very simple

Last week, when it was in the 60s and everyone was sitting outside marveling at the early arrival of spring, I enjoyed myself, but got labeled a pessimist for insisting that winter wasn’t over and we were bound to get at least one more bout of snow before the season was over. I was right.

The weather had warmed up a bit last week, but it was combined with some rain, so today was truly the first nice day. And everyone knew it. Random people smiling at each other on the street (none of whom I got photos of), and people just generally, and obviously, enjoying being outside. So I spent the afternoon wandering the upper west side with my super-telephoto zoom (70-300) lens, and tried to pick up some of the details without getting noticed.

In this batch is an assortment of random people enjoying the outdoors, storefronts, flowers, a variety of signs, water towers, fallout shelters, rooftops and random architectural details from around the upper west side.

As always, click on the thumbnail to enlarge.

Compared to other cities like LA or San Francisco, we don’t actually get a lot of fog here, because we’re in a geographically unique situation. But yesterday was an exception.

I wish profound amounts of luck to the person who owns this bicycle. At least this lowers the chance that it will get stolen.

So, we had another ridiculous snow day today, with over another foot of snow dumping itself on us overnight. Schools were actually cancelled today (which almost never happens in NYC, because it creates massive problems for parents who still need to go to work). Despite my cold, I got myself out of my apartment for a few hours, and went to central park to take some pictures (and to catch up on the 365 project, since I had fallen a few days behind). Only the first 6 photos are technically part of the 365 project, since that’s how many days I’m missing, but I’m uploading a few more that I liked.

Click on the photos to view the full images.

We got more snow today. Not anything approaching last week’s blizzard, but a few inches. Just enough to (a) be annoying (b) be slippery, and (c) cover all the dirty sooty leftover blizzard snow so that it doesn’t look quite as disgusting here.

With my perfect timing as always, I managed to go out to grab a cup of coffee during the heaviest part of the storm.

It looks like time for snowpocalypse 2010. Although, given that this seems to be happening with more frequency, I’m not sure “snowpocalypse” is really appropriate anymore. Perhaps just “winter” would suffice.

I was actually looking forward to the snow today, largely because I didn’t need to go anywhere, I don’t celebrate Christmas so I didn’t get caught in today’s travel onslaught/nightmare, and the absolutely best part about snow in New York City is the first few hours, when it’s still white and pretty, before it gets polluted by exhaust fumes and turned into a giant slush pile.

The one downside? I’m watching my parents’ dog, Ollie, so I do have to venture out periodically. Luckily, he’s old and has no interest in playing in the snow, so the biggest struggle is to get him to stay out long enough. Truly a dog after my own heart. I decided to grab my camera to snap a few shots on our afternoon walk today (which consisted of walking to the end of the block and back). Ollie was very determined to get home, but I managed to get a few pics of the beginning of the storm. This is only a few hours in – they’re predicting a total of between 14 and 18 inches by the time it ends tomorrow.

(As always, click on the thumbnails to get the full image)

It’s incredibly dreary and rainy today, which is the perfect excuse for an unemployed person such as myself to not leave my apartment for the entire day. Except, lucky me, I had jury duty down at the federal courthouse. Again. So I had to pack myself onto a rush hour train downtown this morning with everyone and their dripping umbrellas.

You know what happens next. 15 minutes after the start time, the clerk comes in, thanks all of us for our service, and informs us that the case we were supposed to be in the pool for settled late last night, so we can all go home. And, as a bonus, we’re done with jury service, even though they could have kept us on the hook for another week of pool-sitting waiting for another trial.

This was actually great, in that (as I heard on NPR this morning) they’re apparently picking a jury for a large terrorism case next week. So, all-in-all, not a terrible way to do jury service – a half-day on Monday and 15 minutes on Thursday. and I’m done for 4-6 years. It just would have been nice to have not had Monday and Thursday be the rainiest days of the week.

But I got a cool picture as I was leaving so…that’s something.

After a few more rainy days earlier this week (during which I was out of commission thanks to a bug half the people at our seder caught), I think spring is really here for good this time. Trees are blooming, tulips are coming up, and we can sit outside at the local cafe, which meant that my friend Ed could show off the puppy he’s training for a friend. This was as much excitement as said puppy could muster while getting toasty in the warm sun.

yesterday was gorgeous out, so I took my first bike ride of the season after a five-month break. took it easy, rode 10 miles on the hudson river greenway, which just keeps getting better. Took a little pit stop at the 5-mile turnaround point to enjoy the sunshine, and took these with my iphone. It got into the 70s yesterday.