Another Walk In Windy Conditions

While Heidi ignored my request for her to join us on the afternoon walk, Stella, Sadie and I walked in colder temps and windier conditions this afternoon. I use to like posting just a paragraph of content and all photos on my older Wordpress blog ... so I'll do that since this is our 2nd post of the day.

Another great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Cold Weather Has Arrived

With the storm windows locked down tight for winter weather and all the windows closed, the hounds and I had a solid night of sleep and I could tell my mood was much better this morning than when I heard the salesman knocking on my door yesterday afternoon. It was the coldest morning so far this year as we stepped outside for our first walk of the day.

It might have looked like rain was near but we are not suppose to get anymore until later this afternoon. We should be able to squeeze in a couple of more walks before then, more photos and possibly another blog post tonight.

Hard to say what Sadie was hearing or smelling. She is facing away from the woods towards the neighbors and nowhere in the direction of Stella.

As you can see, Stella was on her own this morning. I had a feeling she wasn't going to go far by the time Sadie and I returned.

With it 46° and windy, I had a chance to try out a new Carhartt jacket a friend gave me. I can always use a different jacket but have always stuck to my down parkas and other down vests I have. This jacket will save some wear and tear on my other jackets and from the looks of it, it will do well as a hound hair collector and catching flying drool.

Those skies are to the north of us ... looks almost like a snow storm is up there. I still have not done any weather research on what the winter predictions are for this area. I have a gut feeling we will not be having a mild winter this year.

Sadie found out today as well as me ... what happens when you are eating dirt but due to all the rain it was really mud. I noticed once on the walk she placed her mouth on the ground and scratched with her paw. When she did that frantically back inside the house I decided to take a look.

All of that mud was caked up in her upper gums ... I cleaned that out in one step with a rag then brushed her teeth with some dog toothpaste and a toothbrush. I was shocked she let me do that ... but she seemed to like the result.

She never lets me get too far ahead of her, so once she saw I was not stopping my walk this morning she knew she had to run to catch up. After all she can't give Stella the chance to drink her water when we get back inside the house.

Poor camera work by the photographer but I think you can still see her ears flapping through the blurriness.

As usual as we approached the lower part of the field near the house, Sadie stood and surveyed the area with her nose and ears trying to find where Stella was.

When I told her to "go get Stella" off she went. You can barely see Stella off to the left up toward the house.

But bloodhounds get distracted easy when there is a strong scent picked up. I ended up getting to Stella before Sadie did, since she was no longer interested in finding her.

I guess the leaves are going to start showing their colors this year ... the trees seem to change every 24 hours and there are a lot of leaves left for a colorful fall season.

That is the most skin I have ever seen fall over Stella's eyes.

You might think from the wrinkles on Stella's forehead she is either in deep thought or stressed out. I just think that gravity is stronger this morning when it comes to her extra skin.

Well will be tuned into the first World Series game tonight. For some reason Los Angeles is having higher than normal temperatures. By game time they are expecting it to be in the high 90's, no retractable roof and no air conditioning like they have at Houston stadium. The starting time is great for baseball fans east of the Mississippi River but right at the start of rush hour traffic in LA.

I came back to Google Chrome this morning. For some reason while looking through my updated blog list and reading different ones, I glanced over at my Activity Monitor when I was shutting down Safari and saw in the short time I had been online, 248Mb of data was used. That is way too much for what I was doing.

I'll compare that to what I do here in the next hour or two. It might be the new update to macOS, but for some reason my Google Data Saver is no longer working. I deleted the app and reinstalled it but so far nothing is showing up. With the computer's Activity Monitor I will still be able to see how much data Chrome is using after I visit the same websites as this morning.

Heidi made it outside about 4pm yesterday. She didn't stay out too long, just long enough for what she needed. Then she trotted fast back from the front yard to the door. With temperatures even colder today it will be hard to get her to do much outside. She might move from her bed to the couch but not much else besides eating lunch. I hope to get some photos of her at our lunch break.

I am not ready for winter here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Boring Rainy Day Turned Exciting

The predicted rain started last night and I could hear it throughout the night with the windows open. It did not even stop long enough for the hounds to take their morning trip outside while I poured out their morning kibble. Sadie made it out the yard but Stella nor Heidi were going to out in the rain to pee ... so they stood in the carport waiting until I was finished, normal routine.

Consequently it had been a pretty slow day being cooped up inside. Once the temperatures dropped to 51° I walked around and changed the storm windows from screens on the lower half to winter windows. Nothing in the 10-day forecast shows we will return to temps warm enough to open the windows. After checking the weather radar all day, trying to find an opening in the rain ... we found a gap so that we could take our first and probably only hound walk at 2:30pm.

I had already changed to jeans, a sweatshirt and a rain jacket over that for the walk. It was going to be close if we could do a complete walk and get back to the house before it started raining again. Both hounds were happy to get outside but Heidi saw that afternoon temperature and once again said 'no way'. I look for her to go out tonight at the same time she always goes out after dark.

It wasn't cold, I didn't smell any smoke in the air like the last few days. Plus the rain had not really been that heavy but it had been a light steady non-stop rain. I am wondering how late into the fall will I mow the lawn for the last time.

Stella was showing more energy than normal with a bounce to her step from the time she left the house. While I was catching up on my taped tv shows last night, she snuck away into the kitchen. Standing on her rear feet and looking over the kitchen island, she was able to pluck out my last mango out of the fruit bowl and ate everything except the large seed ... skin and all.

How did I know?

As she came back into the living room like nothing happened, thinking she would climb up on the couch on the other side of Heidi while I was watching tv ... I noticed some mango residue hanging from her jowls. A dead giveaway ... she was caught just after the act again. That is what I get for letting the mango sit for a few more days to ripen I guess.

So today we played around the computer for most of the day. My iPhone told me I needed to update my iTunes but my App Store on my iMac showed I had already did the update and the download. With my iPhone using my wifi connection to save some Verizon data I couldn't find out how large the file was ... so it started downloading and installing. You never want to stop those until they are finished ... but my Activity Monitor was clicking off data faster than I could even imagine.

iTunes update finally stopped at 2.3Gb but so far my HughesNet is not showing that much data being used. I have come to the conclusion there are very few ways a person can control their data usage anymore. All  companies that provide internet service know we are addicted and knew we will pay for more data if needed. I still think that HughesNet uses more date per day than the Exede service I was using the previous two years. By my calculations while I do basically the same type of internet surfing, HughesNet has me using about 300Mb more per day than I did with Exede.

What was a slow dragging day turned into some fast excitement while I was editing photos for this blog. The hounds didn't bark but did get up from their naps. I thought I heard knocking at the front door. That's a sign that a lost stranger is at the door because all people that know me always come to the door in the carport since that is the door we use the most.

Once I confirmed a stranger (door to door salesman) was on the front porch with the 'getaway' van parked in the driveway running ... my adrenaline increased as I move into 'game mode' ... have I ever told you how much I hate unsolicited salesmen?

As I walked through the carport around the Z4 to see who was at the door, the 'getaway' driver waved at me with his window rolled down. My pulse rate increased even more ... LOL ... I was going to have some fun as I usually do.

He had the same sales approach as the Satellite TV/Internet rep did a couple of years ago ... but he was talking so fast I really couldn't understand him ... so I let him ramble until he had to stop to breath ... then I CALMLY asked him "what the (*&#!*&&*$#@ do you want?

He made the first mistake for a sales rep, man or woman, ... he didn't listen, didn't answer my rude foul question ... he proceeded to talk just as fast as he was before following his well practiced script. At the same time he was handing me a large container of Comet. Did he think that would confuse me with a free can, worth about $2.49 at Walmart along with his fast talking.

Well ... it did !!!! I mean how many times to you get handed a large can of Comet? I can't even remember the last time I ever used it, in fact I don't think I have at least in 20 years !!!

I still have no idea what he was trying to sell me or what he wanted. He did ask me what I would use the Comet for ... my honest answer was "not a damn thing" !!!!

That answer did not even phase him. As he continued to mumble into the next phase of his sales pitch, one that he had practiced so many times before 'hitting the streets' ... I could tell he was on a mission to make this sale, after all I had a pulse, I had answered his question ... there was hope for success. For some reason he started trotting sideways down the lawn toward the back of his van as I stood there with my free (I thought) can of Comet, a $2.49 value at Walmart.

I still has ZERO IDEA what he had said or was trying to sell me !!!!

He was still mumbling something I couldn't understand as he approached the van parked half way down the driveway about 50' away from me. I yelled that I had things to do and started walking back to the door to go inside. I THINK he was yelling for me to give him MY FREE can of Comet back ... at least I thought that is what I heard .... so .... I tossed it to him from my front carport door step .... flying end over low enough to clear the roof overhang .... but I knew it was going to fall short and not reach him.

I didn't want to hurt him with a 95mph football pass so I tossed it underhand ... the last thing I saw as I opened the door was that free can of Comet hitting the wet grass, kicking up a divot from my yard, and a small chunk of yard attached to the can of Comet.

Some may think that is not nice of me ... but all is fair in war and door to door salesmen that don't listen to their potential customer.  LOL

How did he or they decide to pick my house? All of my 3 neighbors are home with trucks in their driveway ... yet as I glanced out of my large kitchen window I saw 'that van' heading south bypassing my next-door neighbor that happened to be standing by his mailbox rescuing his mail before the next rain. The van didn't even honk as they flew by him.

So any guesses what they were trying to sell me? A free container of Comet was mine to keep if I would have just signed some paperwork. I let him approach the carport from the front door because I thought he was going to try to sell me whatever satellite tv service that I did not have, which in my case they would give me the best deal on earth to switch to DishNetwork. It wasn't that.

Looking back on the experience I probably should have let the bloodhounds have all the fun. They wanted out the door bad when I opened it to walk outside. With any bloodhound, excitement brings drool, excitement of seeing people brings them close so they can figure out who they are. How would he have felt seeing two large dogs running at him with 'Gorilla Glue' type drool flying from each of their jowls with each jogging step? It's probably best that I kept them inside to prevent any chances of being sued by a scared sales rep.

As you can see in the last 24 hours the trees continued to change colors.

I guess I will have to 'google' and find out what is being sold by door to door sales reps offering free cans of Comet.

The hounds are snoring. No baseball games tonight. There is a NFL game where I have little interest in either team playing. Sounds like a good night to watch a movie or two and hope we don't have to turn on the heat.

Never a dull moment in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Started Late Today

The thing about being single and retired, you can pretty much do what you want when you want. All three hounds are very adaptable so they slide with any schedule changes without howling or barking. Then never miss their two meals per day nor there 2 walks per day at a minimum ... unless it's a downpour of rain. We always take walks in snow or ice. Yet today was much different.

Normally this would have been a type of schedule where I would binge watch my two favorite tv shows that are no longer active. In this case it was college football, not having enough tv's, and a Directv DVR that will only record two programs at a time. Those two recordings lock me into those two channels and I can't have that while trying to watch multiple football games and a MLB Playoff game. So I recorded only one game that was later shoved to the side by my recording manager priority list to record the show Dr. Jeff - The Rocky Mountain Vet.

By the time I finished watching the last 'live' college football game out in rainy Pullman WA it was somewhere in the 2am range. I was wide awake. At that time some of the sports networks were already showing replays of earlier games that I couldn't tape or missed while watching another. As you can tell time kept on moving and before I knew it ... daybreak was showing itself outside my windows.

So the hounds were fed their breakfast about 30 minutes earlier than normal since I was still up. Yet, their lunch was a couple of hours past their normal time. We didn't take our first walk of the day until after 4pm but that didn't matter to them. They had been fed twice, had their normal daytime naps and still had plenty of time for a 2nd walk before sunset and after this post.

Sadie and Stella headed opposite directions. Sadie took her normal path doing what she does best .. tracking scent. Stella slowly moved from spot to spot in what I call the 'lower field' closer to home. Either I was still to tired after watching college football games until 7am, a total of 19 straight hours ... or it just seemed right to let Stella do whatever she wanted today.

Sadie and I were walking along the back edge of the field before we knew it. It was nice to be walking on dry land without wearing the North Face snow boots to keep my feet dry from heavy morning dew. As I glanced around the horizon it looked like a strong effort by the trees to show some color changes that were brighter than just 24 hours prior.

The yellows seemed to be trying to show their color in the north.

While the oranges were in the Southwest.

While looking at the trees and trying to decide what to take a photo of I did not see Stella anywhere in the field. With the color of her coat she blends in well with the dead dried out taller hay. Without saying a word, Sadie decided it was time to find Stella on her own and took off in a direction she thought Stella would be.

I backed out the lens for a larger area and didn't see Stella anywhere. Had she disappeared on me again?

I zoomed my lens to the 200mm setting and started scanning the field from left to right ... there she was heading north but not far from the area we left her. She had barely moved during the time that Sadie and I made most of the walk.

As I kept yelling the word "hey" ... she finally looked up trying to figure out where that sound was coming from.

Once she recognized the voice she turned and headed our way back to the alternate path we were taking.

There was nothing exciting the rest of the walk. Both hounds were cooperative and seem to want to get back to the house as fast as I did ... they were both asleep next to each other beside my computer desk within minutes of walking inside.

I wouldn't call them high winds but it's been windier than normal today blowing the leaves off the tress and even out of the yard at the same time. It's most likely our last warm day at least the next ten days at 77°. I suspect that might be it for this summer. So we move into the fall with the 50s and 60's as temperature highs, every day or night has a lingering smell of fire smoke from brush burning or people having a fire at night. That still beats the oil drilling smell I had a few years ago.

Here are the first three tree limbs to start the 2018 Burn Pile.

With an overdose of college football yesterday, plus a final Game 7 in Houston I had to watch last night, this sports addict was not in the mood for the NFL. In fact the tv has not been turned on and it's already after 5pm as I write this. It seems to me over the past few years my interest in the NFL during it's season has decreased. I suspect there are various reasons and I can't put my finger on any specific one. It's not just this year but has happened the past 3-4 years.

With college basketball starting in 3 weeks and college football playing 5 more weeks before they start December with a month or more of Bowl games and then the 4-team playoffs ... the NFL may get slid further back on the shelf until their playoffs and Super Bowl.

Besides, that show Dr. Jeff - The Rocky Mountain Vet has a higher priority in the recording manager feature ... and it's a great show.

Not much more to report on here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.