So This One Time, When My Blog got Hacked…

Flowers from my amazing husband

Thanks to all of those who let me know that my blog suddenly began turning up in browsers as “a potential malware site” because Google identified an issue, and most browsers these days apparently use Google’s info as part of their security settings. This started happening at the beginning of April, and I’m still trying to get everything cleaned up. (If you read via an RSS reader you probably never even noticed something was wrong…except maybe that I hadn’t posted in a while.) Who hacks a personal blog?? Seriously?

In any case, I’ve changed my passwords, wiped and reinstalled WordPress, and gotten rid of the bad code in question. You should be able to click “ignore this warning” without fear, but the warning won’t go away until Google revisits the site to confirm it’s no longer trying to infect your computer. I’ve requested a review which will hopefully happen soon. (Edit: That was quick! Yay Google! Things should be back to normal now.)

What a pain in my butt. Here’s what’s been happening the meantime:

My blog got hacked. Then the government almost shut down, which would have given both Jose and me an unscheduled and possibly unpaid vacation. (I would have been on call, so I would have ended up working a handful of hours during the shutdown.) The prospect of a federal employee furlough due to a lack of budget meant the office was insane for a few days as we planned for what a shut down would mean and how it would impact our work. I spent a very busy week completing the design of another Miss Houston pageant program. On top of that craziness, a number of other things happened that I’m not ready to get into right now. The beginning of April 2011 has been the weirdest time of my entire life and I hope to avoid any future weeks like it.

This weekend I’m running the Yuri’s Night 5K, and I signed up for the Silverlake triathlon in mid-May. My times will be slow. I haven’t been training. It’s hard for me to avoid comparing my efforts to those of my tri club friends, and I always feel a need to explain things when I fall off the training bandwagon. Today I’m ignoring that and reminding myself that I don’t owe anyone an explanation.

A rabbit dug its burrow in the middle of our backyard. We noticed towards the end of March that we were regularly seeing a rabbit back there. “Do you think it’s the same rabbit every day?” Jose asked. “Nah, I’m sure it’s just different rabbits.” Then one evening last week we looked out and in the growing darkness we saw the rabbit hovering over a particular spot in our yard that we’d seen it visit before — and there was movement underneath. It was nursing baby rabbits! The next day we took a closer look and sure enough, there was a hole in the ground and you could see movement inside. Last weekend, Jose mowed the yard and we even saw one of the babies hiding in a corner of the fence — so they’d left the burrow! We put two small twigs over the hole so we could see if anything came or went, and the sticks are still there. The baby bunnies grew enough to move on. Farewell, cute baby bunnies.

I was supposed to go to Moscow in May for work but it fell through due to what basically amounted to a miscommunication above my head. (Did I mention that? Can’t remember.) I was pretty disappointed but there was nothing I could do to change it. So instead, Jose and I got tickets to Europe! We’ll fly into London, spent 5-6 days there, then move on to Paris for another 5-6 days before heading home. I can’t wait! And Jose is so excited about going to the British Museum and the Museum of Natural History that he may die of anticipation. Related: he is cute and I love him.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight as the first human in space, and the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch. It was a day for celebrating, but I spent the day in a training class and feel like I missed out just a bit. The NASA Administrator announced where the 3 flown and 1 test orbiter will go after they are retired, and none of them will be coming to Houston. I have mixed feelings about the announcement that can be most succinctly said as this: I am NOT sad that Space Center Houston is not getting a space shuttle because I feel that the way they treat their current artifacts is embarrassing. However, I am sad that Houston is not getting a space shuttle because so many people and facilities here have dedicated their careers and lives to the space shuttle program. I am also sad that JSC doesn’t get to keep any of the major training hardware or simulators, already located here, that have served the program and the astronauts over the past 30 years. I can only hope that better days are coming for JSC, and for NASA.

To cheer up and celebrate Yuri’s Night, Jose and I hung out with a bunch of friends at Chelsea wine bar. We sat on the deck in the perfect evening weather and drank sangria and talked and laughed. It was a lot of fun. It felt like I hadn’t just relaxed like that in a long time, and it felt really good.

Today is another perfect weather day. I feel like I need to soak these days up because I know the humidity will return and another hot summer is in store. Today I walked over to the cafeteria and passed a row of trees in full bloom. They smelled wonderful.