The Frozen Tundra

As expected, it was extremely cold this morning and the solid ice on the storm windows proved it. I had no plans of taking any walks today at all. We did last year in much more colder weather, more wind and a lower wind chill. There are always concerns walking the bloodhound in temperatures that range of 15° or lower. Will she get ice in between her toes and then have to be carried home? Or, will the extreme freezing weather harm her pads of her paws? Will it cause cracking later on? So with some hesitation, we cautiously walked outside after 10:30am and at 14° and a wind chill 5°.

Two things made it feel warmer, the sunshine was out and very bright. Plus the thermometer in the corner of the carport was at 20°, in the shade. The freezing wind was from the Southwest let me know it was going to be colder on the way home. With that bright sunshine, mentally it felt a lot warmer than it was. I didn't mind it so far and neither did Stella.

With it so cold what little snow was left from last night's dusting, it was not moving from the path onto Stella's paws. It was very dry, like the snow you would experience out west. So the only question would be as we started the walk was ... will Stella's paws get cold enough that we would have to turn around?

Really it did not feel that bad. I was wearing my normal layers of clothes, covered with a down parka and a hood over the top of my sock hat. The Mountain Hardwear parka is 25 years old and is still working fantastic keeping me warm. I had no doubt that I'd stay warm enough to finish the walk. Stella looked a little energized and ready to go. A complete walk was looking promising.

Stella kept trotting fast enough to always stay in front of me. I tried a couple of times to get around her but each time I was about to take a photo of her from the front, she would run by me before I could press the shutter. I was a little curious if that meant she would head for the far right corner of the field, knowing I was not going to run after her? Our pace was the same as always. We did not speed up just because it was cold, after all ... the sun was out. :)

With the straw blowing from left to right, you can't feel it by the way it is bending to the right, but it shows the winds were stronger than normal. With it forecasted to be even colder tomorrow I would have expected the winds coming from the NE or the upper left corner of the photo, since that is where the arctic front is coming from.

When I asked "Do you see any deer?" ... LOL .... she stopped and studied the landscape.

Then looked back at me to see if I was serious or just joking with her. Looking back through some photos in my Deer folder the other day, it showed I have not seen deer in this field since November 2017. What happened? Where did they go? Deer tracks yes ... actual deer no.

This is about as far as Stella veered off the path this morning. She did not act cold in any way but she also did not get off the path too far.

As she stopped at the last turn for home, I told her "lets go home" ... and she took off trotting down the path.

I ran a little to get ahead of her, thinking I might catch her running but not today. She always tried staying in front of me.

The daily stop and look toward the woods behind the neighbor's house. Is it the smell of food outside or the smell of the rarely seen field cat?

It might be really cold, but that does not mean Stella will move any faster. She is always on her on time.

The bright sunshine made it feel warmer mentally. It is supposed to get up to 21° by late this afternoon but still has a wind chill of 7° predicted ... about like it was this morning. So the walk may not happen. I do know for sure it will not happen tomorrow when the high temps are single digits. She and Heidi will get their short 1-2 minute supervised trips outside to relieve themselves but that is all

My friend from the Chicago area after waking up to 8" of new snow on top what they had the previous days. Then today ... it's reported that Chicago will be colder than Antarcticia this week!!!

I was in such a hurry to get out of the store yesterday like I wrote about last night around midnight, that I forgot to buy oatmeal. I had failed to put that on my list. I did run into an old co-worker at the store yesterday. She retired a few years before I did but yesterday she told me the same thing I tell people, "It was the best career decision I ever made, and I don't miss working at all." No plans for today other than watching the taped show Bull, more reading about Steve Jobs, some internet surfing and probably some Mahjong games. Without any ice cream in the house, it is doubtful I'll pass out from a sugar overdose and need an afternoon siesta like I did yesterday. Life is rough in retirement but someone has to do it.

'The tropics' of Southern Indiana is freezing today but still warmer than most states in the Midwest and east of us.

A Solution For Frustration

{Comments section is now available, fixed, not sure how that was closed}  This is one of the finer things of retirement. The freedom of time is something I value more than any of the money I made working. It will be five years this April when I walked out of the door and never looked back. I turned into a 'slacker' from a 'workaholic', possibly adding years to my life. I am on my own schedule, after the hounds approval of course and flexibility is the keyword in all of this. So .... some late night blogging.

We didn't know what to expect this afternoon as we enjoyed temperatures in the mid 40's well past noon. Heidi and Stella checked things out after their lunch, with a short minute trip to the mulch for Heidi and Stella wasn't moving. Once back inside I double checked my 'short' shopping list and decided to make a trip to buy groceries

We were suppose to get snow showers late in the afternoon or possibly rain. A few miles west of town it turned into a light rain. The hounds were fed so I thought the chances were pretty good that Stella would a nap while I was gone.

She will always be shut off in the bedroom with Heidi as her supervisor. That room has the least amount of my possessions that can be destroyed if Stella has one of her anxiety attacks. I can repaint or repair any damage she does to the room ... but room damage has not taken place in over two years.

With her recent escapes by opening the round door knob I continue to tie a tight cord from the doorknob to another on a closet door about 12' away and then just in case she does get that door open wide enough to chew that cord (happened early December) I put a baby gate up outside of the door.

Looking at that face how would you ever guess she is an expert in escaping from a closed room and cannot be trusted if I am gone for any length of time??   LOL

As the afternoon passed I didn't see any signs of snow. For one reason, the temperatures were not dropping enough for it to snow. There wasn't really any kind of wind and only light rain. That canceled the afternoon walk for Stella and I.

I had caught up watching my two shows the DVR taped on Sunday. Nothing on tv was an interest to me. Mahjong? No. ... It seemed like a perfect time for a siesta. It was not quite 5:30pm. A strange time for a normal siesta but like I said, when you are retired anything is possible. Time means nothing.

While the groceries were being moved from the car to the kitchen, Heidi not only relieved herself but explored the edge of the property to make sure all the rain and melting snow had not washed away our bank. (joke) That was about all the aerobic exercise she got today outside.

I admit I lost track of what day it was while I was driving to the store 12 miles away. It all started at a stop light downtown, where I couldn't tell if the normally bright orange 'open' light was on in the window of the Chinese restaurant. That activated the word buffet from my memory and I remembered the buffet is not served on Monday's. So what day was it?

A quick glance to my watch told me it was Monday, 45° and cloudy and my pulse rate was 62 bpm, even with a sheriff pulled along side of me in the right hand lane.  :)

Just because I have all this time on my hands, not working, no meetings to attend anymore, that does not mean the word frustration has been erased from my dictionary. It all started when a car pulled out in front of me as I had just made my left hand turn downtown. This town is loaded with old people and those old people always drive ultra slow, even through town.

I passed her in a legal passing zone just as I was leaving town with the speed limit 35 mph. ... Those same slow ass drivers were waiting for me up ahead and my 12 mile trip to the store seemed like a cross-country drive. It did not stop there ... oh no.

With the forecast that our location would be coming to an end within 48 hours with a winter storm from hell, everybody and their mother was at the Super Walmart Store, the best grocery store available within a 20 mile radius of my house.

Not only do they drive slow, they shop slow. They block aisles while stopping to talk. Some don't know if they are going left or right so they stay in the middle of the aisle, dazed and confused. I only needed a few things, like coffee, eggs, butter, chicken, veggies and fruit. It would have been quicker if I would have shopped and bought one thing from every aisle in the store ... it was that clogged with people and slower than slow.

I might think I am flexible being retired until I am in this situation ... then I'm claustrophobic. It's not that I have to get out of there because walls are closing in ... no ... I have to get out of here to get away from people who irritate the hell out of me.

I don't deal with stupidity well. Never have.

To top it off ... slow cashiers and backed up checkout lines was the icing on the cake. I finally excused myself to the lady behind me and the lady behind her, so they could back up and I could get out of line ... then go through the self checkout.

LOL ... NO !!!!!!

It didn't get better .... I have all my food checked out and sacked with no problem. But the machine would not read my debit card. Finally the lady that works that department when trouble arises came over but she couldn't get my card to work either. Something was wrong with the reader.

Luckily after she tried for the 4th time and was about ready to call someone ... it decided to work, while she did nothing different from the four previous attempts.

I was able to get out of the parking lot without anyone backing into me, pulling out in front of me, all those crazy things that can happen in parking lots. So that was a good thing. Did this mean I had a clear shot home? A short 12 mile drive at 60-65mph ???

Not today.

Oncoming traffic was spaced out just enough that even if I punched the accelerator I still would not have been able to slide in front of someone. Right before my eyes I saw my 12 mile trip was going to take longer than I did driving over. The 'lead' car would be an old beatup pickup truck with a Confederate liscense plate on the front ... how did I know I was screwed on the drive home??  LOL

So I kicked back, knew I was going to go slower than slow, five cars behind the leader (that truck) of the 45mph caravan. Sports talk AM radio saved the day.

It's always an encouraging sign as I pull into the driveway that Stella is not outside waiting for me to pull up the driveway. I know that sounds weird and surely impossible but it did happen right after I first got her in August 2015. She broke out of the house that day because I made the mistake of leaving my screened windows open, the bottom of that window she tore through was 4' off the ground. So the thought of that might happening is always there.

I glance inside the door window as I unlock the door and see the door, the baby gate and cord are all as I left it a couple of hours ago. That's a good thing to see. Some 'short' shopping trip that was. People panic when the news is blasting scare tactics on winter storms.

Don't they know they live in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana where you can count on it being much much better than the rest of the nation will get? We don't have a lot of bad weather anymore.

So I am home. I am happy, The hounds are happy and treated with their grain free bacon flavored dog bone. How could I celebrate surviving a couple of hours of frustration?

I fell off my food discipline while shopping. I anxiously took off the lid to a brand new container of Haagan Dazs Strawberry ice cream and started eating. Damn!!! did that taste good.

I'm blaming those 22grams of sugar for my late afternoon siesta ... yes ... I ate the whole container and then basically passed out a few hours later.

LOL

It turned out to be a successful day in 'the tropics' of  Southern Indiana.

A Late Start To A New Week

Things seemed to have changed ever so slightly the past couple of nights. I've had a solid night of sleep and sleeping much later than those 4am and 5am wake-ups from a few weeks ago. Yet, my sleep app is telling me I am not getting enough sleep but it let me know yesterday, based on their data the best time for me to go to bed was 11:45pm because I get what they call "Best Sleep Rhythm" ..... Evidently the hounds approve waking up later because Stella isn't whining to wake me up nor has Heidi. With both of them taking their late night trips outside they are good until I wake up. I did not have my first sip of coffee until 20 minutes after our normal time for starting the walk.

I had a nice article this morning in my Feedly app about taking landscape photos with my iPhone. The times I have tried using it on my daily walks last winter, the performance was not stellar compared to the fantastic photos it takes inside at night in low light conditions. This article not only helped with some good ideas, to the point  I will try landscape photos with my iPhone again soon, but it basically covered the basics of photography. It's those things we know but take for granted after a while and become lazy, at least I have. So this morning I tried some of their suggestions with the Canon G9 X on this morning walk.

While I was  busy looking at the sky, into the woods, and at the treeline ... Stella was on the walk wondering what I was doing, when I was coming and what was going on?

The gully I mention from time to time is very steep just past that fallen tree. You can see the other side of the gully and possibly how steep it is to get out of it. Out of all the hounds I've had here in the last 20 years, only Sadie and Winston decided they needed to see the bottom of the gully. Stella may have during the times she disappeared on our walks but that was always the first place Sadie and I would check. She was never seen and never found by either of us. She would just show up like magic as we were going back to the house. Sometimes Sadie and I would look for her almost an hour.

The skies tell me there is a lot going on to the north of us. It's going to be a pretty weird week in weather. It was 40° this morning but felt much colder with the winds coming out of the west. The high on Wednesday is going to be -1° they say but since we live in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana that will be much warmer than my friend that lives in the Chicago area. She let me know this morning their Wednesday high is to be -24° ... that is not a windchill factor but the temperature itself. Then ... a few days later my high will be over 50°. I can live with all of that because no matter what the weather does, the days keep passing by and Spring will be here before we know it!!!  :)

Each time I have looked at my blog since midnight on Saturday, I am really happy that I stuck with this blog design. Out of 308 themes WordPress offers me, this theme (design) is the only one that has photos 10" wide on a screen that is viewed at 100% or normal size. I like that. The other blog I tried for an hour or so on Saturday night had photos 1" less in width. I am stating those dimensions in inches instead of pixels on purpose just because they are easier to understand the difference in size. The blog title, the post titles and content are currently set at the default fonts chosen by the theme designers. I might change them back to what I had before. If any of you are having trouble reading these fonts on any device you are using ... let me know.

The last of the snow may be washed away this afternoon or more might be added. How's that a possibility? At 40°? "Snow showers" are in the afternoon's forecast. Should be interesting and there might be some nice photo opportunities. If it is more snow than rain, Stella and I will do an afternoon walk. If it is raining .. the walk will be postponed just like a baseball game would be.

I did make the tree with the light-colored leaves my focus point but what stood out to me after downloading the photo to the computer, was the bright red vines which will produce wild blackberries hopefully next summer.

Stella's new routine for the next few days or weeks is following the path most of the time. She likes to change what she does every three to four weeks. Is it scent related? Mentally related?

Whereas the past couple of days she was in the right corner of the field after trotting way ahead of me, this morning she decided to ask for permission before she headed that direction, just around that bush on the right. Sadie use to have Stella up in that area all the time because off the picture on the right side is what I call the entry ramp for the deer highway down into the gully or is it the other way around? ... an exit ramp for when the deer come up out of the gully into the field?

She understood the word 'no' this morning ... something she doesn't pay attention to most of the time when I say that word ... but today she did.

Stronger scent ... intense walk.

The wind was stronger and colder than this photo could capture. I could almost hear it blowing, coming from the west.

At first I thought I had a smudge on my screen on back of the camera, then thought something might be on the very small lens that is hard to touch ... but it was only a cloud.

With the winds stronger than normal a lot of scent was airborne today. She stood and sniffed the air many times on this walk.

You might think I was looking at those tall towers and those huge high power electrical wires when I took this photo ... but it was the contrast in color with those blue plastic covers over all of his palletized bagged mulch. "My" Cyprus mulch is somewhere under those blue covers. I've put 20 of those bags in my Countryman at one time. A great multi-purpose vehicle.<

When I saw the flashing battery icon on my screen as I took this photo I didn't know if we would make it back home taking the normal photos we take all the way to the end. It was the first time the Canon G9 had a low battery warning, so I wasn't sure how much time I had. I found  out later, there wasn't much time after that blinking icon.

I've always thought Stella was the slowest walking hound I ever owned. That she was the only hound I ever owned that took forever to finish the walk on the same path I have used for 21 years in March. Then I remember she wasn't the only one. Remember this 'guy' ?? ....

Winston use to lag way behind us and with short legs his stride wasn't that long anyway. I'd let him do his own pace but once he saw I was getting close to the yard or out of his view, he would always come trotting to catch up with me. Many walks on a nice day he would also 'stroll' one paw at a time.

So, Stella might be slow on the walks we take ... but she just joins a small infamous group of hounds that have walked the same speed as she does.

No matter how cold it is, or how windy it is or if I have something I need to get done ... she always has time to stop and smell things along the way.

I wanted to see what this field looks like from Stella's point of view. She stood next to me confused as I kneeled to take this photo.

More airborne scent.

A split second after snapping this photo, a beep and the screen on back of the camera went black as the lens retracted back into the camera ... the battery was dead.

I'm not sure what lies ahead for us today. That is what is great about retirement, you don't know what will play out most of the time but have all the time in the world for it to happen. If nothing happens, that's okay too. I am also not sure what I am in the mood for. I might have to make a short grocery run since I am now completely out of food I eat for breakfast. I alternate between oatmeal with blueberries or eggs with bacon, scallions, roma tomatoes, mushrooms and sometimes cheese. Long gone are the days of pancakes and waffles until the batter was gone. Long gone are the days of donuts and coffee or those huge cinnamon rolls I use to have at work. It was a good week for food intake, and little to no indigestion.

With the weather planning to be so cold on Wednesday that will be the day I finally post my review on the Apple Watch I bought on the 4th of January. I will discuss that free app "SleepWatch" in-depth, along with the Apple Health app. It has a lot more information than what I was getting with the Garmin Connect app, which is a good app to use if you have a Garmin Activity Monitor/watch.

Another fine morning here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.