Springtime for Timo

This was the weather this morning in Queens. In my quiet residential Brooklyn neighborhood, it didn't look much different. A snowfall in April? Not so uncommon I suppose. So I wasn't that surprised to find myself tiptoeing around puddles of slush while snowflakes birdshotted my face. The poor daffodils were slumped over, not strong enough to handle the snow that had filled their little petals. I rode the F train to school as I do, but when I ascended from the 23rd Street station, I found it was spring again! The sun was out, the streets were wet, but there was no snow anywhere to be seen. I was perplexed so I asked a classmate, "Did it snow in the city a little while ago?" "Yes," he said. What was a snowy mess in Brooklyn was now a sunny (though still chilly) spring day! The season had changed in just a 45 minute commute. Funny how the outside world can change so quickly while I'm riding the train underground, oblivious to what's happening above.

I recently saw my first Smart Car in the city. The car was parked on the street in Soho. Not sure how the miniature vehicle arrived in its place as I just read that the cars are not approved in the States yet. They’re approved in Canada though. Be careful if you’re considering buying one because there have been reports of unruly teenagers tipping the little cars over! Smart-tipping, the next urban past time for bored youth?

I am so glad that March Madness is over. Talk about sucking donkey ass! It’s kind of hard to get into the tournament when all your teams poop out prematurely. So many of the Big Ten schools performed terribly (screw alumni loyalty), but even worse, none of my Final Four picks advanced! I participated in Yahoo.com’s national pool and ended up in the 18th percentile. Simply ridiculous. In a pool of one million plus people, I rooted for Tim McKenna. Yahoo lists the overall leaderboard at the end of each day and the picks of those with the most points are visible to all. Mr. McKenna developed something of a fan club online because he was the only person in that entire pool that correctly chose ALL four teams in the final four. Normally, this isn’t so rare, but in a year where George Mason advanced as far as they did, it’s pretty incredible. Unfortunately, he had UCLA winning over Florida so his impressive picks didn’t help him in the end.