Stella Tries To Escape

While I was taking some photos of a morning butterfly, Stella thought it was the perfect time to attempt an escape and head for the neighbors backyard for some possible food left out for the uncatchable field cat. When Sadie heard me yelling Stella's name she thought she would help me find her. Otherwise, another nice morning walk. She did stop in the middle of the field on the way back because she was sure she smelled food from a neighbor's kitchen.

Hounds Start Day Late After The Rain

The day may have started a lot later than normal but as you can see we have another thunderstorm headed our way that is about 30 miles west of us while I start this post. When I woke up this morning to let the hounds outside and feed them breakfast, it was pouring  rain hard outside so I wasn't sure if the hounds would go out for their first trip of the day. Heidi stood by the door barking for food while the bloodhounds had to go bad enough they sprinted to and from the field. They were at the door waiting for me by the time the breakfast kibble had been poured.

What better time than to catch up on some sleep with it raining that hard. I was up past 2am just to start the latest macOS beta update. It will download and install after I click the button for it to start, so I no longer have to stay up through the night to click the different screens for it to continue. Between 2am to 8am the update can use that free batch of data HughesGen gives me every month. With the update for the iMac and my laptop computer, it took a little over 6Gb of data for both computers. Besides that it was a restless night of sleep filled with the strangest dreams. My Garmin VivaSmart watch told me I was awake for a total of 20 minutes during the night. That's a lot of tossing and turning.

I decided if I showed a dirty leather couch with Heidi sleeping once I could again. This is Heidi around 2:30pm today as the bloodhounds and I took our first walk. She never does a lot of tossing and turning when she sleeps, it's all solid sleep with a few dreams of running at times.

For some reason Stella was ready to get the walk started today. She didn't hesitate by sitting at the corner of the house nor did she try to fake me out by heading north instead of east with Sadie and I. She stepped onto the wet grass and marched toward the path, with a purpose, whatever that might be.

With a quick left turn she was heading for the center of the field behind the house looking for that perfect spot like she always does. It has made the walks much easier to do with her following the path and at times leading Sadie and I on the walk. Not a lot of verbal herding has been needed the past week and a half.

The rain did bring cooler temps but not that cool. It's cool enough that the AC does not turn on but hot enough outside that some AC would be nice. That strong wind from the southwest that the tree leaves are showing, is blowing warm air, not cool.

That is northeast up ahead with patches of blue sky. The sky behind us looks like rain is near. While I was waiting for Stella to get on the path, Sadie had already started her own walk. She was obviously happy we were walking when the chances looked slim earlier today.

Stella took her time following her nose through the field to the path but she made it eventually. She then walked as close to me as possible as I tried getting this photo and reminded me she was still in charge but walking on my foot. Nothing like feeling an 80# hound place their paw squarely in the middle of your boot.

Sadie was nose to the ground and out in front of us.

Interesting to see those small pieces of undercoat hair. Not only do I pull that out every day but I brush her daily just because the shedding she is still doing this summer. I've never seen it this bad and she is the only one shedding hair compared to Heidi and Stella.

She got a little trotting in today's walk but not the full speed sprints she normally does.

While I was taking photos of Sadie ... Stella was walking her pace without any stopping and getting way out in front of us.

Once Sadie saw that, she took off trotting to catch up, thinking that Stella must have found something she needed.

After more investigation she found out it was a false alarm.

I did not say a word to Stella but she decided it was time to head home. She started walking without stopping again. I'll say it again, she is the funniest hound I've had in 31 years.

Only one butterfly was seen this afternoon on the walk. As you can see a lot of their food source is used for the year. They might not be around much longer.

Stella walks too slow on the path for me to follow her and then when I stay in front of her she speeds up to be right on my heels, making it hard to take a picture of her.

They still find time to explore even when we get closer to the backyard. The walk is never officially over to them until they step in the backyard. If there is field under their paws, they think they can take all the time they want to complete the walk.

Once they heard that rumble of thunder, they became a little more motivated to get back inside. Rarely are they in front of me at this point of the walk.

This is for the Apple users that read the blog. With each new update even in the beta version I see small changes, all for the better usually. You can tell they are getting close to the official release in a month or two. The system runs faster, files open faster, photos upload to the blog and Flickr faster and the one obvious change I noticed today was the 'transparency' feature brightened things up since I use the 'dark' mode.

I had been using solid colors as my desktop on my iMac. It was between dark gray and black, so my email, iMessage and preference screens were darker than you see. Today I changed my iMac background to the one on the right under 'Dynamic Desktop'. Since the Dynamic Desktop changes colors automatically based on local time, my borders around these darker screens brightened.

Some of the sidebars that had been the same dark color as the menu's of preferences, Apple mail and iMessage changed to a lighter gray color that made things easier to read. Plus not all the fonts were bright white like they were after their last update. Due to privacy, I cannot do screen shots of those because I am not sure my friends would appreciate our conversations or emails to be shown on the blog, if you know what I mean.

For example that lighter gray color you see as a border on the screen shot above was the same color as the darker screen inside around the images and list before last night's update. All of the fonts were bright white. Subtle changes.

My Reds game turned ugly early last night, so I went from watching baseball to watching an old old movie that was being shown on HDnet channel. Some of you may remember this movie from the early 90's or late 80's ... called ... Officer and a Gentleman. I like watching it for the scenery. All very familiar to me because I lived there for ten years. The motel, the bars in the movie are in Port Townsend and the old abandon stone base is at Fort Ebey SP, just around the corner from where I lived. The ferry ride and landscape brought back a lot of good memories.

I'll try baseball again tonight as usual but my patience is running thin again with the Reds while they are in a losing streak since their All-Star Break. Before that break they had been the hottest team in baseball for the previous month. After a hard day all of the hounds will be doing their normal sleeping, with Sadie in her big leather chair with her head on the ottoman, Heidi next to me on the couch and Stella stretched out on the floor near any AC floor vent.

I hope to get back to my tasks at hand after the rains leave us.

A fast day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana today.

Not Bad For A Monday

It is pretty well set in stone that if I don't start doing something outside right after the morning hound walk, it most likely will not get done. Unless it's mowing the lawn. Otherwise I fall into a routine of downloading my photos into my computer and editing them right after the walk. They might go into a blog post and all of them will be exported to and saved on Flickr. A blog post may or may not be written. IF I move into some other activity besides the computer right after the walk ... it's a productive day.

This gives you a pretty good range of the different flowers, weeds etc that are growing in the field right now. The field is so much different than it was when it was cut in June. At that time it was almost all tall grass.

Since my plants in front of the house are too far under the overhang to capture the rain water, right after my hound walk I stepped inside to set the camera down, pickup the 3qt pitcher for water and headed back outside to water the Azaleas and the flowers that I cannot remember their names. Since my hose only goes so far I use the pitcher for the last three plants by the tv and internet satellite dishes.

We started the walk early but that humidity never left overnight. The old thermometer in the carport was a mark under 90° this morning and the air was thick. Low 90's were predicted highs but high humidity makes it feel much hotter. The hounds didn't mind, it was much cooler in the shade as we took our walk. For some reason Stella joined us right from the start this morning.

Knowing it was going to be watering day I was pretty sure I might get some things done before it gets too hot by 1pm. I use to paint houses in this kind of weather centuries ago when I was 19 or 20. Now I have a choice on whether I want to do anything outside in this heat. Lawn mowing is about all I'll do now, when it's hot. It's too wet to mow in the mornings so I don't have a choice but to mow in the afternoons.

There were two things I wanted to get accomplished this morning. The tires on the FJ needed some air. Little did I know just how hard that task would be. Since I was past the 15 days for returning my TV I decided it was time to recycle that huge box the TV came in. Of course to do that I had to take out all of styrofoam packaging because that is not recyclable. Since it wasn't I was going to end up doing something I had not planned on but it worked out well.

I didn't hear any tree limbs breaking this morning as I walked past the woods. Evidently Sadie did. She was almost in an agitated state of mind while she looked into the woods, running back and forth to get a better view. Finally she decided she had better things to do than run through thick brush and thorns just to see what she had heard. She turned and went back to her exploring in the field.

Stella was in the mode of continuous non-stop walking. If I was in the way she would walk on my foot and would never even look up at me. She just kept walking. Maybe she had already decided it was going to get hot today and she wanted to get back to the house as fast as possible. I am never sure what her reasoning is.

With a nice wind from the southwest, I knew if I burned anything, the wind would keep the smoke away from the house and from me. Some readers may cringe and cuss at me under their breath as they read this ... but yes, I burned that styrofoam along with the case I received last December when a Christmas present arrived in dry ice.

With a fire going strong and that terrible black chemical laden smoke blowing toward the northeast, I ran in the house to get the trash can under my desk that includes nothing more than all the street addresses I cut off of my mail before recycling the mail. Since I am a fire lover at heart (not a fan of the forest fires out west though) I grabbed all of my old business records and slowly fed them to the fire. I could have recycled them but it would have been too time consumer of deleting addresses and bank account numbers from the paperwork. Six years of business records went up in smoke, not a trace of them anywhere.

By noon the three hounds outside while I burned paper, were begging to go back inside where the AC had cooled the house the past hour or so. I did not have a camera handy to take my proof but Stella not only had another large drool this morning, but she had been eating dirt. What do you get when you mix water and dirt .... MUD ... hanging from both sides of her jowls. Where's the drool rag?

It was close to lunch time for them and hot enough that I knew once I went inside feeling that nice cold air I wasn't going back outside for a while. Probably not until after 8pm, when it is nice enough to sit outside. Like I said the other day, for some reason there has not been a problem of bugs, gnats or mosquitoes this summer, so sitting outside is enjoyable that time of day.

I have been able to hold off lately and fight through the cravings for ice cream, cookies or candy. I'll eat healthy throughout the day and early evening but by 9pm it is pure insanity craving sweets. Eating sweet fruit does not solve the craving ... drinking water does not either ... only ice cream, cookies or candy will work. Each night is a battle.

Stella has started to get a little more kibble in her bowl starting yesterday. I am going to see if I can put some more weight on those ribs that are showing. She was a lot skinnier than that in February 2017 but gained a lot of her weight back this spring. She weighed 79 pounds in April.

It might look like two butterflies but it's only one this morning. This flower is about 10' from the yard and at the end of our walk if we take the alternate path. I let the bloodhounds decide which path we take and believe it or not, they don't choose the same path all the time.

I didn't get any photos of the hounds after their lunch. What you saw yesterday is the way it is every day. None of them stay outside long and seem more interested in getting back inside to sleep than anything else.

Last week while Sadie was checking for any kind of spilled kibble around the sealed lid container, she not only moved the 25# dumbbell that holds the container in place, but dug out the old Coleman sleeping bag (for the hounds) in the closet to check under it. Then she decided if she would spread it out with her front paws it would be nice to take naps on ... just like the camping trip. She spends every afternoon on that sleeping back for her naps.

Stella had one thing on her mind this morning when walking ... getting into the shaded backyard as soon as possible. It's rare that she is the first one back to the yard, but today was one of those times.
 

I have to admit that shade this morning felt pretty good. It was at least 10°-15° cooler than the field. She still walked without stopping all the way to the carport/kitchen door to be let back inside.

With it being a 'low' pollen count today, she did not stop to scratch herself in the shade nor did she scratch herself inside ... she laid down and went to sleep, which is her second favorite activity right behind eating food.

I almost forgot ... how hard it was to air the tires up. It wasn't or isn't the process of airing them up. It was finding the air pumps to do it. In this small town three mini mart/gas stations have air pumps. One of those accepts debit cards, which is what I live on. I rarely have cash let alone quarters. Well the first pump I went to did not have a sign on it telling me that debit cards were not working. I won't tell you how many times I swiped my card, then slide the car into the slot before figuring out it wasn't working. I also won't tell you the words I was mumbling to myself during that time.

I go to store #2. At least it has a large page sign on the machine telling me it was "Out of Order". I was down to one last chance, otherwise I was on a 25 mile round trip drive just to put air into some tires that were low and needed air as soon as possible. Of course that machine only took quarters. Unlike last time, last year, their ATM machine was working this time so I could at least get some cash without driving around town looking for an ATM machine that worked.

Pretty soon, even this small town will be on nothing but electronic payment. I am not a fan of Apple Pay yet. Anyone else use electronic payment with your smart phone without any kind of issues??

I was successful getting the tires aired up. I passed on their candy, fresh oatmeal cookies and they didn't have Ben&Jerry's ice cream in their (minimart) freezer ... so I got out of the store with 6 quarters for the air pump, some dollar bills for my next trash run and a ten dollar bill for my next fast food run.

All in all, it was a nice day in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana today.