Spring Training

It's not even the regular season yet, but there's already drama in the Yankee's camp and player movement talks. A-Rod is out for most of the year if not the entire season, which prompted the Youkilis move and a ton of stories about how he'll get along with Joba. That was what was making the headlines until the A-Rod news about performance drugs came up again. That filled the headlines for another couple of weeks.

The story is now about the outfield as Granderson fractured his arm in his first pre-season game. We have writers with stories about Johnny Damon and Alfonso Soriano, both of which could be available to help. I think they're just stories at the moment to please the fans. Realistically, Damon was prepared to retire. I don't think the Yankees would go for that. It would be odd to bring on their former 2nd baseman Soriano as an outfielder, but that would be great because we lost him in the A-Rod trade. Anyway,I think we'll be OK in the outfield no matter who fills the spot because Gardner is in center and we all know he covers ground!

Styrofoam

First it was soda and now it's styrofoam. Mayor Bloomberg's current crusade is to get the city to stop using styrofoam containers. I think he has the right idea since it is not biodegradable. The problem here is that it's not practical yet. Food services use it because it doesn't melt in high temperatures and the big one... it's CHEAPER! Cost is the most important thing. Paper is too expensive and recycled paper even more so. It seems to go against logic, but in this world, we get penalized for doing the right thing... which encourages us to do the wrong thing.

The styrofoam ban is something we should work towards, but forcing it now is going to cause backlash.

Pope

It was announced that Pope Benedict plans to resign on February 28. I've never heard of this before and thought it wasn't possible. Then I read that he's going to be the first to do so in 600 years! In my neighborhood, one of the priests in a local church "retired," but yet he still does sermons pretty often. So I felt like he never really retired. It's even stranger to hear that the Pope is retiring! What does a retired Pope do? Party time?

Winter for a Day

Over the weekend, we got dumped on with enough snow for a season. After 2 years of nothing other than flurries that didn't stick or sub 1-inch snowfall, we got 1-3 feet from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning. Some areas of Long Island seriously got 3 ft! My area had 14"... about 4" Friday and then another 10" when I woke up. I really thought NY winters were gone as we were almost out of this season.  

Super Bowl

It was Super Bowl Sunday over the weekend, but just an ordinary Sunday for me. Since I'm not a football fan, I only watch if a NY team makes it all the way. But I also felt like it was a quiet one for many in NY. It wasn't talked about a whole lot in the office despite corp. services advertising it with events. People still had parties and junk food just because it's a good excuse to do so. I'd say NYers were more about the gathering of friends than the game.

Ratings dropped from last  year and AMNY printed "unknown reason." Uhh.... I can tell you the reason. Last year, it was NY vs Boston, rivals and 2 of the greatest sports towns... plain and simple!