Sadie and Her Separation Anxiety

Since the first day I brought her home as a twelve week old pup, she has shown separation anxiety. I thought after we moved past year six that it would change. In a way it has, she doesn't destroy things now, just tracks scent and drags it out for her own use and to show me what she has found.

It is always my stuff and not hers. She seems to follow The Bloodhound Laws that you can see here at the bottom of the page.

In the case of the photo on the left, she spent a lot of time hauling her red blanket from the floor to my bed for a little siesta while I was gone. This happened some time ago.

After a couple of years I spoke with a different breeder than whom I bought Sadie from and she explained to me what and why Sadie was doing what she was doing. At the time there was a lot of destruction involved while I was gone anywhere from 10 minutes to hours. While I was at work, she was kenneled for her first four years to keep her safe and my possessions safe. But during short periods of being outside she would get into stuff.

The breeder had acquired Sadie's dad and their personalities were almost identical. The breeder said she gives her puppies a test at forty-five days old to see if they are trackers or couch potatoes. After I answered four out of five questions positive, I found out that Sadie was rated as a tracker and the reason for her nose to always be in the working mode. It was the reason during the times I would be away that she would get into things, drag them out for me to see when I got back and some times destroyed.

The breeder said if I had bought Sadie from her, she would have given me a pup that tested out to be a "couch potato" instead of one that tested high for tracking. She would not have sold me Sadie. I had originally picked out a different bloodhound pup at first but changed to Sadie because she would follow Winston anywhere he went and would try to get him to play. She was the only one of eight pups that did that. Now I found out that when she followed Winston that showed a tracking instinct more than the other pups.

The two basset hounds can stay anywhere in the house while I am gone, no matter how long I am gone without any problems. I found out a couple of years ago the best room in the house to keep Sadie was in the bedroom. She sleeps on the floor at night, had familiar smells and fewer things she could get into. I also put the two bassets in the room with her to keep her company with hopes of preventing any tracking activity. I no longer kept her in a kennel due to her size compared to the largest kennel you could buy for inside use.

Overall things have improved a lot the past few years and now things she does at times are funny stories rather than getting home and pulling what little hair I have out of my head. Of course at all times when I am getting ready to leave, I have to put a baby gate up not to block the door because I shut the door, but to keep her from getting into my closet.

Her "specialty" use to be, get into the closet (sliding doors) and chew just the plastic tip off of the shoestring and only one shoe per pair. Honestly, there was never a time when both shoes had the tips chewed off, just one shoe per pair. There was never a time when the shoestring was chewed up ... just the plastic tip. I wish Nike, New Balance, Merrell would sell the exact same shoestrings for the shoes they sell.

So where this post is going is what happened yesterday. It was time to mow the yard and the normal procedure is to put her in the locked bedroom while I mow the backyard, then bring her outside where she is connected to her 100' climbing rope so she can roam in the field behind my house while I mow the front yard.

For some reason yesterday I decided to let her roam the house with the two basset hounds (they sleep the whole time). After finishing the backyard in about fifteen minutes, I moved to the side yard and glanced into the bedroom window to see if Sadie was sleeping on the floor or bed. No Sadie anywhere.

As I moved by the side window for the living room I glanced inside the window to see if she was in the living room. There were two basset hounds sleeping by the window on the floor, no Sadie anywhere.

In my small downsized house there are not a lot of rooms left to choose where she might be but I knew exactly where where she was. I mowed along the front of the house, shut it off and then as quietly as I could I walked into the house and glanced into the room where I have my computer, desk, dog blankets and the large rubber container full of forty pounds of newly acquired dry dog food. Like she use to do in the past while I was getting ready for work, she had removed or knocked off the lid, TWO 15# dumbbells and moved the lid to the side. This lid also locks to the container once you push down on the edges.

Someway she can get them off. The dumbbells are on the lid to keep her from getting into the food, even if I am inside the house. Usually during the time I am watching ballgames in the living room.

As I glanced into the room I see a wagging bloodhound dog tail and her head inside the container eating dry dog food. Luckily I had caught her soon enough to where she had not eaten a large amount and that would decrease the potential for her bloating. Bloating is common in large breed dogs and luckily she has never experienced that. Eating large amounts of food though could set that off. It didn't look like she had ate that much, still it was only an hour after I had fed her the regular meal.

When she saw me she knew she was in trouble and caught red handed. She took off in a sprint to her dog bed in the corner of the bedroom, laying there like nothing happened. With that bloodhound innocent look like asking me "is something wrong"?

Words were not needed ... she knew.

I babygated the closet doors, shut the bedroom door and then went back outside to finish mowing the front yards. It had been one of those days where she didn't want to be outside and would bark until I would bring her back inside, so this time I left her inside.

I began thinking and wondering what she would do or get into if we were in an RV or trailer and I left all of the hounds inside the trailer while I was out hiking, mountain biking or grocery shopping? There would not be a room I could shut her up in if I had a trailer. Temperatures would determine if I could leave her in the FJ while shopping. In a motorhome I could gate her off into the back bedroom where she could still get into things.

This issue with her and me being gone has always been in the thought process, asking myself if she would ever be a good dog to RV with. Would this separation anxiety also determine what kind of RV I would buy?

Domain is Working & Ramblings

It looks like my blogging vacation lasted a couple of weeks. I wasn't off the internet and spent more time than I would have preferred online but I'll discuss that later in this post. I can't shut my mind off so I am always thinking about different decisions and solutions.

First of all, I am going to renew the domain name of this blog. I just checked it and it did work. So all should be operable at www.houndsandrvs.com as well as www.bhounds.blogspot.com Yesterday I took down the domain name and was just using my blogger address, so for those that tried to visit the blog and got the blank page saying your browser could not find the blog ... that was the reason for it.

This blog is almost three years old, I have close to or a little over 100,000 page views and regular readers that come back looking for either new information, see if I'm breathing, what the hounds are doing and what kind of travel plans I have, if any.

So, I decided to stay "open for business", renew my domain name and continue to blog. I have a lot of online friends here and that's always a good thing being a self proclaimed loner. I know being on the side of a "blog reader" it's always disappointing after following a blog to either have the author stop blogging and tells you or the blogger that quietly disappears and never comes back to their blog.

I didn't feel it was right to stop blogging, even about every day routine living as long as I had followers and I still had the urge to write. Which I have both.

While I didn't write about anything I did do some rearranging. As you could see I moved some things from the right sidebar to the left sidebar. I removed some blogs from my list only to make it shorter. I still follow the removed blogs on my Feedly account. I deleted photos of the hounds and my Toyota. I might put the photos of the hounds back on the sidebar. I'll probably continue to move things around and may add those blog links back to my sidebar even though the list was long.

During my absence I continued to read my list of RV blogs as well as other retirement blogs and found that I was not the only one questioning whether to continue blogging or what subjects to write about. Lloyd posted yesterday that he was finding little to write about since he has come off the road, doing the same hike everyday and now living in one spot. He had also gone through all of the social media options and is reverting back to just blogger as his writing platform.

Bob Lowry and his wife over at A Satisfying Retirement just returned home from a trip to the upper Midwest in a Class C and found that 43% of his expenses were going into the fuel tank. While Curtis over at Poor Mans RV Life has found out that after using a Class C, a Jeep Cherokee towing a trailer and a Van over the years, that his older diesel pusher, a Pace Arrow is the best rig he has traveled in, getting 10mpg and spending roughly $500 per month in fuel as he starts his fulltime RV lifestyle.

Both of those percentages and dollars are more than I had budgeted in my estimates. I also knew or expected I would spend more than I have budgeted for fuel, food, etc.

As I mentioned above, I've been spending more time than I have wanted on the internet. It's just the rut I've been in longer than I want to admit. I do a lot of online reading during the day from the blogs I follow, to sports news and forums, forums for the FJ Cruiser and Mini Cooper as well as computers. I trying to stay away from reading the news, still it is very easy to spend hours and hours reading before you realize just how much time you have spent ... which feels like wasted time to me.

That is not the way I want to spend everyday ... so today I am making changes.

It's beautiful outside AGAIN today, so I am definitely going to be spending some time outside with the hounds. The Mini Cooper needs washed and it's finally cool enough to do that. With the recent storms and high winds I will be getting on the roof since the temps have decreased and clear off some broken tree branches.

I admit I like this time of year in the "tropics" of southern Indiana. With the clear skies you can see a million stars at night and the low humidity you can do things outside and still breath. For some reason this summer, bugs and mosquitoes have not been a problem. At night I am smelling more and more camp fires in the air.

Al talked about his three hobbies he has had over the years and how they have came together in the way he travels and his daily photography. That got me thinking and asking myself what were my hobbies past and present. Some of them I have always had for as long as I remember while I found a few that I no longer did but had possible interest in starting again.

Back in the 80's I was into photography. I had all the different sized lenses, the different filters and the bags to carry the equipment in. I have photographs I took while traveling throughout the world and 99% of those photographs are on 35mm slides. At that time 35mm slides was the preferred option for taking photographs. I have some older photos from a small 110 camera that I took with me on my cross country bicycle trip and those can be scanned, I just need to take the time to do it.

So photography is something I might start doing again. I realized I have a lot of neat things to take photos of around here but like most everyone else ... we take those shots for granted since they are a part of our daily life and end up not taking pictures. Many of the photos I am seeing from bloggers this summer from Whidbey Island and surrounding areas, I don't have a lot of photos of but have ten years worth of them in my mind. I think I'd rather have the photos.

Sports have been a hobby of mine since my first breath. My dad was a high school basketball and baseball coach so our life was geared around sports 12 months a year. In the summers he would have two to three weeks off and unlike many of the current RV bloggers, we did NOT take camping trips .. we would travel but would stay in motels that had a pool. We also tried to tie those vacations to major league baseball games if possible. So, no matter what happens I doubt my love of watching sports will ever change.

Another hobby I like doing is riding either a road bicycle or my mountain bike, even if its only for a few miles. When I do travel I will take the mountain bike with me and leave the road bikes at home.

Like Al, I have always enjoyed driving ... yes driving.  I cannot count the number of times I have made trips from California to Indiana and back or Washington to Indiana and back but every time I loved driving cross country. Yet on all of those trips I either didn't have time or didn't take time to stop and look at the beautiful country I was traveling through. At times I did take the older highways but only stopped for food, gas and an occasional nap.

From the list of hobbies I wrote down just out of curiosity, I found that I could do most if not all of them traveling.

That leads me to the subject of traveling.

At this time I cannot make that commitment. Basically after more thinking the past two weeks and even coming close to purchasing a trailer I have decided not at this time. I also enjoy this time of the year in Indiana. Also the hounds ... every time I think about them traveling, I think of their comfortable life here. Winston is getting older, hind legs are getting weaker, and when I look into his old eyes as I pet him ... I hear the words "stay here". Heidi is getting treatments for her skin issues which have not changed even with cooler temps and even keeping her off grass for two weeks ... they got worse. Sadie is just Sadie ... big and needs room when inside.

After a few recent tests traveling with the hounds there are still issues that I wrote about here last September. They do better in the FJ than in the H3 Hummer I had. It's a little bit smaller inside so less room for stuff and us. I just feel the best time for me to do any traveling is when I am down to one hound, not three. It doesn't matter how much I want to travel in a small trailer towed by my FJ 4x4, I know that is not enough room for me and the hounds.

Of course you never know what lays ahead in life, what could change to take away that chance to travel but I am willing to live with my decision and I'll have no regrets if something happens to prevent me from traveling. I have traveled a lot and seen a lot of places recorded in photos in the past just not in an RV, so if something happens before I can travel it's ok.

I will still take short trips with the hounds but I cannot say that I'll make the commitment to travel for the reasons explained above.

Today I am making some subtle changes to my daily routine to enjoy what's outside around me and also to get out of my recent rut. I know I am early into my retirement phase but I think I need some sort of structure instead of floating aimlessly through my days. I'm not talking major changes, just things that will put me back into some sort of routine, without spending all my time in front of a computer monitor.

My traveling plans may change when the temperature get to the point that I hate being here and that might be enough to shove me out the door, hounds and all.

Even with little to no travel at this time, I will continue to blog about retirement living and if anything changes in the travel plans.

I'm Taking a Vacation From Blogging

A couple of things.

I'm not sure that I am going to renew my current domain name: houndsandrvs.com when it expires sometime in September. Currently it redirects to my original blogspot domain. If you decide you want to continue to follow this blog in case there are changes down the road you will need to change your bookmark address to this domain name:  bhounds.blogspot.com. That will be the blog address if I decide not to renew my current domain name.

There isn't much going on in my life since I have basically finished my research of RVs and currently have no plans to travel. I find it hard to write about everyday living when the intent of the blog was to write about researching RVs and then writing about my travels. I can't honestly say if those travels will take place or not, even after almost three years this October.

I am also finding my retirement life is nothing exciting and definitely not anything to write about to send out for the public to read. It is basically what I expected it would be if I chose to live here after retiring. Things are good but slow. There is really nothing to read here when the highlight of the week is mowing the yard or washing a car.

Because of that I have decided I am going to take a blog vacation.

I Saw The Bad Side of the Economy Today

This post fits more into the "Retirement" side of my blog. It would just graze the edge of the "RV" side of the blog.

By helping a friend today, someone I worked with just a few months ago, I saw for the first time the bad side of the economy in the USA. It's the economy that some say has recovered and everything is great and then there is the side where those people cannot see the light at the end of a dark dark tunnel.

In some news media over the past few years you might have read how the majority of working couples are really just a payday away from disaster. This is based on no savings, living payday to payday, a family to support plus a mortgage. Well, this is kinda like one of those stories.

In this case there was no mortgage lost, but a single mother supporting two boys below the age of 7. Due to some recent contract awards while working for the government as a government contractor, her parent company lost the contract after five years of support, when it came due for new bidding. The new contractor chose not to make an offer to her to keep her job. It is common the new company will make an offer when there is a change in government contracts.

In this case a couple of things have played against her. Those are somewhat private and something I will not discuss here, since I do have some ex coworkers that read this blog on occasion.

Without a job offer to her, to keep her job, what it did was move her and her two boys from a very nice large house that was rented, eliminated a very substantial salary to nothing and a situation where the job market is tight enough in the local area that after a month of job searching she has found herself unemployed. She is also out of money and her unemployment does not start until the week of September 21, 2014. That unemployment payment will be less than half of her salary of a month ago. How many of us could afford to take a 60% pay cut or more?

When I heard the news from a mutual friend the other day, I contacted her to see if she was ok and if there was anything I could do to help. Since I have been out of circulation by being retired, I was not aware of job opportunities as I normally would be. So there was nothing I could do there to help her in finding a job except let her know she could use me as a reference.

What she asked for and told me was the most stressful for her right now was a very surprising answer. It was an answer that showed me just how bad this friend was hurting, withdrawing and not asking for help from any of her friends. She had just moved from that large nice rental house to a small 3 room, not 3 bedroom but a 3 room apartment, where the cost of rent was the deciding factor. This was one of those older large houses that was turned into multiple apartments mostly to attract the rental market of college students years ago, but not now. The house was in good shape, a neighborhood that had remodeled older houses for blocks and blocks ... a nice area to live.

Luckily she had a ground floor apartment, with a nice front porch and yard overlooking a part of the college town and a small backyard and patio but not the type of yard where the two boys could play and burn off some energy. The rooms were good size but with the two young boys the rooms had to be reconfigured to fit them. The bedroom and the living room were reversed to give them the bigger room as a bedroom.

Back to her surprising answer and a look at a Catch-22 when things are not going your way in life.

When I asked if there was anything I could do to help her, she paused and then in almost a whisper ... "I need someone to haul my trash away".

I was somewhat confused by that answer. I was expecting to be asked for a loan, maybe buy some groceries, or fill her car up with gas but no. She said her most stressful thing right now was getting the trash hauled away.

The trash in this case were boxes of stuff she had moved but had no room for. It was things she had not sold on Craig's List or eBay. It was really just stuff you throw away. I thought I knew the answer, but asked her why couldn't she just leave it where it was in back for the weekly trash pickup. Of course one was money, she could not afford that kind of expense but the other reason was .... even though she had bagged a lot of it in large heavy duty black trash bags, the city had their own trash system where their containers had to be used. Also those containers were color coded where the trash was separated as if you were recycling. Those containers also cost extra on top of the pickup fee. I had expected the cost being a reason but not the container requirement.

The stack of empty boxes plus some filled with things not worth giving away were covering the small patio right up to the back door of the apartment. Out by the alley was a stack of large moving boxes and the large black heavy duty bags filled with more stuff not worth giving away. Only the stack by the alley had been sitting there for a month and had been in a couple of heavy thunderstorms. It was not a good situation. The boxes were soggy, the bags had puddles of water on them.

Long story short, in two different trips I was able to fill my Toyota FJ and haul everything away. The empty boxes were broken down and taken to recycling. The bagged trash will go out with my weekly pickup and the large boxes full of junk were burned ... the burning process just finished before the thunderstorm that passed through early this evening.

So the economics side of this story is, she is doesn't have a job, doesn't have enough money to last until September 21, with two young sons to feed. She also needs to buy gas to get to job interviews if she she is called. She has interviewed a few times but I'm sure here past salary keeps her from an offer. She has many resume's out for jobs in a market that will be hard to get a job, especially without a college degree.

I know from personal experience twenty years ago, college graduates some with master degrees are willing to work for less money just to stay in the area. Some have a spouse still finishing a degree, some are graduate degrees. It's a tough market to crack when looking for a job and it's even harder without a college degree ... if you expect to make the amount of salary she was making.

The two unspoken factors will prevent her from being hired in her old department, even though it has been requested she be hired numerous times by different managers, according to her.

Yes, she could have saved more or even some of her salary. The majority of baby boomers nationwide have not saved since life itself does become expensive raising a family, especially as a single parent. She was one of those that never suspected she would ever lose her job, although I mentioned to her last summer about being financially prepared in case the large contract was not renewed. These companies are Fortune 500 companies that work that bid on contracts to support government activities. That environment has naturally changed for everyone with the changes in the last year of worldwide military support and available funding released from D.C.

She was kind of caught in the 'perfect storm' of government work, and now finds herself in a bad situation.

Today was an experience I didn't ever want to witness, especially to a friend with young children.

As far as the RV side of the blog I mentioned, this situation reminded me of some of the blogs I had read over the years where families or even single people had moved into an RV and started the lifestyle due to a loss of job, loss of house due to job loss or storm damages. It also reminded me of just how fragile retirement living is for some based on living on a shoestring budget. Who knows how high the cost of energy, the cost of groceries and medical coverage will be within the next 5 and 10 year periods, let alone gas/diesel prices. Will their retirement incomes keep up with inflation?

I wonder what percent of the millions of RV travelers only do it for economic reasons?

Comments & Rambling

I realize it's part of blogging, where the notorious 10% show up and either tell you how what you should do in your life either by commenting or by email ... those 10% seem to be pretty upset after they read my post yesterday. I've never met them, have no idea who they are but it has always mystified me why strangers get so upset because I am not doing what they want me to do.

Ed seems to be pretty consistent with his comments over the past few months ... he is mad that I have not come to a firm decision. He wants me to "fish or cut bait". I've deleted most of his comments when I catch them so he doesn't embarrass himself. I have also emailed him a couple of times suggesting for him to stop reading my blog since it seems to increase his blood pressure based on the tone of his comments. What does it matter to him what I do or don't do?

Amazing and humorous.

Don't people have anything else to do in their life besides troll the internet and leave dumb comments on blogs telling people what to do with THEIR lives?

I don't know Edward, don't care to know Edward and am not concerned what he does out in Denver. He needs to take up a hobby since he has pulled off the road and stopped blogging.

As for the anonymous commenters, I shut that option off a long time ago because it was nothing more than 99% spam.

I had an interesting email in my inbox this morning from a long time friend with a lot of years experience in traveling. They had been doing some research on fiberglass and styrene. After a lot of fiberglass trailers in their past, they were not sure they would be buying anymore fiberglass trailers.

After reading that email I thought about a trailer I had looked at in the past and is used fulltime by one of the bloggers I follow. He has told me that after 19 months of traveling fulltime he has never had a problem with his Starcraft AR-ONE 17RD. They are available locally and will be reconsidered.

I've noticed in my recent searches of fiberglass trailers, there seems to be always an abundance for sale and most of them are priced more than they are worth. Still they don't last long and sell pretty quickly. The market seems to be pretty fluid for fiberglass trailers. So I guess the prices are not too high after all.

My addiction starts in 6 days and 8 days for my local team. That is college football. That is one sport I will watch from the first kickoff in the east to the last game on the west coast. That usually keeps me up until 1:30 or so in the morning on Saturday nights. Pro football does not start their regular season for a couple of weeks later in September. I am a fan of pro football but not one that likes to watch the pre-season games that are going on now. It will be interesting to see how much my diet changes once the games start. I've been pretty good eating wise since April when I retired.

Like I said yesterday, summer has finally arrived here in the 'tropics' of southern Indiana. It was a nice summer while it lasted but we are now in day 2 of 95°+ and 90% humidity. That knocks the hounds out into a deeper sleep than normal during the day. It keeps me inside and still time to clean, read and take siestas. The forecast shows this heat wave (normal for August) should last until next Tuesday. I think I can handle that.

The topic of old dogs came up today via emails. We all seemed to agree that older dogs have different requirements such as a daily routine that is familiar with them plus the ability for fast vet care if an emergency were to arrive. Some feel that traveling is not an option with an older dog. Other bloggers say the same about their dogs but then some continue to travel without any problems. I believe due to the high quality of dog food I have fed my hounds over the years, they rarely get sick until the very end of their life. By the time the problem is caught it's usually too late to do anything.

For those readers that have asked about the results of the dog food supplement I was using in July called Dinovite, after 50+ days Heidi's condition did not improve. In fact as she sits here today her skin condition, due to some sort of lifelong allergies, has gotten worse than it was July 1. I'll be taking her in for a shot later today. I have come to the conclusion that her allergies are environmental instead of a dog food ingredient allergy.

As Al and Kelly over at the Bayfield Bunch get ready for departure to their winter home in Arizona, they are wondering what kind of damage the current Arizona monsoons might have done to their house. I would think that would be what all part-timers wonder about when they are away from their homes. I use to wonder the same thing as I traveled outside the country from 6-10 months at a time. You find yourself too far away to do anything but close enough electronically to know what is happening.

That's about all the rambling I can do today.

Since it's Friday and hotter than ever, it might be time to pull out a new bottle of Costco's Kirkland Pre-Mixed Margaritas, throw that plus some ice into the blender and see if I can't reduce some of this high temperature. Of course I'll have to do that when I get back from the vet this afternoon.

"Just Do It"

Those three words are from a famous Nike commercial but they are also three words that are probably shouted by hundreds of readers throughout North America ... under their breath over and over after reading this blog for years ... a few like to make sure I know what I should do by by commenting.

If the roles were reversed I would be saying the same thing to the blogger I was reading ... or I would have given up and left a long time ago.

When I hear that advice ... it doesn't bother me because I agree with it and really wish I could ... Really ... seriously.

I didn't plan on posting tonight but the hottest day of the summer hit today and as of right now at 7:26pm, Wunderground is telling me it's 90° and "feels" like 131°. So needless to say, the daily hound walk has been cancelled probably until next Tuesday if the forecast is accurate. So I'll blog about something that came up.

What did get me thinking about 3 hounds and a small trailer ... I know, we've been through all of this before ... anyway I was in my small bathroom, built in 1975, never expanded ... so it's small. Because Sadie likes to protect her water bowl and not share "her" water, which is in the room where my computer is, a few years ago I put a bowl of water for just the basset hounds (Winston & Heidi), in my bathroom. When you have a small house and no basement, there are few rooms to choose from. So the bathroom was the choice.

As I was standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I look down and see both basset hounds inhaling water as fast as they could, almost a race. It wasn't the water I noticed ....

It was the lack of room that I noticed.

My always active mind sprints right to the thought of adding the large bloodhound Sadie to the mix and wondering just how much room would be available. I didn't do that but it gave me a great visual of what it would be like with a large bloodhound and two long basset hounds taking up floor space in a small trailer.

With a trailer under the towing limits of my Toyota FJ, 5000lbs max, that leaves the only options being small trailers around 17' from bumper to the tip of the tow bar ... or roughly 13'-14' living area. Comparing that to what I saw in available floor space in the small bathroom in my house ... it didn't leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling of me, one large dog and two long dogs in a small trailer.

Yes ... this has been analyzed before many times.

Maybe this post is more for the "rookie" readers to give them an idea why I have not made a purchase, why I have not "Just Done It", without them having to go back a zillion pages of posts since 2011.

So, to my followers and regular readers ... this is a good example of why I have not done anything as far as traveling with my hounds. Do I want to travel ... most certainly. Do I remember our trip in September 2013 and only 586 miles ... most certainly. Yes, I would love to get to the SW before winter hits the MW. That is the plan at least.

Now back to running the hounds off the floor vents where they are blocking my air flow of air conditioned air.

Accomplishments the Past Two Days

Yesterday morning I turned off the computer, got up out my desk chair, moved to the first thing on my list ... and got started. I've spent the past couple of days being active. Less computer time, less internet surfing ... and feeling better because of it.

The heat and humidity have finally shown up but I was able to get the yard mowed between light rains. Did some heavy duty weed eating with my weed eater that has the steel blade and will cut small trees up to 2" in diameter. With all the sun, the above normal rain level this summer, the weeds and wild bushes have been hard to control. 

I did one of my favorite things of getting up on the roof of my single story house. I love it up there as long as I miss the hot weather. So this time of year I make it up before 10am. My plan was to take my smaller leaf blower with me and I blow out the gutters with that. That leaves me with the mess to pick up down below in the yard, but makes the gutter cleaning job much easier. While up there I noticed my old mahogany tree had limbs that were creeping of the roof, so I trimmed them back.

Once finished, I sat up on the highest point of the roof and just observed. It's a great view and I like sitting up there, even though its not that high. I've never seen everything so green this time of year. It's pretty nice.

I thought this morning would be the real test. Would I continue with things I wanted to do around the house or would I fall into my old routine of coffee, computer time? At 7:15am when Winston decided he couldn't hold his bladder any longer and started whining to go out, all the hounds and I headed outside. It was my normal time to wake up but about an hour late for Winston. He will whine every morning to wake me up, that's the alarm clock.

With heavy dew on the grass and thick fog, Sadie put her nose to the ground and sniffed every area where something had been in her yard the night before. She had a few spots where she held her nose there for a longer time to analyze who had been there. 

The computer was turned off from the night before. We came back in and instead of coffee and turning on the computer, I jumped into the Mini Cooper for a quick run to the town's Dairy Queen to pick up a couple of bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. I love those but don't eat them a lot. I figure a few every once in a while isn't a bad thing. I glanced at my receipt and noticed they are now charging extra for the cheese ... then don't have a photo of all 3 items with 1 price.

So I'm back to the house and before I could even think about it, I've started on the next thing on my list of collecting everything that needs to go to recycling. To cut cost of recycling, the local company has merged their business with one in Indianapolis where there is no sorting done locally. Makes it easier for customers like me, where everything is put into one large bin to be transported to Indy and they they sort from the bin. 

I've continued to be in motion all day today, up until the time I sat down to look at the blog and decided to write a post. It will be getting into the high 90's the rest of the week, so whatever I am going to do outside will have to be finished by 10am but it looks like a lot of days of rain is in the forecast. 

I've thought more about traveling, more about the hounds, looked at some trailers but not a lot and I read all comments from the past few posts I've done. I'm back to that feeling of content. I've visualized what days on the road would be like with 3 hounds. I read blogs of those people on the road and see what their days are like. I have a few ideas floating in my head right now, so we will see what happens.

Fromm dog food is one of only three dog food companies in the 48 states where all their ingredients are made in the USA. It's not readily available everywhere so it might be a challenge to keep stocked when traveling but I've switched to that food this week for the hounds. I decided to overlook the cost and the 25 mile trip to Bloomington to pick it up. I just felt with them getting older, they needed a higher quality of food although what I have been buying is rated 4/5 stars. I just liked the idea of none of their ingredients were imported.

That's the excitement for this week so far. I still have more I want to get done around here and I like spending the time away from the computer. I guess having a list might be a good thing to have after all.

Every Day is the Same

{Editor's Note: The trailer in the three photos sold today about two hours after I posted them.}

More and more I am finding each day of the week is basically about the same. As much as I hate to admit it, things are turning into a boring rut again, with very little motivation to make changes. My days are not much more than staying up later, waking up an hour later, reading blogs during my two cups of homemade Starbucks coffee in the morning and then more internet surfing than I intend, the rest of the day.

At times that bothers me.

At times I think of that type of mentality while traveling. What would I do in a location where I would become bored? Would I pack up and get ready to move to a new location? Then spend the time it would take to set up a new site? I sense some of the bloggers I follow are bored based on where they are located, but they never tell you that.

It is said that is one advantage of the RV lifestyle, if you get bored with the scenery, location etc, you just pack up an move somewhere else. That also takes time at both ends of the trip.

Even when I lived in some great areas of the USA, I remember there being times just like these. It's hard to believe you would feel this way living on the beach, Carlsbad Blvd in Carlsbad Calif and feel this way. Or out in the country between Oak Harbor Wa and Coupeville Wa on Whidbey Island, just around the corner from Fort Ebey SP, that I would have feelings of boredom. The few months I lived in Breckenridge Co, was nothing but work and skiing....so there wasn't a lot of boredom.

I have found though, this feeling has increased with aging. I'm not thrilled with it nor am I happy with myself of falling into this daily routine. I know all the standard answers. I know how I have to turn off everything and get started doing something, even anything. I know if I were to start in one room and downsize some more, that would probably get everything in motion again. I could move from room to room. Most of the downsizing has been done, with very little left to downsize. I have become so lazy recently that even the thought of going to buy groceries is an issue.

I have found nothing in my life that is stressful nor anything that is a concern, leading to this feeling. Everything is going smoothly without any problems. So I am not really sure of the lack of activity on my part.

I find it really strange at times, with all I have, all the choices I have and the freedom to do them ... that I would end up feeling this way day after day.

Today I have been looking online at trailers for sale, even the older motorhomes again. I've been reading forums, checking Craig's List and still drying to decide on a couple of trailers I've had my eye on. Still no decisions. I love those big old motorhomes, but I have nowhere to park it when it's not on the road and the fear of it being a money pit.

Trailers are for sale are everywhere. There is not a lot of difference in price compared to location. I have a couple I really like, but still undecided.

I've lost interest in watching MLB baseball, lost that last month or so. I have no interest in the NFL pre-season, even though I consider myself a football fan.

The photographs of people traveling in Washington, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico keep drawing me to traveling. Then I see Winston having trouble getting up two small steps into the house after he gets outside.

Nothing has changed in my RV decisions.

I think I'm going to take a drive in the Mini Cooper, get out of town for a few hours.

Social Media and a Smaller Internet Footprint

As I have done most of my life, going against the grain, I have found I've done some things as recently as yesterday to continue that path. In a minor way and on the internet, that is.

Google+

A few months ago, I had started a Google+ account as many here know. It allowed me to have those readers with Google+ accounts to "follow" the blog. I had added the widget to my blog layout for that option to be easier. Google+ has a really nice layout, easy to set up and use but I still didn't like having my personal information exposed ... again.

I knew you could set up privacy settings to prevent what people around the world could see. It turned out to be just like Facebook though. Google+ would make changes and not let you know. Then you would either find out through other internet media you needed to go back in and change your settings again. Or after the fact the Google+ community would let you know the process was needed.

About the time I was trying to decide whether to delete my new Google+ account I had something happen that totally ticked me off. I personally had not set up any settings to where Google+ would have control over any photograph taken by my iPhone. I don't even use "location" on my iPhone photographs. One night taking photos of Heidi's allergy skin issues, I receive an email asking me if "I wanted to share that photograph on Google+" ????

How did they know I took that photograph??

Needless to say, with 24 hours after that email ... I deleted my Google+ account.

Facebook

Facebook over the years with their changes or what they call improvements, have always did things with individual accounts and then tell you later, if they do at all. After loading 100's of photographs or in many cases where people had loaded 1,000s of photographs in their "personal accounts" ... Facebook said they could use YOUR photographs for THEIR advertising ... if they wanted to.

I thought at the time that was pretty amazing. So I deleted the photographs from my Facebook account that I did not want them to use. Probably didn't mean anything, but I did that on principal. It still irked me they were telling me over the years what they were doing. Still it is THEIR site, so they can do what they want. I understood that.

Since the inception of Facebook I had deactivated my Facebook account a couple of times but would always come back. A couple of reasons led me back. Friends would email me and tell me they enjoyed my photographs, very rare posts and it was a way to keep in touch. Another reason, I was able to collect, and read certain groups I enjoyed keeping in touch with and Facebook made that easier. Those groups were sports teams, juice diets, RVing, animal rescue, etc.

As many do I never posted when I was leaving my house, or going on trips. Why announce to the world that you were gone for so many days and my empty locked house is at your disposal??? I also never tied my Facebook with my blog. Most of the blog readers and Facebook followers were two different interests. In fact a couple of years ago I deleted every friend I had listed and only kept the groups or hobbies that I followed on my Facebook account. Then little by little friends were added.

Recently though I was thinking more and more about deleting Facebook also. As far as going back and deleting the photographs one by one before deactivating the account, I didn't do that. Although that is a must to delete your account correctly. I thought screw it, they can have those photographs on my account if they want them that bad.

Yesterday while visiting a local friend, we started discussing all of the social media that was available, what it was doing to society as a whole among other thoughts on current events. I told her I had decided that I was once again deactivating my Facebook account for a couple of reasons. I didn't like Facebook and what they were doing and plan to do. I know why they are doing it and it will amount to more $Billions$ in their bottom line. I also was doing it because I personally didn't need them anymore. She told me that she deactivated her account almost a year ago and didn't miss it.

Twitter

A year or so ago I decided to give Twitter a try, not to 'tweet' all the time and let the world know where I was or what I was going to be doing. I wanted to use Twitter to do what I was doing on Facebook ... add my groups of interest, my hobbies, my favorite sports teams, my favorite dogs ... and read their information from Twitter. I also found from the sports writers or sports groups I follow that I could click their link in their tweet and was able to read a newspaper article without having to pay for a newspaper online subscription.

For me, that's a good thing.

So over the course of a year or so I have been able to slowly add a lot of the same groups, RV travelers, hobbies and my sports info to Twitter.

It has been a good replacement for Facebook and Google+

The Internet Footprint

I understand and know there is nothing I nor you can do to eliminate our personal 'footprints' we have on the internet. I mean almost all of us blog. That means there is the same production of locations, photographs, current activities are all on our blogs. Readers can tag or approve your blog posts and send them out to the internet world via the small icons that you furnish them. Readers can download your photographs and do anything they want with them and it doesn't matter if you have your own personal watermark on them and that you even have the copyright statement on your site. They will be downloaded without your permission anyway.

Still with my blog and deleting Google+ and Facebook, my 'footprint' on the internet has been reduced in some way ... that is good enough for me.

We are past the point of having our personal information kept private. We as a society will never regain that privacy. In fact our privacy was probably lost many years before the explosion of social media but social media and the internet now make so much easier for your information to get out into the public.

Getting rid of some social media accounts also does something you don't realize ... less time on the internet ... unless you find something else online to fill that gap. So far I have not and so far I see less time on the internet.

Data Packages and Limits

Over time, with cell phones to smart phones, there has been a migration by companies to sell different programs which usually mean the more you pay the more data you are allowed. Since I never watch movies, rare if at all YouTube videos nor play games on my iPhone ... my data used has been pretty low. For years I never paid attention to it. I never ran over my limits.

Recently a couple of things happened that now leads me to track my data used, not only on my iPhone but also now on my home computer. Let me explain.

I had a cell phone with AT&T when they first came out in the 90's. I used AT&T because at that time they were the ONLY service in my rural area. They were the ONLY service that worked on the locations I would work and where we traveled. So I had built up years of service with them, getting unlimited data. When AT&T started having different plans you could choose from for different monthly fees I was able to keep my old plan and be "grandfathered" in ... keeping unlimited data. That seemed like a great deal.

Every couple of years when my contract had expired I always tried to move it to a newer and cheaper plan. I was rarely making phone calls nor receiving them. Everyone was either emailing and recently texting. Both of those were unlimited usage. Yet I was paying around $87 per month and not really doing much with my account so I always wanted to change to the cheaper plan.

Of course AT&T would rather receive $87 per month from me instead of $55 per month, so they would tell me that if I moved to a lower plan I would lose my 'grandfathered' account and would no longer have unlimited data. On the surface it didn't look like a good deal to pay for any data since I was getting for the price of my monthly service and unlimited.

I never checked my data usage so I would renew for two more years and keep paying $80+/mo not really thinking about it ... that is until last winter. Last winter I wanted that $45/mo plan I kept seeing on commercials on the football and basketball games I was watching. It had unlimited texting, calls but only 1Gb of data. How could people live with that. But I decided finally after twenty some years to check out my data usage.

I went back through the past 18 months of AT&T bills and added my data usage per month. I averaged no more than 300Mb's of data and WAY below the 1Gb that was being offered and would save me around $360 over the year. I called them back and 'downgraded' to the new plan. I hate wasting money like that.

When I changed from DSL to Satellite internet service by need, that new service came with a 15Gb limit on my home computer, and my iPad and iPhone that would be using the wireless account.

If you have even read this far and I doubt many have ... you know that I make spreadsheets for everything. Well in this case I did for my home computer data usage along with a graph. This would keep me within my 15Gb limit for the month. With Exede, unlike other companies, they do not charge you for going over the limit, they just slow your internet speed down after you go over your limit. I do have the choice to buy more Gbs if I want to keep my speed and have more Gb but so far I have not had to do that.

What it did do was find out for the first time where all the data leaks were. Exede will show me what I have used as I move through the month but only in total Gb. So I opened my Activity Monitor on my iMac utilities which shows me constantly what programs are using in data received and sent.

I bring this last part of the discussion up only because sine I started writing this blog post I saw something very interesting going on the Activity Monitor. Besides the list of individual programs that I have sorted by the highest user, there is a graph of red and blue for data received and sent. While I am sitting writing this, along with three other Google Chrome tabs open, it shows Google Chrome as the highest user with a total of 33.4Mb used since I turned my computer on this morning. Second WAS my Apple email program.

I say that because usually there is very little data being used in email unless I sent an email with attachments and I would see a bump on the graph of data sent.

While I was writing this post I glanced over at the graph on my 2nd monitor and noticed that something was maxing out the blue on the graph of data received. The problem was when I looked to see what was using that ... my email had moved to the top of the list using 335Mg or 10 times as more as my browser!!

I shut off my email program immediately.

For some strange reason Apple mail on my iMac had not downloaded all of the email from this morning. These were emails I knew had had received because they were on my iPhone. I'll check into this more after I finish here.

So anyway, just a lot of rambling. This might help some of you that have a hard time staying within your data usage limits. I didn't mean to ramble like this so I guess it will be a good record for my 'journal' if nothing else.

Not a lot going on to write about. I can feel a little humidity today. I have not decided between the two trailers I've looked at over the past few weeks. The hounds have been in their normal daily activity of sleeping.

It's been a slow Saturday.

Some Blog Rearranging & Thoughts

If you look closely you'll notice some slight changes to the blog. I guess it's a lot like rearranging furniture in a house, some people like to do it and some don't. I don't rearrange furniture anymore because I have downsized to just having enough. I do like to make changes to the blog though. I won't do anything drastic like change the template but I've changed the font and colors in the past.

Well yesterday during my cooling down period after mowing the yard while mumbling to myself, I decided to play around with the blog. I decided instead of decreasing the number of blogs on my sidebar like I had been doing, I would bring them all back from my Feedly account. At one time I had around 60 blogs I have collected over 2+ years to read. Some of them had disappeared from my roll without explanation ... just poof, were gone. I found those missing ones and brought them back to the list.

Since I had so many blogs I follow, I decide only they would be on the left sidebar. I moved my profile, the search box, email follow box to the right sidebar. I didn't know what to do about the favorite posts so I left them. I went back and forth trying to find the right colors for links and links that had been read. They still might be changed later, as well as the font type of my blog posts. I like the changes so far.

I then had two long side bars, each side of my section of posts. I had thought about changing to a 2 column blog, looked at it but didn't like the way it looked, so I kept it 3 columns and then increased the number of posts to show trying to match the length of each side bar. I know as long as my posts are never the same length, those sidebars will never match. That's ok. So a long list of good blogs I follow and some I found within the first week of my RVing interest in October 2011.

My major priority today well be get into the FJ and go buy some groceries. My dog's have plenty of food, with a new bag of Fromm's Golden dry food still unopened. In the past Sadie would have tore into that bag the first chance she got, to do her tasting test but not now ... maybe she is calming down as she ages. In the meantime as they eat well, I would tell you what I am down to in the kitchen but it might scare you. I have been eating out more this month though ... maybe that's the reason for my lack of grocery shopping.

I find it interesting that I am driving less and at times it's really hard just to go buy groceries? Is that weird?  I've driven 12 miles to the Super Walmart to buy groceries a couple of times this past week, they have a great produce selection, and each time I have returned home not buying a thing. I looked, but walked out. Interesting.

I find the news recently to be somewhat disturbing, things going on in the USA that you would never think would happen. I usually don't discuss news or politics here and no plans to in the future, but it's surprising what's happening in our country right now. To put the icing on the cake, a picture of a high school football team from a school to the west of Indianapolis, shows up on Facebook today that will take the internet by storm. The photograph has some of their team members in football uniforms standing on different parts of a black Hummer (extreme police vehicle) holding automatic weapons. It was a photograph the school/team was using to advertise the opening of their season. Hopefully they will use another photograph and that one will get pulled.

I think a picture like that tells a sad sad story about society today.

Off the soapbox .... looking at my list of trailers this morning. I have one that has lowered the price, it is about a 5 hour drive north of me through two major cities. It is all so tempting but the size of the tanks are a possible issue. Of course on the other end of the spectrum, those tanks are bigger than what I would have tent camping, so maybe they are workable. Some very high quality refurbished work has been done with a long of changes I like and the asking price is good. It has moved closer to the Camp Lite Livin Lite 13QBB trailer I have had my eye on.

I guess that is the enjoyable part .... the search. 

I was reading The Bayfield Bunch blog as I do every day, and saw that Al is already talking about their trip back to Congress AZ and set the departure date of September 27. I looked at that date and couldn't believe it was just a six weeks away. I'm finding out again just how much time is moving faster in retirement than when I worked all day. I haven't had one day during my four months of retirement where the day felt like time was crawling, whereas I remember quite a few days working you would have swore the clock had stopped moving.

Last week my long time friend and one of my college roommates from 1975, stopped by for a short visit. He had just returned from Colorado with a couple of weeks of hiking. He had a great 2012 Jeep Wrangler with some self-modifications to carry all of his gear. It looked to be a great vehicle for off roading and getting to campsites off the grid. He called me yesterday during my time after mowing the yard to just talk but also said the jeep was at the body shop and he may have totaled it last weekend NW of Indianapolis. I told him those jeeps are built like tanks and it would be awfully hard to total one.

After he told the story of his accident I began to wonder if he might be right. It has been great weather all summer in Indiana  but it had rain in the Indianapolis area on Friday, some heavy misting on Saturday and Sunday morning. Well what many forget and what happened to him ... with the rain and heavy mist, it could have brought a light coat of oil being to the surface of the highway. 

He was following a friend, going he thinks about 30mph, on a two lane country highway with no shoulder. As he moved through the first of two curves in the road, he thought he felt the rear of the jeep kinda slide and by the time he hit the second turn he was on a surface like ice. His jeep proceeded straight across the second turn, down an embankment about a 45° angle and hit a tree head on. That impact employed his air bag and sent his jeep hard into the tree behind them.

All in a matter of seconds, both his front and rear end of the jeep had heavy damage.

He is physically fine. His jeep is totally mangled, maybe not repairable. It just shows you how things can change in your life so quickly, in an instant, when you don't expect it. I remember when I was in a bad auto wreck in 2010 just how fast it happened, no time to react, and remembering nothing but hearing a loud explosion. I had been sitting at a 4-way stop on a US Highway, waiting to make a left turn heading home after work. A large Dodge Flatbed truck, with a modified huge steel bumper, pulling an empty horse trailer of horses but had a huge highway concrete machine inside the trailer ... hit me at 65-70 mph. (from police report) I don't remember anything. It happened so fast I didn't know what happened ... I was out consciously in less than a second ... but that is a whole different story.

What I am trying to say is, you never know when something bad can happen in your life .... so it's best to live each day the best you can. 

I am remembering that statement as I make my decision to leave with the hounds and not wait.