Stella Loves Temps In Teens

Light snow is forecasted for Saturday but it looked like it almost started this morning. It was nothing but heavy frost and luckily at 8am, no wind made 16° feel pretty warm. There is something Stella likes when it's below 20° because that is when she is the most energetic any time of year.

This is just left of the burn pile and behind the dead ragweed. I know exactly what has their interest. I forgot to the tell the story about Wednesday night close to 11pm. I had let the hounds outside for their last bathroom break befor going to bed. I always stand outside with them, small flashlight in hand to see where they go. Wednesday night was different. As soon as we moved to the backyard I see in the same place the hounds are in this picture, a few deer.

They immediately took off sprinting in the woods as I could hear all kinds of tree limbs either still on the trees or on the ground, breaking as they ran. Neither Sadie nor Stella knew what was going on, they just wanted to pee.

I knew from the start of this walk that both hounds would be on their own. I'd walk my pace, take pictures and they could move at their own pace and go where they wanted. They were going to get total freedom today.

Stella didn't take long to decide that today she was not going to be left behind. It has taken a long time to see her running full speed but she was this morning.

Both hounds were easy to see as their red coats stood out in the background of white heavy frost.

There will not be much planned today for outdoor activities. As weird as it sounds, in this cold weather the roads are dry and clean and  I have had the urge to take the Z4 out. It has a great heater so freezing temps will not be a problem.

Weather like this always reminds me of when I had VW bugs in the 60's and early 70's. Since they were air cooled engines, their heating system was based on the engine getting warm. Then heat from the engine would cycle through the system up to you in the front seats. By turning the knob below the front of the driver's seat you could adjust the power. A flip of a lever determined if you were going to have windshield defrost or heat in the flooring area.

Sadie was chasing something this morning along the edge of the gully.

I am guessing she disrupted a warm place for a field mouse or field mice.

Someone is not having a good start to their day this morning.

It did not take a lot of verbal commands to herd the hounds this morning. Evidently it was cold enough that they were as motivated as I was to get back inside where it was warm. Of course Heidi had us all beat and was in her normal spot, sleeping inside her sleeping bag while she waits for lunch.

The freezing cold kind of took all the motivation away for taking any photos for the rest of the afternoon. We did do another walk later in the day with only a retractable leash attached to Stella. It was warmer but still quite cold.

The more I use my new phone the better I like it, it was a good decision to upgrade even though I had no plans to until a couple of weeks ago.

Bright and sunny today but maybe snow tomorrow here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Coldest Day Yet But The Hounds Love To Walk

It was nice to see that sunshine but don't let it fool you. We were out the door before 8am and my WeatherBug app was telling me it was only 25° but was going to feel like 17°. Sadie started her 'stare down' around 7:30am from the doorway wanting to walk and started whining by 7:50am ... I knew I didn't have a choice. So I dressed as if I was going to spend all day on the ski slopes, grabbed the Nikon and took off. Only my face told me during the walk just how cold it was.

To not confuse, I have changed to writing content that goes with the photo below it, instead of switching in the middle of the post. Feels like the right thing to do, so I'll go with it. From the time Sadie had hit the field for the 3rd time since she woke up ... she was all action. There would be nothing but high paced tracking for her today.

There were a few spots where more intense research had to be done for her to identify what had been there. She can never miss anything when her radar is locked in, otherwise known as her curled tail.

Stella is just ... well Stella. She was on her own today. With the temps below 20° my jaws couldn't handle repeating "come on" to her a hundred times during this walk ... so she was on her own. I had a sneaky suspicion I would not see her on our way back and would be spending some time looking for her.

By this time Sadie's jowls were making noise to let me she was still nearby. I'm wondering if the colder temps make the scents stronger.

I was shocked to see Stella running our direction when I turned around to check on her but don't let that fool you into thinking she is going to walk with us today. I'll tell you beforehand, Sadie and I were on our own today.

As you can see Sadie was pretty oblivious to everything else going around her, and it did not matter who was or wasn't walking with us.

There was no eating this morning just pressing her nose into the ground a little harder and you can tell by those folds in her forehead she is doing a lot of analyzing about what she has found.

Who knows, maybe all the 'natural protein' Stella has eaten over the past 8-10 months has helped her regain all of the weight she had lost early last year.

By this time my exposed face is frozen. Watery eyes made it hard to see through the camera's view finder and the freezing wind had really picked up coming out of the NW instead of our normal SW direction. Everything else I had worn was keeping me toasty warm. The ski gloves were pulled out this morning for the first time this winter.

I am not sure what is going on with my pictures this morning, with being a little out of focus at times. It's hard to imagine that my hands are that unsteady when I hold the camera. Anyway, you can see the sun had not been up that long this morning when we took the first walk of the day.

Sadie continued her torrid pace exploring as much of the field as possible.

Just as I expected, as I passed the first corner on my way back ... Stella was nowhere to be seen. Based on the part of the woods she walked out of the other day I decided I would walk into the woods in the same spot.

As you can see as I looked down into the gully, looking left and right ... no sign of any red bloodhound. How can she disappear just like that and not be seen?

I still continued to yell her name, thinking I would see her moving among the trees and along that big bank of dead leaves. But ... nothing.

As I was walking back out into the field, there she was acting as if she had never gone anywhere and was there the whole time. Once she saw me, she started wagging her tail and trotted toward the house with Sadie following. I'm glad it was only a few minutes before she showed up. It was too cold just to leave her outside alone.

When we came back inside I wasn't sure that Heidi was even going to get up for lunch. This is her way of beating the winter cold. She set's all time records in that position for never moving. For some reason this year, she has moved from the bed to the couch for her all-day sleeping marathons.

All it took was a few hours to pass and hearing Stella howling for lunch, that she raised her head, jumped off the couch and came sprinting to spot I set her dish of kibble. She posed for the second day in a row for the new phone camera but didn't stay out long in the temps like they are today.

I am reading online today on how to take the best iPhone 8 Plus photos. That research covers improving the texture of a photo like the one above or the zoom photos I have tried to take. I have a feeling it is more user error than anything.

Stella wanted me to ask, if you were to look into those eyes would you even imagine that I can destroy a room if left too long along with Sadie or that I can disappear in a matter of seconds and never seen nor heard?

This is the normal position for Sadie and Stella every night whether I am on the couch or not.

There were two things I wanted to get accomplished today. I wanted to find a way where my Garmin VivoSmart 3 would synchronize with the  new phone. I had tried every suggestion on the internet, Garmin forum, Apple forum and MacRumors forum without any success. I was about to write it off as a lost cause and forget about it.

Then I decided I could see the same information the watch collected during the day and downloaded into Google Connect on the phone or to Garmin Express on my computer. Evidently months ago when I stopped using the Express I deleted it and today I had to reinstall the program. That put me in a mode to reload my Garmin VivoSmart2 as if it was a new device.

As expected all of the data automatically downloaded to my computer as soon as the watch was recognized. Out of curiosity I picked up the phone and tapped the Garmin Connect icon and within seconds it dowloaded all the data as if the watch had never been disconnected.

So the first goal of the day was reached.

I am now at the stage of wanting to know more on how to take better photos with the phone, so while the wind is howling freezing air outside I am inside searching and reading information where I can tweak the zoomed photos to make them better, etc. I did find out that Apple uses a file named .heic instead of .jpg for photos taken after their iOS11 update.

Same quality but that .heic format will take up less space to store your photos. For those of you that have Apple phones and Windows PC computers, you will have to get a free converter downloaded so you can work with your photos taken with an Apple phone.

I did find out I was using the zoom wrong and the reason a lot of my zoomed photos were blurry.

We ended the freezing day with a walk a little after 3pm without the phone or Nikon. It wasn't any warmer this afternoon than it was early this morning. It might be time for a short siesta like the hounds take every afternoon.

Another week is about over here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heidi's Cold Weather

Today we had windchill below 20° ... so Heidi moved into her deep winter mode to beat the freezing temps.

Heide Checks The Weather

The needle on the old thermometer may have been close to 40° but it didn't feel anything like that. Windchill was in the low 30's. Still, right after lunch Heidi thought she would give me her first pose with the new iPhone camera. She doesn't pose like this too often but she seemed happy doing it ... or maybe she was just cold?

While doing some laundry and cooking tonight's dinner, I continued to read more and play again about the new iPhone 8 Plus. This phone probably does more than I will ever get around to trying or using. I cannot say at this time I am happy with the photos that I zoomed at 10x but that might have to do more with my shaking hands than the camera itself.

Yes, it looks unstable as hell, about to fall over, but it doesn't move an inch in either direction. Years ago I had it straight as an arrow, planted in some solid concrete and ir would have lasted for decades. The the Indiana State Hwy Dept decided the highway needed to be dug out and new asphalt applied with new shoulders at every mailbox for mail carriers to use when delivering mail.

That meant they dug up my mail box and moved it to the current location, no concrete was used. Consequently after 10 years or so, I have a leaning mailbox. That is probably caused by the soil sinking, just to the right of it.

My idea of picking up sticks while the hounds were outside after lunch lasted all but 5 minutes. It was too cold with the wind blowing and I lost interest fast. Heidi lost hers to stay outside and beat me back to the door. She has been asleep under her blankets every sense.

After the laundry was put in the dryer and the stove looked like it wouldn't burn the house down while cooking dinner, we thought we'd give this new toy another chance on our afternoon walk. Sadie is always ready for a walk while Stella quietly agreed.

I've mentioned before that for the past 9 years and a  few months, Sadie hops up and down on two occasions every day of the year and year after year. Those two events are being fed kibble and going for walks. This is the best I can do catching her in that hopping up and down action.

It might look warm in that picture with the sunshine out but it's nowhere close to jacket weather nor t-shirt weather.

The phone does not have 'macro' capability but I wanted to see what it would do if I held it pretty close to the target of the photo.

Again, I did not do any editing to color, sharpness, definition etc ... but I did crop some of the photos.

I am down to one problem that might not have a solution yet. After the phone was all set up and fully operational, my Garmin VivoSmart 3 would not connect. That meant not only would it not download my activity, sleep hours and heart rate throughout the day to the phone but also to the other devices I have with that app.

I went to Apple Support and read. I went to Garmin Support and read about that model of watch and it seems connecting by bluetooth became a bigger problem than normal, after Apple did their iOS 11 update. I was one of the lucky ones when I was able to connect it to my 6s after that update. Garmin says they are working on a fix.

I forgot to mention this morning some of the other benefits I've seen in the short time of using this phone. My signal strength went from 3-4 bars to a solid 5 bars all the time with the same Verizon service. I had a call last night from a friend that was doing her walking for exercise while talking to me through her phone's mic ... the call was so strong and clear you would have thought she was in the same room ... much different that past calls.

I mentioned the A11 chip makes everything lightning fast and most of the time close to instantaneous. The battery life is so much better than the 6s I had. I've had it on since early this morning, have taken a lot of photos, surfed the internet, answered emails and I have used only 7% of the battery at 5:00pm.

My journal project is progressing okay. I am in the stage now of scanning old photos that I took during that trip and will upload them into my Pages document once the scanning is complete. I still like the idea of using a page on this blog because I like the formats of blogs more than I do documents. I am probably missing something in all the design options I would have keeping it in Apple Pages.

I thought the position of the clouds were interesting in this picture.  Once again, any blurriness is from my hands moving, not the camera.

It was about this spot right here that Sadie would do what Stella does ... ignore my calling of her name.

So I continued my walk home when she finally realized I was serious and wasn't going to stop. No zooming here, just trying to keep her in the center of the photos.

That gave her a workout for the day and to keep her in shape this winter.

Stella saws us walking past her so she caught up with Sadie and escorted me back to the house. On a day like today they both wanted to make sure I was around to let them back inside a warm house.

Another successful walk for the afternoon, the 2nd of the day and probably the last one due to me being a whiner when it comes to freezing weather. Cold weather makes me want to drink coffee in the late afternoon so I may pay tonight for the 12 oz of coffee I had this afternoon.

I guess if I can post one selfie I can do another. This was the very first picture I took with the new phone. I had just pulled into the parking space at Mother Bear's Pizza. I was honestly shocked at the quality of this photo and how real it looked.

On to more reading, researching plus scanning photos for the journal ... and a few games of Mahjong fit in between while I am on break.

How soon will the snow start flying here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana?