I try to say this with as much sarcasm in my typing as I can but have yet to find the smiley for sarcasm.

I work online for a company that has a family of web sites that deal with politics. Last Thursday started a mess that is finally just now ending. We were hacked. Sites went down – some sites totally, some sites just certain pages. Server security had to be changes. Server backups had to be used to restore sites.

Thankfully, this is all over now and things are back to normal.

What a day!

First off, we got a slightly late start but did go to breakfast at Elise\’s favorite dinner on Military Rd in Niagara Falls.

After quite a bit to eat at Augie\’s, we headed to Lewiston. I have only been to Lewiston once before. I came up when Elise was being inducted into an honor society and we went in to Lewiston to lunch. It reminds me of a quaint, artisty town. Anyway, we drove all the way down to the river\’s edge and parked. We got out and walked down the boat launch. We have pics – flickr will be updated – of a Coast Guard boat, the silo, seagulls… tons of pics of the river.

After a quick stop at the hotel as Ed had left his camera there, we headed to the Falls. Since I hadn\’t brought Danny\’s or my own birth certificate, we had already decided we would stay on the American side of the Falls. While it was quite windy, it was a gorgeous day. There were a few threatening looking clouds but the only water we would feel was the mist from the Falls. But the possibility of rain kept a lot of tourists away. I was happy as it was not as crowded as it gets in the summer. We did see some Baltimore Ravens\’ fans in for the Bills-Ravens game today that were at the Falls yesterday.

We found an ideal on-street parking spot and started walking. We went over to the rapids above the Falls. We walked down to the Falls themselves. We went up on the observation deck. We did opt out of going down the trails as the wind was a tad cool and getting really wet would not have been a good idea.

Then, we headed to Goat Island. We walked out on Luna Island and basically stood over the water feeding Bridal Veil Falls. We stood in between Bridal Veil and the American Falls. More pics and more getting misty wet. It was a blast.

We, then, headed over to Terrapin Point so we were practically in Canada. This is the point right next to the Horseshoe Falls. This is an area of Goat Island I had never been to before. It was wonderful to get there on a sunny, albeit windy, day. Horseshoe Falls looked even more beautiful and more powerful up close.

I have an absolutely wonderful time going through all of this state park but definitely Goat Island is my favorite. The variety of trees growing there is amazing.

More pics on flickr later today and another day of fun – breakfast, senior day at the soccer game, NUSGA meeting and food, then heading for home.

Road trip number three is under way. I am typing in a hotel room on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Niagara Falls, New York.

My youngest son and I left home yesterday about 10:30 after a mad day Thursday of cleaning and baking – of which the baking carried over into Friday morning. You see, it is Family Weekend at Niagara University and the college kids want you to come with food they cannot get at school. So, with the car loaded with zucchini yogurt multi-grain muffins and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for the college kids and brownies (with squash in them but he doesn’t know that – or didn’t until he had almost polished them off) for the ride, Dan and I headed to Syracuse.

The ride to Syracuse was great. Only a few sprinkles but the foliage was absolutely beautiful. I was truly amazed that it was a nice as it was out and the trees going up the I-81 corridor – I have a few but no cord to upload til I get home – were much more vibrant than the trees at home.

We were going to meet the oldest son and wait for him to get out of work and then head out. Dan and I got the car ready – gas and all, managed – after driving through parts of Syracuse I don’t like – to find the new credit union location, and went to the mall to kill some time. If it had been nice out, we may not have resorted to mall shopping but it all works out in the end (he is sporting a new pair of jeans and I got a new sports bra and a new pair of shoes).

I am not a mall rat so when we were done at Steve and Barry’s, we decided to get a drink at the Hess and head for Ed’s office. It was about 45 minutes early but I would rather sit in the car and listen to tunes than wait in the mall. Ed saw us pull in and could leave early so off we headed to Niagara Falls at a little before 4 pm. Needless to say, the ride on I-90 was not very nice. We drove through some horrendous rain storms. The sky, though, was gorgeous in its fury. The contrast among the dark clouds, the sun trying to appear, the lighter clouds slightly closer to the horizon was amazing. Unfortunately, no pics of this as the flash off the windshield screwed them up.

We checked into the hotel – one of my favs and even more so this weekend as I am using points from previous visits to pay – and were at the small restaurant next door by 7. By 8, when Elise was scheduled to be off desk duty, we were walking in the dorm with her chicken fingers. We did a little visiting.

More tomorrow or Monday as I have no idea what the plans are for today.

So I love to blog. I find Yahoo! 360 to be a good outlet for this. I do have my dislikes but it works easier than trying something new.

Today’s blog from the 360 team leads me to believe I should look for a method to back up my blog or just scrap what I have here and start looking elsewhere. This is similar to research done recently in a volunteer position I have had for many years to help transition a site with message boards to one without.

Anyway, the research means I know I have options – both paid and free. I just need to decide what I am going to do. I don’t want a blog on a Facebook or MySpace type of site. I have accounts at both but seldom even check them, let alone blog there.

I like that I can have photos from my flickr account right here on my page. It makes it easy and, despite others’ complaints, I am seeing flickr working better than Yahoo! Photos did.

I have, many times, wished I had the ability – as some other blog tools have – to categorize my blogs. I have a lot of people who read my blog for different reasons. My oldest daughter reads it almost daily to see what is going on at home. I have recently joined an art group who looks to blogs to see what the artist is creating and possibly instructions for such creations. I have a group of friends from the above site that look to blogs to see how people are dealing with organizational issues or goal setting issues. Some sites – wordpress comes most quickly to mind – allow categorizing blog entries. I have not found that to be allowed here but I have adapted. I highlight my art posts.

So off I go to look at blogspot, wordpress, typepad and other blogging tools. I am not sure if I will move all my blog posts here at Yahoo! I do know I will, at the least, copy them all into a word processing document so I can keep them. This will take a long time but be worth it as there are some items I wish to keep.

This morning\’s walk/run was done without an mp3 player as my son\’s iPod shuffle was dead and he hadn\’t charged it yesterday and my other sons\’ RCA Lyra was still in his ears. I headed out with just a timer and myself.

This is the first true walk of fall. I actually wore warmup pants and a long sleeve tee-shirt. It was only 45F when I left the house. Since the last couple of days had been spent doing routines on on-demand television due to darkness and weather constraints, I was anxious to get back outside. Time in the out of doors is difficult to come by once there are plows on the roads. I don\’t live where there are sidewalks so it becomes a hazard to try to go on the roads once snow starts.

This morning, because my ears where unhampered by the music of an iPod or Lyra, I could hear more than just the cars passing. As I approached the first bridge on the walk, I could actually hear water running in the creek. Now there was not much water, as last week it had been dry, but still, the movement over the rocks. I turned my head to look south down the creek to see just how full the creekbed was and there was the first site – a blue heron! I was sooo excited as I know there are a few of them on the creeks nearby but you seldom see them. This was just a single blue heron but beautiful and majestic. I wished I had taken my camera with me as what are the chances I will see it again.

I continued to the next road and took a left down there. This road runs along side the next creek on my walks. The leaves were rustling on the trees. I could hear, as I continued up the small elevation, a squirrel or maybe chipmunk running through the leaves on the ground. It had to have been one of those two as there was too much leaf noise for a snake and too little for a rabbit or larger animal.

I could see leaves falling from the trees as I turned to start the loop back to home. The road smelled slightly as it had been freshly oiled and loose stone laid on it. As I hit the road I lived on again, I was hearing different noises. There were more vehicles in this area but then, to my grateful eyes joy, a blue jay appeared to the side in a tree.

What a wonderful morning!!

While the weather has not yet shown to be true autumn weather – the forecast people say that is coming this week, the smells as I was out this morning are definitely fall.

In the thick fog, you can smell the testing of the wood stove. The smell hangs fragrantly in the air, even overpowering the exhaust from the huge dump truck that has sped by.

There is the smell of wet leaves. Not as fragrant or special as the wood stove, but a smell that really only comes this time of year. As the trees lose their leaves, then the heavy dew or rain will make the leaves wet and they have a scent that is uniquely theirs.

And, even more overpowering, is the smell of exhaust. Sort of like the inversion you get in places like the San Juaquin valley in California, the heavy fog and dew hold in all those fumes. They mix – the gas engines of the cars and SUVs, the diesel ones of the school busses and trucks – and hang in the air.