Retirement Life Is Easy !!!

I can get use to this great weather very easily. Just like retirement, it's another great day not to jump in that line of traffic 'flying' by the driveway and join them for another day at work. That is probably one thing I have never gotten tired of as I approach my 5th year ... FREEDOM !!! It is so much different to wake and start your day not having to follow a schedule. I can do what I want like the hounds do. Heidi and Stella basically dictate most of my schedule.

Even though the weather was great this morning for Stella and I on the walk, Heidi needed some extra sleep time. She did get up like we all do, had her breakfast kibble and then went back to bed. She likes to scratch the sleeping bag and blankets into the perfect spot before circling three times and laying down. She slept late today because I was up too late last night (2:36am) changing and fine tuning the blog.

I also found out this morning that the actual time on the clock isn't what dictates what Stella wants, such as her walk ... it is based on when she wakes up, and has her breakfast. For example, this morning we didn't start the day until 7:52am, much later than normal. So with her walk set to take place eight minutes after she woke up .... instead she went in the dark bedroom to sleep on the floor right after her breakfast (normal routine) ... an hour later she woke up, drank water to let me know to prepare for our walk.

Starting with this photo here I clicked on the screen in back of the camera to take the photos instead of using my view finder. Three reasons for that. One, I wanted to find out if my hands were really shaking during these morning photos that seem just a tad blurry to me. I wanted to see how hard it might be, since I have rarely taking photos like that. I will discuss the 3rd reason Friday or Saturday. :)

I was surprised actually how well the photos turned out with me not using the view finder. I also found out my hands are not shaking when taking the photos BUT when I pushed the shutter I noticed a few times that I was pushing in a way that my camera would tilt just a little to the lower left. It made me also wonder if my head against the view finder was a factor in moving the camera ever so slightly.

I have also been wondering if Stella's supplement, the VetriScience GlycoFlex Plus, was working or not. She is into her second bag. This morning I found out that the supplement really was working. She was running fast enough that at times I couldn't raise my camera fast enough to catch her running. By the end of the walk as she stepped into the yard, she ran and jumped into me wanting to play like she use to do with Sadie. We wrestled for a short time but there was no way I could take a photo of her with any kind of camera.

Stella was in what I call her tracking mood this morning. She spent a lot of time on the move with her nose to the ground. I let her go on her own and followed her after we made that turn at the corner of the woods.

I soon found out that she was going to lead me diagonally across the field. I had a hard time keeping up with her and for a few seconds I thought she might take off on me and head to the woods to the north. She did that a few years ago and I eventually found her in the woods. Sadie would always find her before I would.

With the 200mm zoom I was able to find her in the tall grass.

You can barely make out the worn path ahead of her made by deer traffic.

As she lagged behind me on the return path home, as I turned to get my camera ready to hopefully take a photo of her running ... she was already passing me on a full-speed run.

It was up to her whether we take the path that ends up at the north property pole by the yard, or take a left and follow the old path used for 20 years back to the house. This morning she headed left ... the scent was just too strong for her to pass up.

Verbal herding was needed here. Then some louder tone to let her know I wasn't a happy camper when she ignored me. She lifted her head to stare at me as if I was crazy, then slowly walked home.

Tuesday afternoon I decided to use only my iPhone 8+ camera. It does well with low light, close-ups and the 2x zoom ... but nothing more than that. I thought I took more photos than these two but college football must have shaded my memory from yesterday. Neither of these photos were edited in any way, straight from the iPhone.

I will be fine tuning the look of the blog today. Barney was nice enough to give me some feedback about the font color, something I wasn't keen on either. I fixed that but there are a few other things I want to fix that will require me to read to find my answer or use the free WordPress chat where their techie will give me the correct answer within minutes.

My priority is finding a way that all of the thumbnail photos on the home page are all the same size. When I inspected the element of the home page it shows the correct size is 200x200. So I have to find a way that any photo I add as a feature photo will be that size. In writing that I just figured out what I need to do, to make that happen.

My brain is on fire today with correct answers ... maybe it's the new year eh?

I signed up for and get the notices from USPS telling me the mail they are delivering that day or within the next few days. It makes a world of difference because in past years I knew I was losing some mail because I was getting too much mail in my mailbox belonging to my neighbors.

Today USPS is reminding me that society thinks I am old. I see the four pieces of mail I am getting today are for hearing aids, life insurance, funeral insurance and joint supplements. All will be thrown into the recycling bin after I take my name and mailing address off.

Since synchronizing my Garmin Connect app with the food MyFitnessPal app ... the food app is now adjusting how many calories I am allowed to eat, plus or minus my 1500 that I manually entered ... if I am not getting the amount of exercise that it believes I should be getting, based on previous activity ... it subtracts a certain number of calories from the 1500 for that day.

Some are reading this and saying "I don't count calories" or "That is not needed" ... but in my case it is. When I don't track the food that I am eating and counting calories I GAIN WEIGHT FASTER THAN EVER !! Plus it's like playing with spreadsheets I guess, in a sick way.

I still have the big urge for pizza and ice cream ... will I "fall off the wagon today?"

I just remembered since the font is now 'bone white' ... I will need to figure out how to change the color of a 'link' so when I do add links into my post you will be able to see them BEFORE you hover your cursor over them.

Well we are a little behind in our normal routine today ... the hounds are still sleeping and not howling or barking for lunch. Based on what I have seen so far, they will not want lunch until around 12:30pm local time, about an hour or so after their normal request.

I TRIED WATCHING SOME TV NEWS THIS MORNING ... 'tried' is the keyword there. By the time it took me to walk from my computer in a different room to the tv remote in the living room I turned it off mumbling to myself "I'm not going to waste my time with that shit."  (noticed how I tucked that period inside the quotation mark)  LOL

Well busy day ahead today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

I Know I Know I Know

Some people say "never say never" ... I need to be one of those people. That saying is perfect for someone who changes their mind a lot, like I do. So ... YES THE BLOG DESIGN HAS CHANGED YET AGAIN!!! I put out a warning the other day that there might be some small changes ... but nothing like this !! While it's almost 2am and the hounds are in a deep sleep, let me explain the why and how.

The all white background I had been using was just too bright for me. When I added a slight bit of color, it didn't look right. Then the more I looked at the theme I was using, the more I didn't like it. (At least today) So before the ballgames started at noon on Tuesday I started playing around a little with some small changes and the same design.

After watching the Rose Bowl, I decided to 'get serious' about making some BIG changes to the way the blog looked. Maybe this idea also started when I changed my computer settings back to the 'dark mode' and also went into Firefox settings to change their theme to the 'dark mode.' It's easier on the eyes for the amount of time I spend in front of this computer.

Using the same design that I had for the past week, I made the background black but the post background was white and that clashed too much with the black background I wanted. I could have changed the white background by adding some CSS code but even if I did that, I still did not like that design.

I thought I had found a pretty good theme (template), with page wide images and the columns of old posts on the front page but I ran into the same problem ... the background of the post was white and that is not what I wanted. I wanted the page to be black or dark gray, completely around my photos

I have always known that photos look better against a black or dark gray background. Why would Apple changed their Photos program a few years ago to that same idea? Or when I would look at other blogs that had a black background, their photos looked really good. They stood out with the darker background surrounding them, compared to a light or white background.

So I thought I had it ... but again, I would have had to find some code or get the code from the WordPress CSS forums to change the white background.

I kept looking through templates.


I set three requirements in the WordPress theme search ... (1) Style: Clean (2) page wide images (3) Background: Black

Then I saw it. I clicked on a theme I had used two weeks ago based on the notes I had written in my 5x8 notebook next to my keyboard. It had everything I wanted. LARGE PHOTOS, a 'footer' sidebar and a front page that would show past post in date order, newest on down, with the date or time I had written the post.

I grabbed my iPhone and iPad Mini to see what the new design would look like. It looked great on each. There was one adjustment I had to do with the header image. I had to hide it and go with the plain color header because on the phone, the title could not be seen and there was a menu bar cutting right through the middle of the picture. Besides, a header image is too small on a phone to see it.

I might have to lighten this font color for the blog post. As promised I did keep the font the same as the previous two weeks. I had a few people let me know that it was easier to read, after I changed it. The fonts are the exact same font and the same size as before.

I will have to live with the three columns of past posts on the front page not being exactly even due to the slight difference in the size of the photos. I also have to insert a space between each photo where I have listed them one after another, without content.

I can live with both of those differences to have the most important stuff.

IF you have problems reading the blog or just don't like it ... let me know and tell me what device you use to read the blog. IE: phone, tablet or computer.

That was my thought process for changing the blog. I have always thought since the blog seemed to be about the hounds more than anything else, that the photos needed to be the main focus and they needed to be large for me and the readers that use computers.

In the meantime I am headed for bed. It's 2:32am and I need to get a few hours of sleep before Stella, then Heidi wake me up to serve them breakfast. Since retirement I have never used an alarm clock to get up, but why would I need one since the hounds always whine loud enough to wake me up.

It's been a good weekend of football in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds March Into 2019

For someone that proclaims they are a 'night person' it was somewhat disappointing to find myself asleep before midnight. It was a sprint right after the last football game on tv to close the house down for the day, brush the fangs and head to bed. I had less than an hour to wait for the midnight hour and could not do it. Older or did the tv pictures of rain in Manhattan NY dampen my enthusiasm to bring in the new year? The hounds? ... they had been sleeping for hours.

This morning wasn't summer like yesterday, 62° ... but I am not going to complain with temps in the 40's. The 10-day forecast shows 40's to be the highs. I'll take that here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana during January. There are times I am just not into the white "Winter Wonderland" stuff, if you know what I mean.

Stella and I had some minor changes this morning to start the new year. For once she didn't lag behind much, spending most of her time out in front of me making it hard to take some photos from a different angle than I took most of time in 2018. I made a slight adjustment to my camera on this walk, right after the above photo

I turned on the auto-flash and really like the results since the morning around the 8am time frame has been dark and overcast. I did a little editing in Apple Photos but I like them much better than the normal early morning photos we take. I left the flash on for the rest of the walk, all the way back to the door.

I was reading Bedlam Farm this morning and Jon had an interesting post about how he stopped his Boston Terrier from eating gobs of crap in their barnyard. I am to the point of trying the can of "Pet Correcter" where I can either buy it online for delivery or take a trip to Bloomington's Pet Smart and bring it home immediately.

He didn't show a lot about how it worked in his short video but his blog article explained the process here. It sounds encouraging ... only took him thee days ... yet, bloodhounds are very very stubborn, so I might use the whole can and still not get positive results.

From the time I got up this morning throughout the walk, I have never heard a day quieter than this morning. People must have celebrated a ton last night and are trying to recover because after three hours or so of being awake, I have heard or seen less than five cars pass by on the highway. It's like the Twilight Zone here today.

My HughesNet Gen 5 internet speeds have mysteriously moved back to their normal speeds of 45Mbps on the download. That is so much different than 2-3Mbps I had last week when I called them. Yet I have been having a 'data leak' somewhere. I have been using over a gig of data per day where I usually top out at 700Mb per day, but many days less than that. Granted I have spent a lot of time changing the blog design recently, or changing browsers between Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox. Those automatic updates to the browsers are killers on data but needed.

Then again, all of that data usage may be caused by where my I am most of the time when the weather turned wet or colder. Plopped right in front of my computer ...

I mentioned the other day I was going back to Microsoft Excel. My 2011 version of Office was not going to work with the latest Apple OS update, plus Microsoft had stopped with their security updates. I did play around with the Excel charts I had on file, remembering how easy they were to work with ... when I found a surprise.

When I went back to Apple Numbers, using the same right clicks on my trackpad, I was finding similar menus and options that I had on Excel. Within minutes I had updated new charts on my 2019 spreadsheets. Not many of my spreadsheets have charts but I found these charts to be a motivation feature a few years back when I was paying off debt ... now used showing my savings.

It's been a few days since I started my new Facebook account. While I was checking the website on my iPhone last night during the commercials of the football game, I had a notification that an old friend from the past had sent me a Facebook Message. Facebook prevented me from reading that message UNLESS I downloaded their messenger app ... which I will never do.

I don't even download the Facebook app on my phones or tablets. That is giving them the keys to my personal data in more ways than just surfing the internet. I type in their URL on my tablet and phone, using their website to see my account instead of their app. For convenience I was awfully close to clicking the buttons they provided before I caught myself. Does that really make a difference? App or no app?

Last night on FS1 when they were doing a pre-game advertisement for the Northwestern - Utah game being played in San Diego, they had the Coronado Bridge in the background. I have probably driven or ridden across that bridge a thousand times or more but one trip in particular I will never forget.

I was taking a taxi in the early morning hours (2am or 3am) across that bridge to the aircraft carrier that was docked at NAS North Island in Coronado. During the time after midnight they had the orange road cones set up in the center lanes of the bridge in preparation for the daily morning rush hour a few hours later. Those orange cones and my loud yelling probably saved my life and that of the taxi driver.

As I sat in the backseat looking out the windshield, not talking to the driver, the taxi was going in a straight line running over those orange cones and heading for the opposite side of the bridge at a fairly good rate of speed. We were in the middle of the bridge, about halfway across. His taxi was scattering those cones all over the lanes on the bridge.

I yelled loud but did not scream .... the driver jerked the steering wheel, getting it back in the right lane in the right direction ... thanking me ... "I fell asleep, I fell asleep, thank you, thank you (over and over) ... I don't know who was happier, me or him.  :)

Like everyone else in the world, when one year ends it is almost automatic to look back on the year from your perspective. You might look inward in deep thought or look back at the good and bad memories ... most of the time with me, I do both. I will not go into details but I will say Stella's new chew toy of 2018 was not all of the bones and balls I had bought in the past for the hounds .... those are still laying besides the dog bed that Sadie slept on and Heidi uses for naps at times ...

No, Stella had something else she liked. By the evidence she leaves for me she did NOT ingest the pieces of hard plastic as she dismantled my clothes basket for laundry. She only chews on it when I forget to move it out of my closet, to outside the closed door of the bedroom when I am gone. Those cloth balls, or rubber bones ??? They stay lined up neatly in a row next to the dog bed, untouched.

I am not sure why but it was a nice change to close out the year. Some how I missed all of the recaps of 2018, whether it be the top stories of the news or sports, even the Top 100 countdown of music sold in 2018. Has the life of digital from tv to radios changed so much that people don't catch those recaps of the closing year? I use to love listening the to the countdown of the Top 100 Hits for the year.

Yesterday was "Fire Coaches Day" in the NFL. There was also one college basketball coach fired mid-season which is never heard of. When people hear the word "FIRED" they immediately think of lack of income, no job etc .. but that's for normal every day people ... not coaches at the college or professional levels. They all have "buyouts" built into their contracts ... so yes, they might get fired but they will be rich as hell as they plant that For Sale sign in their front yard.

Besides their annual salaries, which are all in the millions of dollars per year, they will pocket millions more with their buy-out clause. In college, the school may save on that payoff in the future years as they reduce the payment based on the fired coach's new tv job or coaching job's salary. They don't do that in the NFL or MLB or NBA ... it's just gobs of cash added to their bank accounts.

So why am I bring this up?

How would society react if tv sports channels or even news channels featured how man "white" coaches were fired and how does the league look with not enough "white" coaches on the payroll? Working with, or playing sports with people of different color, I have never cared if they were  black, white, yellow or red. I have had the same philosophy when it came to bosses I worked for. Color was not important ... it was "can they do the job or can they play the game."

What color their skin was, is not a factor in my eyes.

Should a "black" professional coach or college coach be able to keep his job after years of consistent losing, just because the league is pressured to have a certain percentage of African American head coaches? Why doesn't job performance be the only role and the color of their skin not scrutinized by the media? What does it matter what the color of their skin is? Winning is the #1 objective in sports ... you either win or you get fired. All coaches know that. I get tired of hearing color of skin being involved in sports or news.

I am already hearing from the political experts on tv saying that if the Democrats want to win in 2020, their candidate must be female and preferably "a person of color."

Stella had her own path coming home this morning. With the ground so saturated before yesterday's storms, I was surprised just how fast that standing rain water disappeared into the ground, including the field. Yet it was pretty soft on the path ... yet no water surfaced when taking a step.

Another day and night of college football starts at noon today. Looking at the tv schedule it looks like all five games will be good games to watch. BTW, that tv schedule is about the best I have found over the years. On Saturdays during the season, that list of games will fill a page and a half. I print them out and highlight the ones I am interested in, during the season. I always have to remember their times are an hour behind my time. It is perfect in finding what channels the games are on and much easier to sort through one row at a time, instead of an online scoreboard.

Let me know what you think of the photos with the auto-flash setting. I really think I like them better than the dark dull photos when it's early morning and overcast.

It might not look like it from the rain dust spots on the upper part of the Mini but overall that high wind and rain whipping through the carport yesterday washed the car very well. Even the smudges of Stella's dried hound drool were gone from the top of the bumper. Looking at this picture, I can't wait until I can start my concrete project next spring.

I plan to high pressure wash it ... then apply the garage sealant in gray paint. That's not all ... I am going to high pressure wash off as much of the green paint on the steps and the house foundation ... then apply gray concrete paint to them. I will also fill in that low spot where the water collects after 43 years of use. The concrete sealer I applied in the cracks last fall has worked out great.

Heidi was NOT up all night celebrating the new year ... she was only following her daily routine of sleeping right after breakfast. This is one of the few times that she will sleep on the dog bed I bought for her seven years ago, that Sadie used every night to sleep on. I still find it strange in a way that she rarely takes a walk in the field and doesn't even explore the field a little bit on her own. The front, side and backyard seems to be her preferred area.

My brain activity has decreased a lot lately. 10 hours or more of watching football on tv will do that. I can definitely confirm I am out of the market for buying the Apple Watch, at least for now. Cameras ??? I am still actively pursuing data on which one I want to buy.

I have even considered upgrading from a Nikon D3200 to the D3500. Not a lot of difference in the specs but I've been pretty rough with my D3200 in a way. I keep wondering if my picture quality would improve with a new camera.

Yes, I admit that as recently as this morning I felt the urge to change the design of the blog ... LOL AGAIN!!  From traffic reports I saw that the last three posts on the front page were never clicked on. So I reduced the number of past articles that show up from 12 to 9. I almost went down to 6.

I think it's because of the sports sites or even news sites online, they all have a white background, not a lot of trim in different colors ... they look less cluttered than the blog looks. If I do change it in the next few days if not hours ... I will still keep 6-9 past articles listed on the front page. I will also keep the same font as this blog has now, with any changes I might make.

My eating habits are quite disappointing after changing them a few weeks ago. I am not losing weight like I want to. I don't have all the 'good stuff' to munch on during the ballgames I watch and I am constantly looking for something to eat during those games. Those apples, bananas, nuts or frozen fruit does not work as a substitute.

I also cannot make up my mind on what percentage of calories should be carbs, protein and fat. I do realize that if/when I eat pasta, rice or beans I HAVE TO control my portion size ... otherwise the pounds are gained with each bite taken.

I am craving a pizza so bad that I might be learning why meth addicts can't stop. Don't even remind me about Ben & Jerry's ice cream !!!!  :)

Bring on 2019 ... all of us here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana are ready for the new year.

Another Year Ends With RAIN

It's pretty amazing to look back through the blog to previous years, the exact date, to see how things change within that 12 month period. I can also search certain dates in my large Photos Library on my computer and see the changes all on one screen. It wasn't until I looked back in the older blog to see that last year it was -1° with a windchill of -9°. Consequently the hound walks were canceled for the day.

Then the foggy brain cells of mine remembered last year. The coldest winter in history here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. For over a month from December 15th to January 15th it never was warmer than 32° and many of those 30 days had high temps of single digits ... some below zero.

I started this post this morning with on the first two photos of Stella. It has been raining all night. Add all of that water to the saturated field, it was not walkable. Stella knew it before she stepped off the carport. She stood listening to the rain drops that were falling from the tips of the tree limbs, but it wasn't raining. She knew we were not walking at 8am. It was too dark, much darker than those two photos show. She stood in the yard a little confused.

Heidi didn't think it was that bad by lunch time, as she snuck around the corner of the house. It was warm enough to be above her threshold but she didn't stay outside long.

After raining all morning it didn't look bad for standing water. Reinstalling a new drainage system is the first thing on the list for a March/April time. It's old and obviously not working as good as it use to.

Early afternoon the winds picked up as predicted and rain was blowing from the west

About the time I thought it was over, I had a "Weather Advisory" hit my inbox, telling me high winds are scheduled for later this afternoon or early evening. Will those 40mph - 60mph winds disturb my tv satellite signal while I try to watch two good football games?

A little after 2pm the lights flickered, the internet lost service as well as my tv signal, with it raining so hard I couldn't see outside. When you see the amount of standing water you will not believe that short burst of rain was less than 20 minutes long.

Stella doesn't like to walk through water. Just to the left of those posts is her way outside. She snuck around the car thinking she could bypass the large puddle

She stood and thought of a plan. She had gone outside this morning to dump her tanks but likes to always go out after lunch. Walks were cancelled today so she knew she would not be able to get to the field. She doesn't like getting her feet wet.

Not until I cleared all of the overgrown brush in this area a few years ago, did I have that water path down the center of the yard. In fact with all the heavy brush, I never saw standing water of any kind in that area.

When the neighbor's culvert is flooded, that's a sign of a lot of rain water. Before December 1st we were 10" above our annual average of 42". We have had three major rain storms this month.

As Stella walked along side the car ... she saw more flooding ... she was stopped and would not go any further.

Sniffing the air, she didn't see any way nor smell any way of getting outside into the field or yard. She slowly turned and headed back inside to wait for a try later on.

We decided to "button down the hatches" and prepare for high winds. With the ground so saturated I am never a fan of high winds. In 2008 with more rain than what we have now, straight line winds pulled every tree out of 80' of bank, landing those trees parallel to the house. The closest tree was 8' from the front door and the front yard was covered with fallen trees.

I hope the winds don't disturb my satellite signal. I'll be watching the Michigan State - Oregon game at 5pm and Northwestern - Utah game at 7pm ... right during range of time for the high winds warning.

62° today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Happy New Year !!!!

Thoughts From The Darkness

It's been a few days or weeks since I rambled a little bit. I can tell this blog is gradually moving back to the same direction it was going before I announced to the world that the subject matter would change. Plans of more transparency. No stone left unturned as those thoughts slowly crawled out from beneath the rocks. So what happen? What's the plan?

When you saw that title you probably came running to see how far my brain had dropped over the cliff ... wrong kind of darkness. Not quite true. The darkness is what is outside on a Sunday morning at 7:15am. Still the mind is active, maybe too active at this time of day.

In the past few days you have probably notice the blog has changed colors for less than five minutes, font changes but no format changes. I like the format and I've heard from a few readers that they like it to. It's easy to find stuff, and easy to navigate through. So the format will stay but you know how I like 'tweaking' the look when I get an overactive brain.

It was just a few years ago when I had this type of brain activity, I'd start looking through websites that had cars for sale. In most cases I'd end up trading cars or trucks or both within 72 hours after I started looking. The disaster in all of that impulsive buying was my bank account took a hit and the satisfaction didn't last long. I think the all-time record for owning a car before I traded it was 47 days, in December 2016.

Now I just look through website design (themes or templates) choices and fill the same urge to make changes. Yet there has been a battle for the past few months, thinking I would take advantage of those 'holiday deal' with drastically reduced prices, that have since passed by me.


The Apple Watch Series 4.

I don't really need one. I know it will only work with Apple computers and iPhones, which I have. I would have to add an app to track my sleeping habits. The battery life is too short for me. (18 hours) Nor would I buy the cellular version because I don't need emails, texts, music, coming out of my wrist. I'm looking at the health tracking features mainly.

On the other side of the view, it does have a proven heart health tracker, including an EKG reading. I was reading this morning that it does NOT have constant pulse reading but I think that might be an incorrect statement, I'll have to check. It does have 'fall detection' where it will call 911 if the settings are right and you don't respond in a certain amount of time.

Tied in with Apple Health in my iPhone, that 911 call will alert the friends I have listed as emergency contacts, all living out of state. That might be handy since I live alone but I don't plan to fall and see that as a feature that isn't needed for another 20 years when I will be in my late 80's. On the other hand it could replace my iPhone. How neat would that be to go anywhere without carrying a phone in one hand or slipped into a pocket in cargo shorts/pants?

Yet the iPhone has a fantastic camera for indoors or low light. Not bad for outside. Could you tell which photos in blog posts from Wednesday on, were taken with the iPhone ?? So that would be one reason not to have the watch replace the phone.

I currently wear a Garmin VivoSport that has a long battery life, constant pulse readings, GPS, sleep tracking, synchronizes with MyFitnessPal (food log) and feels small on my wrist. I would not have paid the $160 for it, but Garmin sent a new one to me free when I let them know in September that the band to my Garmin VivoSmart 3 broke. I didn't ask and really wasn't looking for help. I was just letting them know what had happened.

The Garmin gives me all the information that I was looking for two years ago. It looks good in casual dress, which is most of the time for me, and will look good as I mow the yard or do yard work in the warmer months.

So it's back to the question of 'a need' or 'a want' for the Apple Watch. Just like it was when I use to satisfy this urge by trading cars. I feel a strong urge to drive to Best Buy today and buy one ... a huge urge actually ... or I could buy a new camera .... see what I mean? That little man on my shoulder with his lauging voice, is tormenting me again today.

Something else I do when I get in these moods for change. I play around with different browsers. Safari for Macs, Google Chrome and Firefox Quantum. Even though I have always read the latest reviews in CNET, PCmag, and other tech websites about those browsers ... I still keep going back and trying all three of them.

Until a couple of days ago when RetroRoxie sent me a link, helping me find an answer for WHY Safari and Google Chrome was preventing me from making replies on some WordPress blogs plus logging me out automatically from my blog on Blogger, "Bhounds And Other Adventures".

It was due to the privacy settings for each. Safari calls it "cross-site" tracking. Google Chrome calls it "3rd party websites collecting cookies and data". I needed to switch them to 'off' so each could take place. Once I did that, both Safari (using it now) and Google Chrome did not prevent me with those two issues I had for months ... or since their last updates.

Many reviews say that Safari is the best browser for Macs. I have an iMac and a MacBook Air and it is what I have run for a browser most of the time until I had that problem two paragraphs above. I like that Firefox and Safari do a great job in blocking ads and stopping videos from automatically playing on news and sports sites.

I could tighten the settings on Google Chrome and add some apps to prevent ads and autoplay but I am not really keen on the brighter version of the new Google Chrome. Now, if I were using an Android phone I would tie myself into the Google system with docs, and all the other products they have available ... but I get all they offer in my Apple devices, all synchronizing with my phone, computers and tablet.

I know I will continue to bounce between browsers every few months ... but at least that is free. Plus it calms that overactive brain I get sometimes.

So where is all that blogging transparency? The change in direction for the blog?

My mind has been content I guess. I have not noticed a lot of deep thoughts surfacing. I have not noticed any inner crisis taking place. Both hounds are in good health, no emergencies, no drama going on ... nothing to bring thousands of blog readers rushing to see the latest, like they slow down to look as they drive past a car wreck.

I've continued to "glance" at tv news. I have also continued to turn off the tv or change channels within minutes, mumbling under my breath ... "what a bunch of shit". (yes I LOVE that periods OUTSIDE the quotes ... :)

So I don't have a lot of radical comments about what is going on in the news because I have stopped watching it enough to where I cannot make comments. In 2013 while working as a government contractor I was sent home when Obama shut down the government. Speaking only from personal experience ... I think I remember being gone for only 10-14 days ??? but I do remember to keep my health insurance and a regular paycheck, I had to go on vacation while wasting my vacation days.

I did write a post the other day and saved it as a draft. It was an idea I had for the blog that wasn't tried and may not happen ... a weekly collection of questions, weird or otherwise, that I have throughout the week. I still have that post in 'draft' folder. Which brings up the subject of 'drafts' ... not beer, blog posts.

I have a hard time writing blog posts in advance, filing them under 'draft' and posting them later. Most of the time my posts are time related, like current, within that hour(s) ... I cannot go much more than a day on subject matter for the post. Whereas some bloggers can write about where they were and what they did on a trip two months later ... I find that hard to do.

So due to my DNA, I'll probably continue to blog like I always have ... in the morning after our walk ... maybe late afternoon or early evening in the warmer months. I am outside a lot when it's hot doing anything, from yard work to sleeping under the sunshine. If I post something like this very early in the morning ... I'll probably have a second post late afternoon or early evening with a paragraph summary and all photos.

That is probably what will happen today.

One thing about this template (theme), I do not have to manually put a space between the photos so they show up on tablets and phones with a space between them. Nor do I have to change the file size like I did on blogger, so the photos were sharper. Which I have discussed that too many times in the past.

Just remember, new readers ... the hounds and I live a pretty simple lifestyle, laidback without a lot of drama. I'd say the post about the water heater a few days ago was the most excitement the hounds have had in months. Believe it or not I still have steaming hot water coming out of the faucet so that is a good thing, since I had no idea what I was doing to repair it.

The posts are usually more photo based than a post like this but sometimes I like nothing but words, content, thoughts, etc. I just have to come up with some kind of photo to add to the top so there is a small thumbnail on the front page. The look stays the same that way.

Much like me mowing the whole yard when only the backyard needs mowing ... or the "balanced" look where the punctuation is outside the second quotation mark. Or all those squares for each post lined up evenly on the front page.

That will give you a picture what my pet peeves are ... plus crooked photos on a wall in anybody's house.

Well that magic hour has struck ... 8am ... Stella has walked in the computer room to drink water, hydrating herself before she whines to get me to change shoes to boots, throw on my down parka, gloves and sock hat ... grab the camera and go out
to do 22 minutes of 'verbal herding" to get her from Point A to Point B. The walk last 5 minutes due to the sound of gunshots ... no verbal herding was needed ... I had to trot to keep up with her has she turned around and headed for home.

There was probably more I wanted to say in this post but like usual ... I forgot what it was.

It looks cold outside but I can see some sun here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.