I bundled up this morning and went hiking at Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. It's a small wildlife preserve about 45 minutes from Buffalo. East on I90 and north on rural route 77.

I planned on hiking the Swallow Hollow trail followed by the Onondoga trail. Finding the Swallow Hollow trailhead was incredibly easy as it was well marked with signs.

The trail is about 1.3 miles long and takes you through a marsh area. Part of the trail is on a wide, well maintained gravel path and part of the trail is on a well maintained wooden boardwalk right above the marsh. The trail takes you directly through marsh land with an incredible variety of bird calls filling the air. Followed by marsh is a small section of pine followed by a small section of hardwood trees. Then you walk along a dike that takes you around a small marshy pond. Along the way, there is a clearing in the woods for a terrific view across the marshy pond. Standing for a few minutes I saw seagulls, hawks, blackbirds, and canadian geese. Further along the marshy pond signs indicated that you could see snapping turtles and woodland ducks, but my guess is that I would have to come back later in the spring for those sights.

It was an easy walk allowing for no illusions of trail blazing or adventure. It's a good trail for someone who wants to see nature but doesn't want to work very hard or get dirty. Good for little kids too, I would think. Possibly good for someone in a wheel chair. Not a lot of incline or decline and there is a ramp at the trail head that allows wheel chair access down to the path. I would go again just for the wild life viewing opportunities.

I tried going to the Onondaga trail to give that a try but the road to the trailhead is closed between December 1st and April 1st. I was a little disappointed that they didn't post that information on the website.

So the experiment quickly took a nose dive.

The family that was supposed to be rapidly procreating was doing it by adoption. It hit a snag however. Adoption in the SIM world, just like in the real world, requires a set amount of finances. I managed to sell furniture and other possessions to adopt the first two, but by the third adoption it was just impossible. So I decided to have the third baby the natural way.

While pregnant with the third baby, mom was a little sleepy quite a bit of the time and didn't understand the real dangers of hypothermia. The oldest boy was out playing in the snow in the afternoon too long. He came in the house after getting too cold, but mom didn't know to gently warm him up.

Next thing I know, there's a social worker at the door.... and well... you know the rest of the story...social worker takes the kid. She even came back after mom had the baby and took the baby too.

So I started over with a pre-made SIMS family with mom, dad, teenager, child and toddler. And immediately set mom and dad to work on having a baby. I think this is cheating though, because usually by the time you have a teenager it gets a lot easier because they are a third adult to help around the house. But we will see if the teenager will help or if they will rebel and runaway to college.

Last night (e:Drew) was reading me the story about the dude who went over the Falls and miraculously survived. This news story led to an argument as to wether or not it was safer to just jump into the falls or use a barrel.

(e:Drew) said the barrels were safer and I argued that surely one could break their neck or other bones in the course of the fall if inside a barrel. (e:Drew) countered that people could be packed in the barrels and I imagined curling up inside a barrel and having styrofoam peanuts stuffed in around me so I wouldn't bump around and break.

So today I found a link that explains the different daredevils who have barreled over the falls and the techniques/equipment they used and the results. I think the most interesting barrel story is the guy in a barrel who survived the fall, but the barrel was trapped behind the falls for 14 hours where no one could reach him and he died from suffocation:

I went to Talking Leaves tonight to buy a book with a gift certificate some people so thoughtfully purchased for me for my birthday.

I browsed the store for nearly an hour.

Fiction versus non-fiction. Standard literature versus classical literature. US author versus a foreign author translated into English. Travel book or food book or travel-food book. Book of Local Interest. Book I'll read again versus book I'll only read once. Number of pages of book versus cost of book.

I found myself overwhelmed at all the books and was unable to select one.

I had to leave book-less.

I'm such a dork.

So...to all you home owners out there.... how did you make out on challenging your assessment? They increased the assessed value of our house by $15,000 originally. They knocked off $7000 after we challenged it. I fought the man and I won... sort of...