left to play, move around and for Stella to stand on her back legs and look out the window.

Stella didn't have a way to stand on the bed and crawl out a window. They had fresh air, water and all their Kong balls and bones. It may have helped I fed them lunch right before I left so most likely she and Sadie slept the time I was away.

Heidi's skin looked really good this morning, maybe the best it has looked in many months. The strange thing is after I gave her the Epsom Salts soak this week I did NOT apply any Water/Vinegar mixture. I am going to give her another soak and see if those weekly soaks work better than apply that vinegar mixture.

I've played a lot of Gran Turismo 5. I have regained my 'touch' and am at the Professional Level which is the 3rd of 5 different performance levels. As you play, money is earned for new cars, tune ups, modifications plus you can win free cars that you may need to qualify for different races, even at the Beginners Level.

It will be a week of beautiful weather here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Prepared For The Next Thunderstorm

I thought it was pretty cool to wake up to some fog around 8am. A little later than normal but the past couple of nights I've been up way past midnight playing an old game of Gran Turismo on my Sony PlayStation 3.

Rain was forecasted for Saturday, starting a little past midnight tonight but looking at the radar at 5:50pm there is plenty of rain nearby ... maybe within the hour.

With a late start I was still able to fit in my two cups of coffee while the hounds slept. Maybe this weather is heating up enough that it's zapping their energy also. Besides reactivating my Facebook account this morning I looked around at the internet browser Opera. I like it and have been using it for the past couple of days. I'll not go into the details but you can read about it on the net. It's an older browser company actually .. since 1997.

After the hounds demanded an early lunch, not caring that they just had breakfast a little more than 3 hours earlier ... we headed outside and touching the grass told me it was too wet to mow. The sun was out but not what I would call blazing hot, which is what I needed to dry the yard out. I decided heck with it ... time for a hound walk.

I added a 2nd shoe to the "wet field" walk. A pair of Nike's that I bought too small, but are still comfortable. As soon as we hit the shaded areas of the field I was soaked again.

Stella had hung back on her new favorite corner by the burn pile. She then realized that Sadie and I were already gone. It didn't take her long to catch up.

Just like that both hounds disappeared into the hay, while I continued to walk at my pace.

Sadie was after birds again. She never catches them but loves chasing them. That's good for her to get her running in to keep her weight down. Notice her ears are wet.

Stella is gradually heading over to her favorite corner. I let her roam today at her own pace.

She is almost invisible in this shot.

This is taken along the back edge of the field. You can see how in just a couple of days, the hay has really gotten taller in this area and maybe thicker.

Stella has seemed to have forgotten about her 'no fly zone' area, she has little if any interest now. Her new point of interest is over toward the woods by the neighbor's house, where the deer were a couple of months ago.

Once again Stella is hard to see in the tall grass. You can barely see her in the center of the photo.

The new "wet field" shoes worked out okay.

After leaving the car cover off of the Z4 a few days when it was sunny I decided to put it back on anytime that I am not driving it. It collects too much dust from the fields or highway in front of the house, plus a little of what I call "yellow pollen" power. Plus these spot storms that come out of nowhere are a pain if you want to keep your car clean.

Friends have not only suggested but one has offered to come over and enclose that side of the carport, making it a garage. I'd rather have the carport. It's open, I can see out from the inside of my house and I'm not sure I want that "closed" feeling blocking one of my better views from inside the house. So, I'll keep the carport and use the car cover.

The backyard grass was so tall after a week of not mowing, and then adding in the rain, that I raised my mower one notch. That worked out well because I had very little grass clippings left on the yard as I mowed. The interesting thing was, I started to remember that this was my normal blade level in the past ... still I wasn't sure.

The two banks of grass looked better cut at this height and that was what got me thinking that this level use to be my normal cutting level. A quick measure of grass showed me I'll stay with this new raised level.

You may remember me talking about the sharpness of my blog photos in previous blog posts. In January when I moved my blog back to blogger from Wordpress, I signed up in the box on the upper left "Follow By Email", to see if it was working for those that had signed up. There is a distinct difference in photo quality in that emailed blog post compared to the photos on the blog. The email version is much sharper.

Gran Turismo 5 is a racing game, played on your tv via a Sony PlayStation. In my case this game is 6 years old and the PS3 is about the same age. It's been sitting off to the side for the past 4 years but from 2002 - 2010 it was pure addiction. Not only was I addicted but many co-workers were also and many a day started at work with GT discussions.

It's pretty detailed, hard to do for some, and a ton of fun. I'll not explain all the details but will tell you one funny story to give you an idea. You have to pass different levels of driving tests to be eligible to drive in certain races. As you improve in racing there are higher levels of competition.

In "my prime" of this game I was at the top level. I was racing this German road coarse for the first time, a ton of fun ... but the race was never ending. I thought something was wrong but I kept driving at a high rate of speed and noticed I had already a solid hour at the handheld controls ... where you can feel the road vibration in the controls. Since I had to get to a football game I stopped racing, saving where I was.

I later read that the race was a 4-hour endurance race in REAL TIME!!!

Since you can go from one race to another you would be shocked how fast time flies playing that game, one race after another. It's fun, addicting and enough untapped levels that I will not have to upgrade for many years if I do at all. I've never had the interest to play this game online.

The hounds are out for the count so to speak ... I'm going back to racing ... here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Facebook Deletion Didn't Last Long

When I went on that rant last night about Zuckerberg and Facebook taking over the inside of smart phones, televisions, computers and I wasn't going to put up with it ... deep inside I didn't think my absence from Facebook would last long.

Before I reactivated my Facebook account, I looked at all the questions therapists ask to make sure I wasn't addicted ... believe it or not, I'm not based on their questions.

It's convenient. Let me explain.


Unlike most of the 200 million Facebook users, I lead a pretty boring life when it comes to Facebook. I only have 35 friends listed, not thousands and really pick and choose who makes the list. I follow groups and those on my friends list. It's handy, it's convenient to keep in touch with them when 99% of them live a good distance from me.

Emails have been replaced mostly by texting now. Still we keep in touch by Facebook more than anything. Yet, there are a few on that friends list where we actually hold conversations on my flip phone and we have occasional in-person visits while living hundreds of miles away from each other.

I also am not a Facebook user that posts everywhere I am or what I am doing ... about all I post post are a few photos of the hounds for those to see that don't follow my blog. Those photos are only sent to my friends list, the basset hound group or the bloodhound group.

I have had my Facebook account locked down as much as they allow wth their security settings.

THE FACTS ARE ....

All of us lost our privacy when we started doing things on the internet ... from surfing websites, shopping, banking, taking photos and yes ... even blogging. So if I were to quit Facebook and was really concerned about a "footprint' being left on the internet ... then I should just cancel my Exede Account for internet service and stick to doing only Excel spreadsheets on my computer.

Mark Zuckerberg and I will never meet in person. I'll never see the huge wall around his property nor will I see all the houses of his neighbors being demolished because he bought them out for more open land so he can expand his fence. We don't have to agree for me to use his site for what I want to use it for. So all of that means nothing.

I am a very very very small drop in the ocean in all of this Facebook, Internet and Blogging stuff. After all my last employer (government) was hacked so all of my personal stuff was breached ... every bit of information that was filled out on their forms to process a security clearance ... they not only sent me a letter last year or so to confirm it but also gave me 3 free years of Identity Theft Protection and Monitoring.

So really, what does it matter?

If you are on the internet anywhere, you are being tracked, poked, purged, whatever ... all for profit and by every company that has a website. All my hound photos are on Google images in a matter of minutes after I post a blog post. I don't own them, Google does, Facebook owns them when I post there ... it's their site. They do whatever they want with those photos or what groups or sites I like on Facebook, all to make money. That's the object isn't, making a profit?

I use Facebook for similar reasons why I blog publicly ... people enjoy seeing the photos of the hounds and they feel the same way on Facebook when I post a few there every once in a while. I also enjoy seeing photos of friends along with the blogs I follow.

So this morning without a lot of in depth thinking, I logged back into my Facebook account and just like that the hounds were famous once again ... the account was active.

It always happens ... a string of bad weather makes me want to change things ... from blog templates, blog designs, what internet browser I use (now Opera) and even canceling social media accounts. I'll chalk up my "craziness" to the amount of time it has been since I last visited Nick's in Bloomington for one of their great stroms.

Or maybe it's time to put the top down on the Z4 and take a trip to 5Guys for a great cheese burger. After either one of those my blood counts will be back to normal and my thought process will be also.

A light fog this morning with hopes of a lot of sunshine to dry the yard enough for me to mow late this afternoon before the thunderstorms hit on Saturday. The hounds have been fed and are sleeping but they will be happy to know their photos are back on Facebook.

All is back to normal here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.