It's Great To Feel Warm Again

We had two surprises when we started today. There was just a little snow last night and yesterday was not Friday. The snow covered the driveway and our path, showing us the way to go and I spent all day plus last night thinking it was Friday instead of Thursday. Hard to believe I didn't realize what day it was after looking at my watch multiple times during the day yesterday.

It felt nice and warm this morning with no wind, no sunshine, and not a lot of highway noise. Stella started leading the walk but the further we went the more I felt she wasn't feeling good today. She had a lack of energy and as you will see, rarely veered from the path.

When I started the walk I thought of just letting her go on her own today for the first time in many months. Then it occurred to me that if I were to do that I would have very few photos for this blog post.

Once I saw she wasn't going to move, I gave up on the idea of total freedom for her and backtracked to go get her. I zoomed in to get this photo so she wasn't that close to me.

This is a pretty good indicator showing just how little snow we got last night. It is still in the mid 20's as I write this but that is still around 20° warmer than yesterday morning and that's a huge difference in my comfort level. It feels so warm this morning that Heidi might even make an appearance outside later today, just in time for the next blog post

Finally I can show you the deer path they use between the woods that borders the field to the woods behind my neighbor's house. It's hard to show it with mashed green grass but with the snow, their path shows up pretty clearly. It's interesting how curvy their path is.

I was surprised by the lack of activity from Stella at this point in the walk. Maybe there just wasn't that much deer scent to track. She seemed like she was not that interested in the walk this morning. She was looking more like she does on the afternoon walks.

I even stopped her a couple of times to ask her if she was okay. Every time I asked she would barely wag her tail, then walk around me.

Lately every walk we take, she will stop to scratch herself while sitting on the path and that gives me a chance to get pretty far ahead of her. It's the only way I can catch her running but the delay between photos doesn't give me a lot of time to take continuous running photos.

That is the same deer path I showed earlier, only from a different part of our walk.

We took the 'old' way home this morning. She waited on me to catch up with her, showing no signs of wandering away. She headed straight to the door once I caught up to her.

Before it was 8:30am I had completed five things off of my 'Reminder' list and that included a short trip to town for dog food. I bought some lamb and rice this time with hopes that might make a difference in Stella's scratching. I've looked everywhere on her for fleas and have found nothing like that.

Since I now know it's Friday and not Saturday I can't say that will make much of a difference really. In fact being the football addict I claim to be, at least for college football, I had forgotten the Super Bowl will be played on Sunday. I have not decided if I will tune into the game or not.

I never watch pregame stuff, nor the halftime. For some reason this year I am just not too interested in seeing the game. Maybe it's the teams that are playing that has decreased my interest. Sports talk show has been saying there isn't the normal excitement around Super Bowl Week like in the past.

I stopped by the library on my way home to check their 'New Books' shelf or other books of interest they set out on display. For the millionth time I found out, they don't open until 10am and it was 8:20am as I pulled into an empty parking lot.

I received a long email last night from the WordPress Support and Development Team. They had actually looked into my problem of their new dashboard gobbling up 800Mb of data or more at one time. It never did that until they started the redesign of their dashboard. It also does not do it if I use their old 'wp-admin' dashboard, by their suggestion.

They looked at my photo file, which they call the 'media library' and was aware that it was loading images each time I would open a browser for the first time that day and that it was using an abnormal amount of data.

I tested it this morning during my free data period and all three browsers used tons of data loading that same library. I even closed each browser after they were finished, and reopened each one to see the same data usage as they reloaded the library.

They claim the reason for it is the cache file space of the browser I use. Anymore you can barely find where to see the browser cache files and when you do find it, they will not let you increase the size of the cache files or at least override their default size.

Blogger does not take a lot of data each time you go into your account to post or to load new photos. I doubt that I ever go back to Blogger because I like this blog much better in the way it looks plus the way things are done in the background. Towards the end of my Blogger use, it was always hanging up while uploading only 20 or so images for the post, sometimes with less than 20 photos.

Sometimes those photos would not load at all and I'd close the browser, reopen it and start over. Too frustrating to work with and of course their Blogger Support email responses are like a huge black hole in space. You might send them a question but you will never get an answer.

It's nice to look at the calendar and realize there is really only one more month of extreme winter weather possibilities. Sure it can and will snow in March, maybe April but that is in weather much like today, not the kind we just experienced and some are still experiencing in the Polar Vortex.

It's warmer this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and that's a GREAT thing !!!!

Polar Vortex Has Passed

The hounds and I headed to a night of sleep last night excited with the thought of warming temperatures were right around the corner. We were going to have to wait until late afternoon before it hit 20° but at least we would climb out of those single digit temps by noon. I officially called the 'Polar Vortex' over soon after lunch, at least down here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. Would you believe me if I told you the high on Monday is supposed to be 60° ??? That's not a misprint.

Both hounds were outside for their first trip around 8:30am. I poured kibble as fast as possible. Today they were both at the door when I went to let them back inside. It was still 1° at that time and a wind chill below zero. A few hours later Stella came and touched my arm with her nose ... she had to go outside without delay. She is a great house trained bloodhound.

It didn't look that bad. Still, it was 8° but bright and sunny. I stood outside watching her, with my camera in hand, no coat over my fleece pullover, no shoes, just wool socks tucked into those cheap Chinese sandals I mentioned the other day. She surely wouldn't take to long to relieve herself.

I kept telling her to "hurry up" as she looked for that perfect spot to pee. I was a little concerned her lips or nose would stick to the yard if she kept her nose to the ground too long.

Since she didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to do what she drug me outside to do, I decided I was going to run back inside and put my down parka on, I'd pass on the shoes since that might cost me time, only to see her in the land of burrs.

She had to do more than pee and there is only one place she does that ... in the field. I decided to sprint inside for my coat. I glanced out the window and saw she had walked behind the area containing all the burrs on the dead ragweed. That's always a good thing to see.

She was as fast as I was and by the time I was back outside she was headed my direction. She is pretty logical when it's this cold outside. Although she doesn't seem to speed up her thought process even when it's freezing outside.

An hour later Heidi woke from her morning siesta and took her trip outside. See what I mean? They never have to go at the same time. That strengthens my resume as a professional doorman for the hounds. It wasn't much warmer than an hour ago but you could tell we were out of single digits by the amount of time Heidi was outside and the places she wandered.

Stella has a severe case of cabin fever. We were hoping for an afternoon walk around 5pm when the thermometer needle taps that 20° mark. We'll forget what the wind chill is, just to get outside for some exercise.

Hounds fed, I was fed and a quiet afternoon of reading and watching one of my favorite shows called Homestead Rescue. Yes, she is sleeping with her head raised off the couch.

Even with the temps rising above 15° and the bright sunshine, Stella and Heidi so no reason to cut their afternoon siestas short. They knew the plan was to do nothing until later today where it would be almost 20° warmer than when we started the day. The high's tomorrow will be back in the low 40's and all will be good again.

By 3:30pm I was just as  anxious to take a walk as Stella was. It wasn't going to be worth it to wait another hour or so just to gain a couple of degrees. It was still cold but very nice to be outside walking knowing it would be twice as warm tomorrow.

She turned around to attack me as if she wanted to play but each time I tried getting a photo of her trying to get started, she would stop, so these three photos were all I could get.

Not much went on today, a lot like the ending of this post.  :)

All is good here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, at least the small area we reside.