Stella Was Running Full Speed Today

Stella continues to get better. She did a lot of running this morning, some at high-speed. Plus when there is food around, she wants it, even if it's mine.

With the high winds and the cool temperatures yesterday, nothing was done outside. So as I sat at my kitchen table playing a lot of Mahjong and reading some books I noticed the water level across the highway was increasing, just like they forecasted. These next two pictures were taken a little after 1pm on Monday.

It makes you wonder if the owner on the left knew something we didn't, thus had not done any plowing to prepare to plant his field. I do not live near a river, only a small creek. Also, this is not the worse flooding I've seen since living here.

By this morning you can see that the water kept rising over night. It will take a lot of time before that field is dried out enough to run heavy farm equipment through there.

Like I said yesterday, a few years ago they installed some of the largest drainage pipe across that field in the same are the water is flooding this morning. There is more water farther right of the picture behind the neighbor's property. I wonder how much money was lost with the crop under water?

With plans of waiting for the sunshine to dry out the yard enough to mow this afternoon, we still had time to do our morning walk. Actually the grass and ground were dry as we walked. I'm not sure where the sunshine is and there is a long way to go to increase the temps 20° to get to the forecasted 65° today. That's Sadie deep in the growing grass.

Stella started her walk with a slow trot, then concerned me as she veered to the left and started to jog away from my direction. I had two hounds going two different directions. I had a feeling the walk was going to be a little more challenging for me, than the normal routine.

When I called out to Stella "over here", she abruptly turned to her right and started heading to the path I was on. In the meantime Sadie decided that she would be the one hanging back today. I did not even want to look at what she might be eating.

It was rare to see Stella out in front of the walk with no Sadie.

Sadie wasn't around because she was this far behind us. While I turned to follow Stella, the sky looked too gray and the feeling of rain was there but hard to imagine. There were just a couple of spots on radar that rain looked possible within hundreds of miles and I was under one of them.

As always Sadie came running to catch up with me. She rarely if ever has let me get out of her eye sight. Except when she has chased deer, then it does not matter where I may or may not be.

She ran right past me and headed toward the corner in back. I wasn't sure what her plan was today, nor Stella's ... I just kept walking and figure they would decide when and where they were going.

I am hoping to seeing Stella's ribs disappear and I wonder if it is too soon to believe that picture of her.

With storm clouds blowing south of us in a easterly direction, it was good to see blue sky and sunshine trying it's hardest to poke through the clouds. I have a feeling though, today is going to be a day of a lot of overcast sky and I may be mowing the yard later today while wearing a jacket or a thermal shirt under a sweatshirt.

This were going pretty normal at this time. Both hounds were in view. Nothing out of the ordinary was expected. I saw nothing in any direction that would cause the hounds to run away from me. What I forget sometimes, is that it's their nose and not their eyes determine where they go.

So I have to admit I had mixed emotions when I saw Sadie taking off in a sprint toward the neighbor's wooded area. There was nothing there I could see that would make her do that. The good thing was Stella took off after her running full-speed to catch up with Sadie.

These next few pictures are zoomed and a little blurry but show how fast she was running.

Whatever it was, they were not going to stop. I had to tuck my camera in my hand and take off running after them. We were not quite to the wooded area. They both turned to trot toward me once they saw I was getting close. Maybe they were wanting me to get some exercise because the rest of the walk ... they both walked to my side only a few feet away, like nothing happened.

I tried to get ahead of them for a final picture to end the walk. They both finished their walk with a fast sprint.

It's good to see Stella getting some fast paced running in this morning. The lump on her left ischium is gone and was not evident on Monday. She is back to hogging space on the couch while she sleeps. She moves Sadie out of the way to get closer to me begging for my food. She is howling even louder for her breakfast and lunch. All good signs that she is feeling better.

Nothing planned this morning except wait to mow the lawn this afternoon. I might post some later tonight if I have any more pictures. I'd like to move back to posting once per day at the end of the afternoon.

Cool and windy in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Hounds Glad Storms Are Gone

I was warned the next storm coming our way Saturday night into Sunday, was going to be non-stop rain and the bite might be worse than the bark this time around. She was right ... it started to rain and never stopped.

Like I said on Saturday, before all of this rain showed up, I know for a fact that my gutters were clear and clean because I was on the roof cleaning them just a couple of weeks ago as I do every spring and fall.

When it's raining so much so fast, it has nowhere else to go than over the side of the gutter when it's full to capacity.

Luckily for the hounds, there were a few times where the rain lightened up enough that they would go as far as the yard and this one time the rain stopped completely. Yet with all the wet grass, they didn't go any further than this on Sunday. I doubt there are many pictures like this throughout the world of blogs ... LOL

By 9:00am this morning, the water in both fields kept rising. A few years ago they installed some of the largest drainage system I'd seen across their field ... right at the point of where this water is standing.

The winds were stronger than normal, it wasn't to 60° yet and the ground was over saturated but Sadie had to get out of the house. One day inside is one day too many for her. As I walked along the path with a little standing water, she took off.

Stella was showing some high energy this morning too. She was out as far as Sadie was but only to the left of the path looking for that same spot she wouldn't leave last week. Most likely that spot had been washed away. With all the rain it looks like the field grew a lot this weekend.

Once Stella hit the first turn she took off running for the far right corner. The few pictures I was able to take of her running turned out too blurry to post. With the winds blowing strong from the SW, I'm sure deer scent from the gully was filling up her nose.

In the meantime Sadie had locked on to something at the top of the gully before the turn that Stella was running past. The camera did not capture all of the movement she was doing, being quite agitated.

I had to call her name to get her to move. It's rare when I have to do that with Sadie.

By the time I had reached the back of the field, Stella had already trotted along the outside edge of the field across the far right corner and was headed down the backside of the field. She was sure that deer had crossed in that area.

Evidently the rains had washed away all the old scents, if that is possible, because both hounds were excited about what they were capturing with their noses. They were rarely together on this walk.

It's good to see Stella back to running. Each day she gets closer and closer to her old self. I'm anxious to see if her lost weight will also come back.

Looking at the clouds south of us during the walk it looked like it was going to rain here but the winds were blowing the clouds toward the east, the direction of this picture. With a little bit of sun and a lot of wind, I'll be mowing my yard by tomorrow afternoon.

I turned around to check on the hounds as I walked and both of them were dying to change course and head to the neighbor's wooded area. With a bribe where I named some food, they both turned and started running toward me. They were happy with what they got once they were inside.

The Monday has started off pretty fast after being cooped up in the house all weekend, even for me. By 10:30am we had been on our first hound walk, I had bought 80# of dog food and filled my own depleting food supply. Not bad since it was a 25 mile round trip to pick up groceries.

A couple of interesting computer / internet findings.

I was expecting to start the day with my first day of HughesNet counting my data. They gave me free data for the first 20 days after activating my account. Even though my installation was around 2pm that day, I figured my data clock would have started just after midnight.

I was wrong. Looking at their system data counter that I have access to with my account, they will not start counting my data until the exact time the installer called to activate the account, right down to the minute.

After twenty days I am still just as happy with my change from Exede to HughesNet Satellite Internet. It is just as fast at first day (48Mbps) and only lost it's signal one time over the weekend for less than a minute ... when the storms made the electrical power to my house flash off and on.

The other information computer topics is kinda strange. I almost added it to my blog post on Saturday but thought I'd wait to see if time cured it. Google has come out with a new log in screen and it worked perfect on my newer MacBook Air laptop but it didn't show up on my older iMac.

Not only that, but the way my blog was treated by the two different computers made it more weird. On the newer laptop that was showing the new Google login page, it would also keep me logged into my blog if I turned off Chrome. Google Chrome on the older iMac did not.

It acted like this for 3-4 days.

On my older iMac If I only turned off Google Chrome but left my computer on, I'd have to log back into my blog when Google Chrome was started again. At the same exact time when I restarted Google Chrome on my laptop and went to my blog, I was still logged in.

My only guess is that my computers were logged into Google Chrome on different Google servers and one of those servers did not have the update for the new log in page until 3-4 days later. Now, even after shutting off the computer for the night, I am still logged into my blog when it's restarted.

Stella is howling, Heidi is barking ... both letting me know I am late for pouring out their lunch kibble, so I have to go. They can keep time pretty well, even when it's Daylight Savings time.

Cooler, windy but no rain here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Sadie Fits In A Walk Between Storms

Once Sadie saw sunshine outside she thought she had a chance but we needed to go outside and take a few steps into the field just to see how wet the ground was. It looked and felt dry enough, although wet, that we could get a walk in today.

By the time I walked inside to grab the camera and came back outside, Stella was already starting the walk and was out in the middle of the field before the first turn, ready to go.

It was an afternoon of exploration. No trotting, no running and no jogging from either hound, including me. I have felt the field being wetter in the early morning dew last week than it was now. Hard to believe it had rained the the last 20 hours off and on. Yet it is nice and hot this afternoon.

Sadie was thrilled we were outside. It doesn't take much for her to get cabin fever when she cannot get outside a hundred different times a day. At least it seems that many from my doorman experience.

Stella's ischium is back to being the same size as her right one. I have to think that swelling over the weekend through Wednesday, had to be rabies shot related. She enjoyed her back rub with the rubber hound mitt that collected a small amount of shedding hair.

Not nearly all but along the edges of the field where the hounds walk, the grass seems to be getting taller by the hour. It will not be long before I'll have hard time seeing the hounds while they walk with their noses to the ground.

After hanging out left of us for most of the walk I was a little surprised that Stella slowly walked in Sadie's direction near the far right corner. I didn't have to call her by name thing but later on she turned on her stubborn feature and made the walk a little longer than planned.

Even with distance between them, still no trotting today by Stella.

She followed the edge of the field behind me and Sadie all the way up to the last turn. We had to wait on her to catch up, as she was in the ultra slow pace this afternoon. Maybe too soon after her afternoon nap.

I had walked quite a while not really paying attention to where she was. With Sadie right next to me I just figured that Stella was slowly walking behind me. When I turned to check on her, she was nowhere near behind me !!!! She was barely visible just on top of the small ridge of the field toward the north woods. It took my 200mm zoom lens just to look this close to her.

I called a few times and she never moved. I took this from a long ways away so I had no choice but to start walking her direction. She still did not move as I approached her. Then once I was about 10' from her, she raised her head and slowly walked toward me with not a care in the world.

So an unexpected walk was fit in the schedule today thanks to the actual weather compared to the forecasted weather last night. I have a feeling though that Sadie will still want another one later. We might do one without the camera but will have to see.

I still have the urge for some reason to go to Best Buy. There must be something over their that needs my money but I don't know what that would be besides some printer ink. Walmart is closer but they only have the box of three colors for $14 more than the same box at Best Buy. I don't need all three colors, I am not even close to being low on the other two colors besides cyan.

I do not need any computer stuff, no camera stuff so I can't figure out why I can't get that trip out of my head. The Epson scanner that scans negatives and slides in addition to pictures, does interest me quite a bit but I am not sure I am in the mood to jump right in scanning pictures or slides if it were sitting on my desk.

I guess the best way to sum up this afternoon is like when you are hungry but do know know what you want to eat.

Dr. Jeff's vet show on tv tonight may turned out to be the highlight of the evening here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Storms Were More Bark Than Bite

The storms last night ended up barking more than it bit. The radar showed it could be a bad one but we ended up with a .8" of rain. It sounds like everything was once again, north or south of us.

I guess it was fortunate a few years ago the farmers installed some huge drainage pipes across the low part of their field. Basically from left to right across the middle of the picture. The local tv weatherman said last night the rain coming down at a rate of 9" per hour.

This is what happens when your gutters are clear and cleaned but there is more rain than gutter space available.

The space below that overflowing gutter caught all of the excess and more.

By this morning with a night full of storms, it had been absorbed into the ground.

All three hounds did take their first walks of the day while I poured their breakfast kibble. Based on the the wet fur on top of them, they did venture out into the rain to dump their tanks. A few hours later they both went back outside to check the chances of a morning walk.

They called it off and came back to stand inside the carport looking to see how long this misery was going to last.

Even though I had cleaned the gutters just a few weeks ago, preparing for the spring rains that had not come yet, I saw this within minutes of the Friday night storms.

I knew exactly what the problem was and it would be an easy fix as long as it would stop raining long enough for me to reach over the gutter and remove some of whatever it was blocking the wire mesh that blocks every thing but water at the downspout.

It couldn't have been leaves, maybe a twig but by the way this looked it had to be wet leaves??

The rain did not complete stop but it slowed enough for me to pull out the 3-step ladder and reach up into the gutter near the downspout to feel liquid mud. I didn't look to see what it was but moved it around out of eyesight range enough to unblock the plug and instantly hear a large amount of water flowing into the downspout.

Supposedly these storms are going to continue through the weekend and into Monday. Of course living in Indiana, those forecasts can change every hour, so Sadie's day may turn out okay after all.

Let's just say that she has not been a happy camper this morning. Stella has been the perfect bloodhound during last night storms. With a warning when I picked her up that she hated thunder and lightning, once again she has not shown any of that fear or anxiety.

There was a lot of loud thunder and a lot of bright lightning all through the night ... but to me that is just perfect sleeping weather. The new HughesNet Gen5 only lost signal once and that was when the house power flashed off and on Friday night. Soon after that computer rebooted and the signal was found, that speed was still at 48Mbsp.

I had a huge urge to drive to the local Best Buy store 25 miles away yesterday. I got the hounds ready for my departure, changed some clothes for me, grabbed the keys and was about a step from the door ... when I changed my mind. I couldn't believe I didn't feel like spending money in a place like that.

After more internet research I have found that my Epson NX420 printer/scanner does not print temporarily in black if one of the color inks are low or out, as advertised. I still do as much as I can digital and even have my auto insurance cards in my iPhone instead of a printout but I would still like a hard copy of my 2016 Federal and State Taxes just for a piece of mind.

Strange how that works. Never in my life have I ever needed a printout of my taxes but still think I need to print a copy out for my files. Sure the computer could break at any moment but I have everything backed up on an external drive and a different laptop to connect to if I lost the services of my iMac.

So, why do I need a hard copy of taxes?

I did find a nice Epson scanner, at a good price, in stock that not only scans documents and photos but 35mm negatives, 110 negatives and slides of each size. I have thousands of those slides and negatives if I add up all the different kinds.

Sometime I would like to make a digital copy of my 1976 Cross Country bicycle trip journal along with the pictures I took. Some of those are hard copy photos and others are negatives.

I have a lot of great 35mm slides taken over two decades but only a few were processed into pictures.

So once again today I have the urge for a roadtrip to Best Buy to pick up that scanner, plus buy the Epson #124 or #125 Cyan ink cartridge, so I can print in black only ... that would also get out of the house. I need to get a life sometime as others have told me.  LOL

Well the sun is trying to break through the skies. Wunderground shows all of that 100% chance of rain has dropped to 25% until midnight. Sadie does not know it yet but a walk MIGHT be possible later this afternoon as long as it does not rain this afternoon.

Changed the roadtrip plans to Rounds 4-7 of the NFL draft here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Hounds Prepare For Rain

I could tell after lunch that not much of anything would be done this afternoon, hounds included. The occupants of this house barely had a pulse.

Even though it was not raining Heidi heard the forecast and walked out to the front yard just long enough to dump her tanks. She took her bad weather path behind the Yews, climbed the three steps up to the porch and then jumped into the front yard. She came back the same way, only walking around the porch to get behind the Yews.

Sadie and Stella didn't get any further than this before they came back to the house to go inside. That's really strange for them as they are usually trying to talk me into a walk after lunch.

As much time as they have spent in this area the past 24 hours, I suspect the big blonde cat has paid us a visit sometime in the pre-dawn hours.

The house got so quiet this afternoon you could hear a pin drop. Instead of that, all I heard was constant ringing in my years. The hounds were in such a dream state of sleep, none of them were snoring.

While sitting at the kitchen table playing some Mahjong on my laptop, this piece of machinery drove by the house and made a right hand turn onto that one lane of gravel I was on last week. I have no idea what they are spraying. Since it's wild mustard and they have plans to plant there, my wild guess is that it is weed killer.

Or maybe they are spraying fertilizer before they plow them under????

Just like Heidi, they went back the way they came. I was so lazy I did not even get outside to take this. It's shot it through the kitchen window as I sat at the kitchen table.

It was one lazy afternoon. I heard the sound of thunder after we returned from our afternoon walk without the camera. It seemed like the perfect time to crack open a window in cool weather and take a siesta.

No plans for the weekend, except a 100% chance of a lot of rain here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.