Stella Disappears

I was going to blog about Stella's disappearance on the public blog up until the time I downloaded the pictures into my iMac. I did not blog about her disappearance before, when she did this exact same thing last spring. I had to ask myself why blog about it? Am I just wanting to generate blog traffic? Am I wanting to see what kind of response I get or the comments it receives? Why am I blogging every day publicly anyway? So ... I came here to document the disappearance.


I am going back to commenting BEFORE the photos instead of after them. It makes more sense and is also easier today when I list photos without comments. Our walk this morning started out like all of the, except this one was around 9am. That's fine as we have been starting our walks later in the day this past week.

I wasn't going to take the camera this morning but I am glad I did after what happened. For some strange reason I thought about notifying Kelly and have her put the new blog on their blog sidebar. Since my story of blog stalkers and threats are not true, it would not matter if the blog was listed. Of course, Chinle might see it and then would be able to keep track of what the hounds and I do.

Since I am undecided about the future of public blogging, I'll not ask Kelly to add the Wordpress blog to the list. Afterall I have used 15% of my 3Gb of free photos before I would either have to make version 2.0 of the blog or pay a monthly fee for expanded photo storage just for a blog.

I am two days away from my Facebook account being permanently deleted. That means if I were to log back into my Facebook account AFTER August 28th, I'd have no history, no friends, no photos. I would have to go back and block all the people I don't want finding me nor have a desire to see their accounts. I do miss Facebook "just a little" ... the photos for the FJ Group were fantastic but mostly off road mods and rock climbers. I do miss seeing what a few of my friends are doing. But really they were just "Facebook Friends" that never really kept in touch with me in real life ... except for a couple.

Twitter gives me all the sports news and photos I need. Most of those people have duplicate info on their Facebook accounts. I never heard back from Stephanie concerning Stella.

I knew at this point of the walk that I would be letting Stella do whatever she wanted. Most of the time she is up near the first corner when I leave her behind and then she will wander over toward Haslers or behind Lueking's backyard.

It was this picture that I thought about later when I didn't see her anywhere in the field as got closer to home. Had she gone into the woods? That is the only place she could have gone because she was nowhere in the field outside of her normal places.

Sadie will always look back to see where Stella is.

The sunshine is out an hour later but from this photo you would think today was going to be overcast and cloudy.

Sadie took off looking for Stella as we came to the first corner. Stella was nowhere in sight along the horizon. I looked from the woods on the left, across the field and to the right toward Haslers.

Stella was gone ... I suspected she was in the woods to the left, where I last saw her with her nose to the ground.

In 20 years of living here I have only walked in this woods a few times, probably less than 5 times. It's always wet and muddy down below as I found out that time I was looking for Bertha. But today the ground was dry and it was really nice back in here. I should go back and explore more.

No signs of Stella anywhere. I called her name over and over, hoping to see her come running through the woods ... but did not see her anywhere.

I can see why Lueking's son and grandchildren were walking through this woods last December ... it's nice and easy to move through.

Just think ... this woods rebuilds itself naturally. For all the fallen, rotted trees on the ground, there are new ones growing, with tree trunks only 3" to 6" in diameter.

I was actually shocked I did not see Stella in these woods.

A final check of the field. Sadie and I walked over to the edge of Hasler's drainage ditch ... no sign of Stella. Luckily I did not see her laying by the side of the highway, although traffic is really lite for a Saturday morning.

Sadie was looking through the yard, ran to the carport door and then the front yard looking for Stella ... I left her inside and then drove the FJ back to the turkey farm behind us. Stella was nowhere in view.

I was gone for 8 minutes looking for her in the FJ. It had been 38 minutes since we started the walk. As I pulled into the driveway there was Stella in the carport, walking out to the front to meet me. She was happy I was home. She did her normal 'poking' me with her nose, smelled my hair and then tried opening the round door handle as Sadie and Heidi barked from the inside.

I'll not blog about this. But it's good to document it here. I hope I can find the "label" from the last time she did this so I can keep all of her disappearances together.

For not doing a lot except watering my flowers on occasion, they are looking pretty good. It will take 2-3, maybe 4 years before these plants grow enough to look good. I don't miss the large yews.

The hounds are sound to sleep. I've had my coffee but need some oatmeal for breakfast. Plus I need to start cooking a large pot of beans for later today and the next few days. My problem is, once they are finished cooking, they taste so good I cannot stop eating them. They don't last longer than 2 days.

I'm glad Stella's back. She acted happy that I came home.

Sadie And Stella Run Away

This morning's walk started out like all other daily walks. When they took off running I didn't realize they would not stop and run out of sight. Evidently we had just missed deer in the field.

Another great day to get things done here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Deer Sighting

The weather forecasts were correct, it was 60° this morning as we started our morning walk. As I write this a little before 10am, it's 64° and hard to believe for August weather in this location. It will take all day to get up to 79° but that is still cool enough for the hounds to get 3 walks in today ... hopefully Heidi was join us.

Same routine, same path most of the time ... only this morning Stella and Sadie strolled together for most of the walk.

I am finding there isn't really much to say about this morning's walk. I could have started a couple of hours earlier and then lead into my 'to do' list but I still have a lot of time to get a lot of things done today. This cooler weather has motivated me today.

It's good to see that Stella's tail is in the upright position ... it's a good sign she is feeling good again.

I didn't know it at the time I took this picture, but Sadie had picked up deer scent. She did not take off, nor did Stella to chase them. She was looking in the right direction.

As I made the final turn, I looked over to my right along the wooded area and 4-6 deer were scattering and sprinting from the field to the woods. I only caught these two. Many more were further to their left.

Stella stopped and looked, sniffed in that direction, she was in a postion staring that direction I was certain she was going to take off running in that direction. When I told her "you're too late, they are gone" ... she turned and walked my direction.

Deer in the area that they did not see did not seem to be a big deal to them. They had other stuff they wanted to check out before I caught up to them. They took off running way ahead of me.

It took some coaxing but I was able to get both of them moving in my direction home.

Sadie acted as if we should keep walking somewhere, as she was not ready to come inside. It was a great walk with no humidity, no mosquitoes, and was cool t-shirt weather. It should be a great day to get a lot of low priority stuff done today. The AC is turned off and all the windows are open, with a good chance of that happening for the next 10 days.

I was so happy with the performance of the 'beta' version of Apple's new macOS High Sierra on my laptop computer, that yesterday afternoon I installed it on my iMac. Here is a preview of the improvements, macOS.

A few of the things I have noticed is a faster Safari browser, really faster. I've made it my default browser again and put Google Chrome back on the shelf in the Apps Folder, out of sight. The editing features in the Photo program are much more detailed, some professional settings that I will probably never use.

Of course with any OS change I've had to make some adjustments. I mentioned the other day my 2011 version of Microsoft Office for Mac would not work on the new OS after October. Microsoft was no longer going to support that with updates. They are wanting everyone to buy their 2016 version. For the 'basic' stuff I do in Excel I didn't need a new Office package.

I did a lot of searching, reading and testing Apple Numbers that came free with my computer. By the end of Tuesday I had converted all of my Excel spreadsheets to Numbers with no issues. I also converted all of my Word Docs to Pages.

I finally found out how to link cells between spreadsheets. I didn't find it in my 100's of internet searches or reading the forum full of Mac geeks. I even posted my question on that forum and didn't get an answer on how to link cells from different spreadsheets. I did not find my answer in Apple Support ... I found it on my spreadsheet after it was converted to Apple Numbers. By highlighting the cell I wanted to link to, it showed me the formula.

So all is good migrating from Microsoft Office to Apple iWork programs and they are free.

On a closing note, all of the plants I planted a few weeks ago are too far under the roof overhang to get rained on. After our night of rain on Monday night, I could tell the next morning what plants got watered by the rain and which ones did not ... none of them were touched by the rain. The Yews were like that but I never had to water them after they matured.

It's fantastic weather today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.