The Changes Continue With Me

It was a day of changes Saturday as I made a couple of mistakes that I mentioned in my previous post. A lot of them were blog changes but some of the small changes with me still continued into this morning. I guess it's one of those moments where my brain might be in the overdrive mode, where I cannot make up my mind what I want in the blog design. Plus I can't make up my mind on what to do on anything. No big deal, this is a common occurrence with me.

I am going to try something different on this post, let me know how you like it. I am going to put a little commentary about the photos listed and will wait until the end to write what's on my mind or as I call it ... 'rambling'.



It was still fairly dark this morning just like the past two days. I planned on waiting until 9:00am before starting the walk but Stella had other ideas. I heard her walk across the hardwood floor in the bedroom from her 'after breakfast' nap. That plan of waiting an hour was gone as she stood at the doorway of my computer room, whining. It was 8:03am, her normal time.

She was in the tracking mode again this morning. Signs of deer traffic were all over the field. I could see fresh hoof prints that had dug into the ground through the thick grass. I like these mid-40's temperatures so early in the morning, with only two days before Christmas.

This warm weather isn't something new. It was Christmas Day just three years ago where Winston sat outside looking for snow and wondering why it was so warm. He had become paralyzed from the middle of his back and rear legs just six days prior. To this day it is still a kick in the gut when I think about it.

Instead of trying to keep Stella on or near my path, I decided today I would follow her. Her nose was right on point, in the middle of deer tracks, with those hoof prints I mentioned but also a couple of other signs I'll get to.

I am not a deer hunter, nor a deer expert but I am assuming with the way the tall grass was pressed so close to the ground, that is a place where a deer might have laid down to sleep? I'm serious when I ask that because I have no clue. I know my answer is just a few keystrokes and clicks away if I asked that same question on DuckDuckGo image search. I thought I'd show just how little knowledge I have when it comes to any kind of wildlife.

Here is another more prominent 'bed', only this time the grass looked like it was almost damp compared to the grass around it. Something had been laying here an hour or two before we got there. You can see the two hoof prints, looking as if it dug in as the deer tried to stand up.

A poor quality photo but shows that Stella is on the move. That is rare for her and I can assure you she will not move that fast on any afternoon walk. Never

I tried getting as far ahead as possible  so I could possibly get a photo of her running. By the time I turned she was already running at me and she was so quick I barely got this photo and the one below.

Obviously she wanted to get way ahead of me.

As I walk on the path you can barely see on the right edge of the photo, towards home, this small path crosses both of our paths moving left to right in this picture. It is the deer path from the woods, across the field, to the woods behind my neighbor's house.

As we slowly make our way home ... Stella isn't done with her exploration. Too many scents to smell and catalog in her computer database called 'the bloodhounds brain'.

I knew something was strange when she abruptly moved from the center of the field heading to the backyard over to the path I take back home. She rarely does that, so something is up.

While taking some other photos of the woods, sky and my house roof I did not notice she had moved left of the path into the "land of burs". This is blurry but will give you some idea what those burs look like attached to her coat.

I was trying to hold her with one hand and take a photo with the Nikon D3200 in my other hand. She was covered with them on the other side. She thought she was going inside with all of them attached. :) :) :)

Just like I said I would yesterday, after the IU game was over a little after 8pm, I slid back into my desk chair to play around in the blog "dashboard", looking for that 3-column theme and photos just as big if not bigger when the post is opened up to read. At least you can sort or filter the 300+ themes to choose from by what you want. Not in detail but just some basic things. I tried this ... "3-columns, page-wide images". The number of themes to look at went from over 300 to 86.

Long story short, by 12:35am I had a theme I thought I liked. It was soooo much different from this one but it did have the two things I wanted, 3-columns listing 9 past posts on the homepage and images that were even larger than what you see here Sunday.
(as of 10:18am)
Yet as I looked it over there was just something I didn't like. Was it the all black background or that the three columns did not line up exactly perfect because some of the thumbnail photos were different sizes? Stuff like that drives me crazy, similar to a crooked picture on the wall ... anybody's wall.

With the lights turned off, computer turned off and both hounds asleep, my overactive brain was wide awake and still working at warp speed. 15 minutes later I jump out of bed, lights on, computer on .... yes, I was changing the theme back to what I had at 8pm Saturday and right now (unless I change it again Sunday). {I changed it a little after 2pm on Sunday}  Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!

With the different theme design I had to quickly edit my last nine posts, taking out the feature image, then installing the 'excerpt' so the posts would be summarized on this themes homepage. This morning with some help from the Wordpress techies I was able to install some CSS code to remove the categories that were above the titles of each individual post.

Here is the 'sick' thing with me. The blog looks good to me. It's easy to read, it's bright and easy to navigate BUT .... I still have a small urge but big enough to have me look at other blog themes (design) and possibly make changes today. Somebody take my computer away from me!!!

Oh, that is not all I can't decide on. That slight confusion of never making my mind up occurred all day Saturday. I went back to logging in all my food, at least for now. This morning I brought out the small container of granulated sugar for two level teaspoons per cup of coffee. (interesting results).

Those results were immediate and surprising. I tried the sugar again because I didn't want to wait for a month or a year to see if there was a difference. I found out something before I even finished my second cup of coffee. By adding that sugar I was feeling a little indigestion. Enough to notice the difference from the past four to five days. I'll not be using sugar anymore in my coffee, nor will I buy anymore granulated sugar nor substitutes.

I even thought about starting a new blog that was subject specific ... sports!!! What am I or was I thinking ???? It has to be the 'winter mentality' that keeps me in front of this monitor bouncing from one idea to the next while I am doing something else. I need outdoor projects to do.

At least the hounds are sane and keep to their routines without much change. They are mentally stable and know what they want, what they like, etc. They don't bounce from idea to idea. They only get confused if it is raining outside and they have to dump their tanks. Their eating habits and sleeping habits never change although the spots they sleep might.

Hmmmmm do I post this now or wait until tonight with pictures of Heidi. I can do what I use to ... post mid-morning and then include any afternoon photos on tomorrows blog. See, it's questions like that make me move in circles. Don't ask what I want to eat for lunch, I have no idea and if I did I would not be able to decide. How screwed up is that?

It's
the last daythe 16th week of 17 weeks of the regular season in the NFL. I'll watch the Colts today and all the playoffs. I have yet to watch a College bowl game because none of the match-ups interested me. It looks like I'll start watching them about every day/night starting December 26th until the final National Championship game. That will stabilize my brain a little to where I will not have time to be making blog changes but I will have time to publish a blog post.

No worries, it's all good today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Day Of Mistakes

I basically wasted my afternoon today. It took only five hours for me to mess things up with the blog as much as possible, then fix them. I am usually pretty careful when I am working behind the scenes of my blog. Today I made a couple of errors that cost me some additional time. Of course the hounds didn't change their routine. It was a cool 41° but they both spent some time outside this afternoon. Stella took me out for two walks and with a camera in the afternoon walk.

It all started when I thought I wanted to change the blog design back to where it had a front page with three columns showing the most recent and past blog posts. The number of posts on that page is something I could decide. It's like I said the other day, every blog I have checked out does not have all that I want.

Probably what I want the most are wide large photos when you are reading a post. With the current theme and the one I have used since Thursday morning, it has photos 8-1/4" wide. That looks good on a large monitor but may not make much difference if you are reading the blog from your tablet or smartphone. I always check the blog site on my iPad and iPhone to see how it looks for readers.

The blog title looks pretty messed up on an iPhone 8+ but if I try to fit it on one line to fit the phone, it makes it too small on a desktop monitor.  On Wednesday I had found a one column blog with 10" photos but as Ed pointed out, the blogs listed did not have dates. I found out after looking at it, there were also no dates in the archives either. So I changed it to what you see now.

I know somewhere out of 386 themes to choose from, there has to be one that has a front page showing three columns of blog posts AND have blog photos at least as large as I have now, 8-1/2" wide.

Three columns of blog posts to see on the front page or a long list of them?

So besides of 'activating' a different theme I was working too soon, thus making it look much different if any of you stopped by during that short period of time, I also deleted the post with all of the butterflies I posted a few days ago. I didn't try to re-write the original post but added all the photos back to a post earlier today, with a short paragraph.

I also went back to logging in my food in MyFitnessPal app. Stopping that logging of food will be a slow process if I do it at all. I have taken breaks from using that app in the past, so anything is possible.

As we finished our walk I could see Heidi heading toward the door. She didn't see us coming. I called her names a couple of times and had a loud barking basset hound by the time Stella and I reached the yard. She must have been cold.

She is a lot more vocal since her surgery in September for an impacted tooth, plus another tooth pulled after finding a problem while cleaning them. Today she was named an "Official Food Beggar". I was eating nothing more than a raw avocado and she moved off the couch to my feet, looking up barking at me. She doesn't know that she has the wrong approach and the wrong kind of food.

I'll continue my search for a 3-column front page, no sidebars and photos that are at least 8-1/4" wide when you are reading the post or scrolling through the photos. I have an IU game to watch but after that I most likely will be back on the computer looking through themes, IF I can even find one as much as I like this one.

Found one that did both ... columns ... large photos at 10pm Saturday Night

This is the 3rd post of the day from 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Butterflies Fly Away & Come Back

While trying to edit the post with all the butterfly photos from a few days ago, I inadvertently deleted that page. So all of those butterflies in that photo have flown back to the blog. Enjoy ....

Living Without Granulated Sugar

It's been less than a week since I decided to tighten up my eating habits and after 25 years of drinking coffee (late starter), I hid the granulated sugar container out of sight and started having my daily two cups of coffee ... black. I don't have any historic revelations to speak of but I have noticed some differences. One is my loss of appetite. Tuesday - Friday I ate less than a 1,000 calories per day without intentionally starving myself.

A shock to me was that I enjoyed the taste of coffee without sugar. Now before you email me or list in the comments section all the substitutes I could use to replace granulated sugar ... save yourself the time and trouble. I am not interested in any of that crap. I don't care what it looks like or what it does. Years ago I tried all of it and had coffee come back out through my nose. The taste of coffee with those "fake" sugars simply sucked.

Like I wrote the last week, I'm not attempting the Keto carbohydrate theory. I know that there is no way in hell I am going to eat less than 20 grams of carbs per day. NO WAY !!!!! I mean one banana alone is 27g of carbs. No, I'm not giving up a banana a day just to be "low carb", screw that.

All I intended to do was to cut out what was making it hard to lose weight. Am I fat? Some people say I am not, that I look proportionally built. The few people I have run into at the store, that have not seen me since I retired, have mentioned I have lost noticeable weight. Still I'd like to get down to 185 pounds, standing 5'10".

Please don't send me any lessons on diets, nutrition, suggestions, etc.

I'll tell you why. I know enough about nutrition, what's good, what's bad, what food does or doesn't do. I know ... water water water water. For me that means pee pee pee pee. When I was much younger I was a strict vegetarian for eight years. I took one semester class in college dealing with nutrition. While bike racing part-time, nutrition and heart rate recovery was important. Nutrition was monitored and studied. In recent years I have read medical journals to see what is good or isn't with current research or lab tests.

I as hit my 30's, due to work schedules and locations I fell off the wagon hard from that veggie diet, eating when I could and what I could. I went back to red meat, lots of carbs, fast food, junk food ... anything I could eat or wanted to eat. I didn't log into a food app (not invented yet), I didn't keep a food diary, I didn't count calories. I just ate.

Granulated sugar was BIG in my diet ... in coffee, on cereal, on grapefruit, on oatmeal. Throw in all the pasta, whole pizzas eaten, never just one sandwich or just one burger and mix all of that eating with getting older ... slower metabolism ... and I was headed for a heart attack. In fact when I took a job related physical, the doctor asked me how long did wanted to work. I answered "65" .. he replied if you want that you need to lose 20 pounds.

I was 50 years old at that time. Here is the strange thing ... based on what I weighed that day, I lost those 20 pounds he suggested soon after I retired from work at 62 years of age. Interesting. I want to lose 15 pounds more.

I have always eaten pretty healthy overall. I never sat around gulping  64oz "Big Gulps" and downing a large bag of Cheetos followed by a small case of twinkies. My problem was and always has been portion size, plus high calorie foods. I believed in moderation for everything. I called that "my diet" ... moderation. Plus I never logged my food intake into an app or I would quit logging food in.

I noticed a trend when I didn't log my food intake ... I gained weight ... I ate more ... impulsive eating took over. Now I log my food intake for short periods of time just to check on if I am eating right. I'll stop logging in food today because I have seen the results and know that I am eating what I should be. Plus I have gauged how I feel. Energy? Heartburn? Hungry?

There are still battles of fighting through strong urges to make a "junk food run" ... As recently as last night I was thinking of making a short grocery run Saturday morning. I wanted to buy some ground sausage (good fat and protein), a little flour and a quart of whole milk. You do know what those three ingredients make don't you?

Sausage gravy over that tin of biscuits I'd buy and bake ...

That's not all I was planning to buy ... oh no!!!  LOL ... I pictured myself walking by the freezer department, opening the door, reaching in to grab A COUPLE of containers of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. As a reward for eliminating granulated sugar this week. (only a justification)

Since it's only 7:30am, the store I was thinking about going to is not open yet. It will be a BIG TEST to see what happens or will I even go. By the time I take Stella for a 8am walk, spend a little time thinking, it's very likely I will not make a trip to the store anytime soon. It just gives you an idea what I visualized last night just after I went to bed.

I went to bed too early ... now Stella is confused as hell, because we woke up early. She had her breakfast kibble at 5am. She and I have been waiting for daybreak and the clock has been extremely slow getting there. She has moved from sitting and staring at me to laying down sleeping in various spots, not knowing what to do.

Back to that granulated sugar.

By looking at the daily nutrition section of that food app, MyFitnessPal, it's amazing how much sugar your body takes in with good healthy food. I mean I have had zero deserts of any kind, no sugar, plain pink grapefruit, oatmeal only with blueberries and most food high in fat and protein ... still the sugar nutrient count higher than I expected.

No sugar takes away the feeling of bloat or feeling fat. I am not hungry soon after eggs/bacon like I am after a 1/4c of dried oatmeal before it's cooked. BTW, I am eating the oatmeal only to get rid of the small Quaker Oats container I bought the last week. After that, no more.

It's not only no granulated sugar ... but no grains that make me feel better. Even after four to five days. I've also noticed that the past couple of years anytime I cut out grains. A short book called "Wheat Belly", a free online download, points out some amazing things different from what we have been taught. I read that a few years ago.

For a long time I have not had set meals. I eat during the day when I'm hungry not because "it's time to eat". I might have nothing but baked salmon or I might add steamed broccoli to that. Last night or mid-afternoon I had nothing but a large thick NY strip for an early dinner ... yes Heidi and Stella shared the fat that I cut off or could not chew. They love the smell of steak. To Stella that means a 12" hanging drool in anticipation of getting some.

Not once the past four to five days did I automatically reach for that sugar container. I poured coffee and went back to my computer desk.

In closing, I know real changes will not be seen for months or even a year. I think if I take it one day at a time, no granulated sugar, occasional pasta in a small portion, or a section of lasagna, I'll see major differences by this time next year.

This is NOT a diet ... just a way of eating. I've changed my own definition of moderation.

I was going to wait to blog this morning but I knew at 8am the skies were not going to be any better than yesterday, where they would be too dark for good hound photos. Plus I had the urge to write early this morning and not wait a few more hours. What I am thinking of doing is posting again later this morning like I use to on this blog .... a paragraph of content and a lot of photos of the hounds this morning.

If I waited until after lunch, Heidi would be more photogenic and would actually be out of bed by that time so she could be included in the photo session.

Now, IF I can just delete that thought of Ben & Jerry's this morning I'll be fine for the day.

Some Clean Friday Morning Thoughts

No cussing today. Yes Heidi really is sound to sleep in that photo. It was in 2011 soon after I picked her up from the basset hound rescue. With rain all night and very dark skies this morning for the 8am walk with Stella, the camera was traded for the 25' retractable leash. Consequently I have dipped into my photos archive to put something together for this post. It was fun to look back and each photo will have a paragraph of small commentary. Some interesting photos, I think.

Heidi, whom at the time was named Lucy, came with a reputation as "a runner". The foster mom and adoption agency told me under NO circumstances that she should ever be off a leash, no matter what. So we took walks that first week with her on the same 25' retractable leash I used this morning.

She was thrilled with all the space she could explore and run. Sorry for the blurry picture but I had a leash in one hand with a hound running on the end of it and my camera in the other hand.

After five days of following those instructions of 'leashed at all times' I could tell she was going to be great without one and gave her total freedom anytime she was outside. After seven years and six months, she has never ran away, has never gone near the highway and is let out on her own so she can explore solo. She likes that.

You have heard me talking about the "land of burs" just right of our path from the dead ragweed. After I pull those burs from Stella's coat before we continue our walk they all end up on my gloves or jeans. I have found the easiest way to shed them ... wipe my gloves on the tall field grass laying next to the ground.

Sometimes bigger is not better when it comes to large 4K HD televisions. This past summer I decided I needed a larger tv to give me more real estate to take advantage of Dish Network's 4-screen split, for watching ballgames. It is not the reason I switched from DirecTv after 19 years but it is a nice feature I found after Dish Network was installed.

During my research to see which tv was the best for sports viewing, reading through many lab reports, I found this diagram that shows the "honest" answer on what size of screen to buy. I pulled out my Stanley tape measure and decided the 55" screen would serve me better than the 65" or larger screens that had some great prices.

Since in the past I have bought duplicate movies on DVD and music on CD's, forgetting I already had a copy ... a year or two ago, I alphabetized my movie collection just like my music collection that I did years before. This might be a little OCD but I can find movies easier now when I am looking for something to watch and I never buy duplicates.  :)

Last summer during my week of reorganizing, sorting, recycling, throwing away stuff from electronics to 30 years of paper files ... I still have all of these electronic cords that are no longer used, outdated or more than I need. My local recycling no longer accepts electronic gear from stuff like this to tvs, computers or stereos. All of this sits hidden in my 'stereo' closet inside a new trash bag just waiting for me to find a place to accept it as recycling.

During Stella's destruction period when I first got her in 2015, she let me know real quick she loved the taste of a dried sweat baseball cap ... even if it was one of my favorites.

After you retire you have all the time in the world for yard work or other projects outside, that you never had time to do on weekends or during the week after work. Yes, that is the 'north' part of the yard where you see Stella ending her walks and hiding behind that first tree while facing the camera.

Here is the corner of the bank that I go back and forth with, whether to let it grow back under more control by me or keep cutting it as grass. The reason would be for soil erosion.

This idea to clear the brush all started when my neighbor a few houses away bought the field through an estate sale and had the land surveyed. To my advantage his survey was much different than mine in 2000, by THE SAME COMPANY!!!!  :) Once they planted that property pole on the corner, this was all mine ... so I cleared and burned the brush, pulled up roots with a rake, raked out some soil and planted grass seed.

I might have made a huge mistake. Now in heavy rain storms the water flows toward the camera down the center of that cleared area, makes a 90° turn right at the edge of that bank on the left and flows down the small hill towards my house. The old underground drainage system will be replaced by me this spring.

In June of 2008, 'Straight Line Winds' decided to show me what a 120' sycamore tree would do to my DirecTv satellite dish. At the time, it was mounted on a post in the middle of the front yard to clear the bank of trees facing south. After those winds cleared 80 feet of bank by pulling large trees out of the ground like weeds, I had a clear view of the southern sky. The new satellite dish installer was able to mount the dish near the house, like right on the house not the roof. It was my choice to mount it there to prevent high winds, which we always get, from destroying my tv signal .... I can't miss watching a ballgame just because of severe stormy weather. :)

I needed some landscaping bricks a few summers ago Another one of those projects you have time to complete when retired. The Home Depot cashier told me to pull around to their garden center. When I got to the gate of the garden center, he said pull your "Mini" right up next to the pallets by driving down the aisle. How's that for some service.

The just proves how versatile the Mini Cooper S 2-door can be. The owners manual for my 2009 Mini Cooper S told me I could put 700# over the axle. 22 bricks were only 400# and did not prevent me from going 75mph all the way home.

1961 VW Single Cab Pick-up w/Treasure's Chest

The Germans were way ahead of the design curve in pickup trucks. The edges around the truck bed fold down to make it a flat-bed truck. The "Treasure Chest' goes the width of the bed, right behind the cab, below the truck bed and can be opened on either side. It was great in snow and back in 2003 it was my main daily driver to work in all kinds of weather. Oh, the payload was 2,000 pounds and a pallet would fit with the edges folded up. Who needs that $64,999.99 Chevy Silverado when you can have one of these?

1967 Two-Tone Standard VW Bus - 1963 VW Cargo Van
The '67 use to be mine. It was my very first eBay purchase back in 2002(?). Driving back from Tucson, it blew it's engine 9 miles north of Truth or Consequences NM on I-25, an extremely hot Sunday morning. A year later I bought the '63 Cargo van in Salt Lake City, UT and met Dennis in Colorado right off Hwy 50 for some camping. He drove up from Alamogordo, NM and had installed a new engine, then converted it into a camper.

The '63 Cargo van had dual Weber carbs, a 'freeway flyer' for a transmission and I cruised back to Indiana on I-70 and I-64 passing cars on the outside lane with room to spare under my accelerator pedal. The 80mph speedometer was maxed out most of the way. Ran like a champ.

Living proof just how tall the Tulip Trestle might be. Read about the trestle here, still used to this day by trains traveling east and west in the country through "the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A lake and great campgrounds a short distances from the house. You have to have a government ID card to get on the base where the lake and campgrounds are located. That results in very few people around, an open lake to sail, canoe or kayak. Plus very quiet campgrounds

In the summer of 2002, since Cincinnati was building their new Great American Ballpark so close to Riverfront Stadium they cut a section out of the circular Riverfront Stadium left field, tore out the Astroturf and planted grass. The Reds still needed a place to play that season until the new stadium opened in March 2003.

Many Reds fans agreed with me ... with the modification, a great old stadium, why not keep it instead of building new. We all know the reasons ... they need new stadiums and all those corporate boxes sold to make payroll so they can pay those overpriced athletes.

It was found out later the new stadium was close to the same design presented to those in power back in the late 1960's. Instead they built Riverfront Stadium. The design was popular then because it was a circular multi-purpose stadium where baseball and football could be played. Duplicate round, multi-purpose stadiums were built in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis about the same time.

I wonder if I could use this 5 Schilling bill at my local mini-mart for that 20oz coke and a small bag of chips I pictured the other day on my blog post about my eating style?

I had seriously thought of writing a clean version, no cussing, about the tv news I've been tuned into this week instead of what I have posted here. I can say I have turned into a calm unbiased news viewer/reader away from an angry, cussing tv viewer/reader since my last post. It is hard to sort out all the stuff presented. I've gone back to CNN most of the time for my news after years of boycotting them.

They seem more "newsy" than their competitors. I can sort out the fake stuff and the real stuff on my own, I'm not that stupid. Still, they do have certain commentators I have to turn off because it is very obvious they are not as unbiased as I am. The latest news affecting the world ... they say ... is the James Mattis letter telling the world that he was quitting and why.

Personally for me this has always been a tough question to answer. I can see both sides of having American troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. My nephew has been able to survive three different tours to Iraq. I've been on deployments 20-30 years ago on aircraft carriers outside and inside the Persian Gulf. I have also worked in government, closely with those that did those ground deployments after 9/11.

Conflicted might be the better word than confused.

Those countries have their own way of life. They are 1,000s of years old not just a couple of hundred. The majority do not want American anything on their land but they love our money paid to them by the billions. The small minority beg the USA for help in troop support and funding. Otherwise they will be overrun and killed. So there is that.

The longest war in history yet no chance of winning even with small victories if you call them that. Veterans that have served in heavy battle say it's never a good thing to leave those countries. After spending over a TRILLION dollars and no light at the end of the tunnel 'our' checkbook says pack up and get out.

Parents of those killed, say get out while some say if you do that then my son or daughter died for nothing. Past experience shows if the USA troops leave, that hole is sucked up by those they are fighting, making things worse there and increasing the chances for another attack on the USA ... if you believe the military experts.

Of course any good Congressman/woman is going to say stay. Especially if there are business, factories, etc in their congressional area that makes a profit, large or small, from selling their products for war. They want to be re-elected next time. Believe me, war is big big business and many times they last more for financial reasons than just spreading democracy.

So it's hard to decide what to do ... keep spending money and leave the troops there, helping the very small minority or pull the plug, pack them up and fly them home.

Another way that lingers on how to look at it from both sides. Would you as an American citizen want a foreign government to send their troops here in your towns/cities to  force their beliefs down our throats or else? Or does the USA still need to keep their troops fighting to prevent that situation from ever happening?

With a financial background I find it hard not to view the situation from a financial point of view instead of an open mind.

Well as I glance out the window, it's not sunny, but it's not raining. It's just dark and cloudy. With that in mind and the low energy hounds I have sleeping near my desk, it is doubtful that I will post anything tonight. That is unless I am slapped up the side of my head with a rant, an idea, an opinion or some great photographs to share.

Dark, overcast and rainy is still a good day in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.