Planting Trees in the Blogx

Yes, that's right, this blog comes less than one month after the last one, a new record for me?

(Excuse the terrible title/pun but I can only title so many of these "Another Update" "What I've Been Up To" or "My Weekend")

So first off, don't people say that the one thing the east coast has over the west coast is that there are 4 seasons instead of just winter and summer? Well, A) I'm completely fine with just winter and summer, and B) Someone explain to me how it went from 50 degrees to 90 degrees in a matter of 2 days? That sounds like winter-to-summer to me...

Anyway, I got tree-cruited by my old SCU neighbor, Tera, to plant trees with the NYC SCU alumni group in Bronx Park on Saturday. Since it takes an hour+ to get there, and we had to stand around for 2 hours (read: "volunteer organizations" should be redubbed "volunteer disorganized-ations") before planting trees at 11, I had to wake up before 7am to get going so there was no big night out on Friday. On the subway ride up, I definitely felt more and more out of place as the street numbers got higher and higher. The SCU group was fun, and it was great to feel like we were contributing to the beautification of the city - even though I felt like we were planting trees in what was already a forest (and we weren't exactly in a part of the city I'll be frequenting). The river was cute though and maybe I'll have to do the cayak trip someday. We were part of some city initiative called "Million Trees NYC", whose mission is to plant a million trees in the city. As of posting, the website says 174,590 trees have been planted, which means they clearly haven't updated since Saturday because I think I put them well past their goal (you're welcome, Bloomberg). Anyway, all in all it was a fun day and I enjoyed the sunshine and the group.

So to summarize the month:
-Parents visited for the weekend, saw some plays - "God of Carnage - 5 stars", "reasons to be pretty - 3 stars", and "Accent on Youth - 4 stars". I'd recommend all of them though. Ate some good food - "Peter Lugers (easily the best steak I've ever had)" "Tribeca Grill (Easter brunch)" and "Blue Fin (some Good Friday fish)".
-Baseball season started, so I've been to 2 Mets games so far (decided against the Yankees). Citi Field is pretty cool, though it's no Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T Park. They do have a Shake Shack in the stadium which is absolutely fantastic.
-Staying up far to late to watch - and then fume about - the Sharks' collapses (it just wouldn't be late April otherwise). I'm generally an optimistic person, but I can only take so many (i.e. 5 - Calgary, Edmonton, Detroit, Dallas, Anaheim) years of missed expectations before I become a pessimist.
-Started preliminary design work on my pipedream of starting a hockey statistics website. It'll probably never get off the ground, but I always need a pet project.
-Went to a show down the block (I love to brag about that since I spent 6 years driving an hour to San Francisco to see shows) tonight - Alkaline Trio and Saves the Day. Odd that it was my first time seeing Saves the Day considering how many pop-punk shows I went to in high school and college. It's really fun seeing bands that I listened to in high school who are still around, and Alkaline Trio's the first one in quite a while.

Another solid month in New York. I think I can officially say that I survived my first NYC winter - which apparently was an exceptionally cold one too! I'll definitely be here for a few more.