It Wasn't HughesNet Gen 5's Fault -- Our Internet Service Was Out

I did not notice it storming Thursday night after I had moved to the living room away from the computer. How could that be, since it looked like it had stormed when I took Sadie outside around 10:30pm? The Reds game wasn't going well so I turned off the game and started reading a book ... only to fall asleep for an hour. Only when I went back to my computer around 11pm and could not get any websites to load did I realize I had a problem. I had lost my internet service.


I'll not go into the whole story. The same installer showed up Saturday morning for the service call that was called in by HughesNet. He also had installed my very first internet satellite system called Exede 3 or 4 years ago. When he changed my system this past April to HughesNet he used the same coax line that goes from the modem ... under the house ... and out to the satellite dish receiver. This morning he found out the line was bad, not the radio receiver on the front of the dish. So I am back online after a day and a half. It was a nice break from my internet addiction.

With the baby gate keeping Sadie and Stella in the living room while the two men did their work, the hounds were pretty excited to get outside after the techs had left. Of course they had to double check those footprints and van tire marks scents before we could go on a walk.

How the temperatures ever dropped to the low 60's this morning is beyond my knowledge base but I liked it. It will eventually get to 80° by late this afternoon but in the meantime the AC is off and all the windows are open with a solid breeze from the SW.

It was so nice outside that even Heidi decided to join us for part of the walk before she turned off to do her own thing, while Sadie, Stella and I walked on.

Hardly into the walk Stella had already started trotting to catch Sadie. When I see that I always hope she is on her way back to running full speed since she loves to run but hasn't been able to for some unknown reason.

Heidi was actually trotting a little also but she was really more into smelling every scent in the field instead of walking. I knew she would be turning into the field soon on her own exploration.

What a difference in her appearance compared to two summers ago.

After I turned away from Heidi, I barely caught Stella actually running to catch Sadie. Galloping more than trotting. They both took off around the corner, so I thought a deer sighting might be possible ... but nothing was there. They were just both feeling good with the cooler temps.

Just as I arrived at the first corner I turned to check on Heidi a final time to see if she was headed our way or somewhere different. She had already found a scent to keep her occupied.

Again ... as I turn back to the bloodhounds, Stella is running again to catch Sadie. This is more running than I have seen her do in almost a year. I'd have to go back and look at pictures or blogs posts to get an accurate time.

Not a lot of eating stuff today ... just a lot of snooping and sniffing around.

As I neared home I could see Heidi looking up at us. The camera rarely catches the movement of her wagging tail. She has been a happy basset hound lately. She is back to growling at herself as she plays inside or out in the yard. Once the bloodhounds try to join in her fun, she will stop playing. They are too big and stronger than she likes.

For once she was not sleeping in this next picture. She was rolling on her back from side to side to scratch it, then would just lay there enjoying the sounds and scents of the field ... then roll back and forth some more.

Once I told Sadie 'go find Heidi', it didn't take her long to run at her. Sadie will always perk up her nose and ears when I ask her to find either Heidi or Stella.

There were not a lot of butterflies this morning but this one was extremely tiny. I was surprised when I saw the picture that it had so much color.

No, that is not Sadie taking a nap next door. It happens at least one deer a year but they usually end up in my driveway or the culvert and at times in the front yard. This time the deer ended up in the neighbors yard. He called the state highway department for them to pick it up yesterday but they didn't show up. This morning the neighbor was moving it off his property with his ATV.

I was surprised to hear the deer had been there since yesterday afternoon. I saw it last night about sundown as I checked my mailbox. Luckily the hounds did not smell it and want to take off to check it out. Most of the time someone will pull up in their pickup truck with a friend and will take it away. They are usually not by the side of the road long.

Sadie is in the opposite direction of the deer. She is behind the house not noticing anything about a deer next door.

It's such a nice day today that I decided to go ahead and post this now instead of waiting. I don't think I will be around the computer until late tonight since the weather is so nice. I think it's time to head out for a local drive with the camera and see what I can find.

I cannot describe how nice of a day it is here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.

Hounds Attacked By Butterflies

Maybe Stella knew what was going to happen before Sadie and I did because she stood and stared as Sadie and I took off for the 4pm walk. That photo was taken with a 200mm zoom lens so we were fairly far away and I could tell Stella had plans of her own. What I didn't know just what the afternoon walk would bring out.


The afternoon was slow enough that I was able to vacuum and dust the house and wash the few dishes I had left from last night. The rains had stopped, no traffic was stopped in front of the house today and all of the hounds were sleeping so quiet I almost forgot that they were in the house.

With a blast of a passing semi-truck horn, I went to the window to see if a stray dog (only 3 in 20 years) happened to be on or near the highway. I saw no dogs on the highway but I saw what I thought would be the excitement of the day. The owner of the cornfield had an out of state sales rep, based on the front license plate, installing some signage in front of a good corn crop this summer. They want people to know where those seeds came from. I notice they are from a different company than last year.

So with the house work finished, the dishes washed, I poured a tall glass of ice cold water and sat down to see how many more games of Mahjong I could complete under 4 minutes. Based on the way the weather looked this morning I found it hard to believe I was seeing the reflection of the sunshine outside the large window I look through from the kitchen table laptop computer. It was time for an afternoon walk with the hounds.

The skies looked great toward the NE, humidity was low and the field dry. Toward the NW was an entirely different looking sky. That is when I found out that Stella was going to have her own plans on where she was going while Sadie and I followed our normal path.

Through my zoomed lens I saw Stella rise out of the growing wild flowers and field grass, walking out the north side of the yard. I suspected we would see her on the way back over by the neighbor's woods. Yet, she surprised me once again and came our direction on her own time without me calling her name.

What I did notice fairly quickly on this walk, there were more butterflies than I had ever seen at one time. They were everywhere in the field and for some reason Sadie was not chasing them as she likes to do most of the time when they fly over her head or nose. She had other plans and left the butterflies alone but that did not mean they didn't bother her.

Each photo, sharp or blurry, is of a different butterfly.

There were so many that I was trying to catch with my camera I forgot all about Sadie and Stella until I felt that wet mouth and moist nose of Stella's touch the side of my knee. She nudged me to let me know she is around. At times inside the house she will do that to my face to let me know she likes me or wants something to eat. Bertha, my first bloodhound, use to show me that by putting my left ear in her mouth without a lick.

Both hounds took their time and both were slow in their walk this afternoon, almost like a stroll. There wasn't any intense searching and identifying by Sadie nor was Stella looking for and eating deer scat ... just strolling through the growing field of wild flowers and being swarmed by butterflies.

Remember that each picture is of a different butterfly.

You can tell just how excited the hounds were to see that many butterflies in their field.

The slowly walked back to the house, walked inside with the air conditioned air when I opened the door. Then lay down next to my desk chair with their back up against each other as I put this blog post together.

I have not felt the effects of not drinking the strong ice tea I usually make. I follow the directions but I rarely have anyone finish a glass of it. It's dark like coffee and probably too strong. I'll never forget the day my dad took the 32oz glass of my ice tea I offered him for the drive home on a very hot August day. As he took the glass with him to his car, I saw him hiding behind his open car door pouring the ice tea into my gravel driveway.

Just the one sip he took inside was definitely too strong for him.   LOL

So without any withdrawal signs after switching to plain water, I'll be drinking cold water and watching more Reds baseball tonight ... or lets say I'll have the game on the tv in the background while I do other things. If the game gets out of hand, like losing again I will have to have a movie night for the 2nd night in a row.

It's been a great week here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Take Their 1st Walk Ever In Rain

As the hounds went outside first thing in the morning while I poured their breakfast kibble, I could tell the weather experts were correct today ... it had rained over night. There was just a little standing water in the flowerbed (normal spot) where I am going to have a large rock dropped soon. Wunderground was showing rain 75% and down to 50% chances solid until Friday morning ... finally after a couple of hours I decided why not?  Sadie and Stella would take their first walk ever in the rain.

I had a choice to either walk in the light rain getting my shirt and my arms soaked or wear a rain jacket and still get my shirt and arms soaked since was very humid ... like 99% humid. I chose the rain jacket and zipped up to the bottom of my chin ... that kept those mosquitoes that were buzzing by my ears and nose away from their target ... my arms.

I can barely call it a light rain ... you could hear it, but not feel it. It wasn't a real rain by any means but it was outside our box, outside the norm. I lowered my mower yesterday and used a tape measure to confirm the blade would cut at 2". A little shorter than normal (1 notch adj) but recommended for my lawn by Scotts lawn care.

You will notice just left of the flowers the ground gravitates toward the house. That 'ditch' was not there when the area was overgrown with wild brush, small saplings and extremely thick to even try to walk in. I am going to have to fill that in with dirt and replant grass. Any ideas how to prevent the water from naturally taking that path towards the house?

By the time Sadie and I were in the field and I could hear rain drops hitting my rain jacket sleeve, I glanced back towards the house and Stella was still sitting under cover in the carport looking right back at me. Smart Bloodhound. Did that mean she wasn't going to walk?

Finally she slooooowly walked to the corner of the house, hesitated until I said "come on" and then slooooowly walked into the field. Sadie and I were already following the edge of the field heading our normal start north.

Once she decided the rain wasn't that bad, she had a little trot to her step and trotted right past me to catch up with Sadie.

Of course Sadie was oblivious to any weather change. I doubt that she even knew it was raining let along feeling it. The only thing important to her was WALK ... and that was what she was doing. I don't recall her being this obsessed with taking walks when she was younger ... she will always come to let me know she wants to walk, no matter where I am or what I am doing.

Where I barely found a small yellow daisy yesterday and took a picture of that, this morning there were more of them and much larger. Amazing what a little all-night rain will do for plants.

Stella's new routine this week is stopping right at the corner with Sadie but instead of walking toward the neighbor's woods or out in the middle of the field, she has started walking in the direction of our return path and joining Sadie and I with the walk 3/4 finished.

I could have included the other 4 photos that show the sequence of her walk, but they all looked the same as this one, just in a different location. I've never had a hound bloodhound or basset, that walks as slow as she can and does most of the time.

In the meantime, Sadie was right along with me. You could tell that she was happy to be walking and she thought it was a good decision that I decided that a little rain never hurt anyone.

Stella sees Sadie and I but that doesn't change her pace. She is doing a slow loop toward us, probably to check if I am really paying attention to what she is doing and if she can sneak away for some possible 'natural protein supplement' that she likes to find.

You can see she has almost reached our worn path that's hard to see ... just to the right of her nose.

From this point on, both hounds wander in all directions while I continue to walk and turn to take pictures. They gradually herd themselves back in my direction the closer we get to home.

You can tell by my ballcap it was a very light rain. Since I have officially named my North Face snow boots my all-wet, rain and snow boots, I can see us taking more walks just like today and not cancelling them just because there is some rain outside. The rain jacket also worked out well, even in humid weather.

Before letting the hounds back inside I went in to get 'their' towels so I could dry off their underbellies, legs and paws. Stella decided once she was inside that I needed to do a better job of drying her legs and paws off ... I took photos of her doing that but she was licking them so fast that both photos were blurred.

I would like to keep the windows open today with the temps staying in the low 70's. Yet with the humidity showing 99% and my new addiction to cold air inside, I've closed all the windows and turned on the AC ... feels much better away from the sticky humidity.

I found out this morning that a huge data user is when I upload photos to Google Photos and Flickr. I try to do that only during the time where HughesNet gives me free 50Gb of data between 2am-8am. Lately I have not been using that free data for saving every photo taken that day to those two platforms. I know it's probably overkill since my computer is backed up automatically with Apple's Time Machine to an external disc but I like having my photos backed-up on an online site just in case I have disaster here.

So far this morning after uploading photos to this blog and posting it, plus my normal internet reading I have used only 134Mb. Yesterday I had used 200Mb of data in the first 1-1/2 hours.

As you can tell from the picture of the cornfield, it's going to be a day of rain and gloomy weather but a nice break from those high 80's and low 90's. I've pulled another book off my shelf and today feels like a reading day.

Nice and quiet this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.