We’ve been getting lots of snow in NYC lately. It started dumping halfway through Thursday and just never stopped. I rolled out of bed at 7:30 this morning. Much to my surprise, Columbia was closed. So I rolled over, turned off the alarm and fell back asleep.

Later, I ventured over to Central Park to see a fresh blanket of thick, wet and heavy snow.

Now, after seven months, I’ve set foot in all five boroughs.

I met him and Snow up in Harlem around 11:30 a.m. Thursday and we hopped in the car and zipped over to Queens.

At the vet, Snow and CJ waited patiently. She didn’t give off the impression of a dog who was two days away from death, but she did do a lot of whining and squirming while we waited for her turn in the examination room.

Much of the argument I am trying to present in my piece on pit bulls is that they are treated almost as a minority. People fear them and hate them without ever really trying to understand them as a breed. It was quite refreshing to see CJ conversing openly with the two other couples about their dogs in the waiting room. They all had much smaller dogs, but it was clear that everyone in the room was speaking the same language: the language of passionate, concerned pet owners.

Questions like “What is she in for?” and “What about your dog, what is he here for?” were thrown around.

They joked about spaying and neutering and their apprehensions, projecting their human fears of their own castration onto their beloved pets. The surgery Snow was facing was essentially a glorified spaying. Her uterus would have to be removed in order to take care of the infection.

After much waiting, Snow got up on the table. She wasn’t too keen on having her swollen and painful private parts probed and put up a bit of a fight by growling and thrashing. Her metal chain and long nails on the metal exam table sounded like hail on a tin roof as she struggled to get down and away from the vet’s probing hands.

The vet very quickly and methodically produced a leather muzzle from the drawer for her to wear as a precaution. CJ and another veterinary technician held her tight. Snow leaned into CJ’s embrace, as if hoping to bury herself in his thick black leather jacket to escape from the uncomfortable probing.

A quick x-ray showed her uterus was in bad shape, and her spine was a bit arthritic from giving birth to puppies.

The uterus is the dark mass near the right half of the x-ray.

CJ haggled a bit with the vet to get the bare minimum of services rendered to get Snow healthy again. Then, he told Snow he’d be back first thing in the morning on Saturday to pick her up.

CJ dropped me off at home. I ran out to the 110th Street station to snap a quick stock shot of the subway for my latest Covering Education blog post.

I’m covering transportation and safety issues for the course and the post was about a new report released by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy that projected MTA fare hikes to be at least 15 percent to make up for their $400 million budget gap. Last month, they voted to phase out free and discounted MetroCards for the city’s public school students. The report calculated that this hike would cost a working family of four with two school aged children an extra $2300 a year in transportation costs.

For a simple blog post, I spent entirely too much time on an accompanying infographic on the history of MTA fare hikes. I’m pretty proud of it though.

I only took the subway up to 116th St. Then, I walked back down to my apartment. Since I had my camera, I figured I’d finally take the picture I’d seen countless tourists take before on my daily walk to and from school. This is Tom’s Restaurant. Probably best known as “the Seinfeld Restaurant.” Although, the diner scenes were shot on a set, they used this shot of the actual Tom’s Restaurant in the show.

Look familiar?

The restaurant is also the inspiration for the song “Tom’s Diner,” which was released in 1981 by Suzanne Vega.

My personal favorite, and probably a bit more familiar is the 1990 remix by British group DNA.

I caught a cool glimpse of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as I turned to cross the street to head back home.

I finished the day off glued to my computer, working on various projects. The computer work was only broken by a nice run in Central Park. I listened to the first episode of the new Freakonomics podcast. I’m a fan and it will fit nicely into my running repertoire.

I like busy days. I never seem to get through everything i’m supposed to, but I always go to bed feeling complete.

My block has been embracing the snowfall with enthusiasm. The guys in the neighborhood have been out since 11 a.m., crafting this beautiful couple in celebration of the blizzard, Valentine’s Day and Jennifer Lopez (check out the ba-donk-a-donk on that beauty).

Slept in. Went for a run.

Met up with Fred. Biked to Central Park. They had a rail jam going on.

Fred indulged in some swag.

This woman was grooving to the tunes supplied by the Red Bull mobile sound system.

She had moves.

Next, we cruised to 125th St. in Harlem. First, I had to stop off at the heated bathrooms of the Lake House. Fred held my bike.

Went to Dr. Jay’s. Fred scored some cheap threads. An old, probably homeless, man pooped his pants in the store and got chased out. The ensuing chaos made for quite a scene. Back outside I snapped a shot of the Apollo before we left.

I wolfed down a torta at Taqueria y Fonda with Fred. We parted ways and I cruised to the Animal Care and Control shelter on 110th between 1st and 2nd Ave. I met up with Evelyne Cumps, a volunteer who runs the Compassion program at the shelter. She and the other volunteers walk the dogs in the shelter, many of whose fates aren’t very promising.

This is Baby. Baby was listed as “questionable.” Evelyn said she liked the dogs who need work. She walked her around the corridors of the shelter, stopping to give her pieces of meatloaf she bakes herself at home for the dogs.

This was the second visit to the shelter for my pit bulls story. The first visit, I only saw the dogs up for adoption. There were 18 of them that day. Only two didn’t have any pit bull in them. Person after person came in looking for a small dog to adopt. Nobody wanted a pit. Tonight, I got to go back into the shelter where the dogs are held that haven’t been put on the adoption list yet. More of the same. If I had to guess, it was 95 percent pit bulls and pit bull mixes.

After that, I headed to Brooklyn Bowl where Hot Chip played a DJ set. I don’t have any pictures. There were a lot of hipsters there.

I hadn’t been to Coney Island, so I was excited for the opportunity to see that part of the city. It’s a place that is both eerie and wholly intriguing. Now that it’s winter and the attractions are closed, it has a real post-apocalyptic ghost town feel. Vibrant colors and wide open natural light made it great for filming.

I chose to bike there, because I figured everyone else in my class would take the subway. It was a 30-mile ride to get there that took me down the west side bike path, across Canal Street, over the Manhattan Bridge, down Flatbush Ave to Prospect Park then all the way down Mcdonald Ave. until I made it to the Boardwalk. (Geography nerds, see map below).

View Larger Map

Needless to say, I worked up quite a sweat. As soon as I stopped moving and started filming, the magnificent winter sea breeze froze my damp clothing immediately. Looking through my footage back in the lab, I noticed the camera seemed to do a lot of shaking towards the end due to my incessant shivering.

Pleased with the shooting I had done, I hopped back on my bike. Not 10 minutes into the return trip, I heard the familiar, terrifying noise of a flat tire.

“POP. SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” it screamed at me.

I came to a halt, luckily right below the elevated Avenue U Station of the F train. I hauled my bike up to the platform. The turnstile was one of those full-length cages so I had to shove my bike in, swipe my card, then push it through.

Then, I had to swipe myself through.

“INSUFFICIENT FARE,” the angry green letters beamed back at me.

Here I was in the middle of Gravesend, Brooklyn with my precious bike on the other end of the turnstile.

I walked down to street level and hurried to the other end of the platform, refilled my Metrocard and went to rescue my bike. All the while, I stopped to shoot some hurried video.

Luckily, my bike was still there. Although it had been moved aside to let passengers through.

Now, if you ask me to name the two most awkward things to do on the New York City Subway system, I would list them in this order: 1) film strangers. 2) lug a bike onto the train.

I had to do both.

It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience, but I’m alive and I’m glad to have done it.

I’m a journalist, I like having a good story to tell.

I walk through the door of Aspirations High School and into the open lobby. The fluorescent lighting bounces off the clean white linoleum floors and freshly painted white walls with blue trim.

It feels like a hospital.

“Um, excuse me, sir?” A voice barks at me from my periphery. It’s ripe with sass.

I haven’t set foot in the school for thirty seconds, and I’ve already blown the security checkpoint.

Oops.

The nice uniformed security guard takes my ID, lazily fills out a log book and makes me sign my name. I ask her for directions and she vaguely points me to the end of the hall. She snaps her gum loudly at me as if to signify I am someone else’s responsbility now. I turn right down the hall. To the left, in the other half of the building, is another high school, the EBC School. This is a new concept to me. I have always gone to schools that had their own building. Thus, a school is a physical entity defined by its building. Now, I am in one building that houses two schools.

Two minutes in and my mind is already blown.

The secretaries send me further down the hall. I wander down the sterile, well-lit hallway past a hall monitor, perched at the intersection of two paths. From his perch, he can see the end of the hall where the students enter from the outside which is stationed by yet another monitor. These men are not uniformed and are clearly staff members at the school who have a healthy rapport with the students.

I find the classroom I am looking for. Jeff Kaufman, the US history teacher, is a classic New York tough guy with a heart of gold. This former NYPD officer has bushy mustache, a local accent and constantly ends his statements about the state of education with a defeated, “but, hey, what are you gonna do?”

I come right into his classroom and we strike up a conversation. The desks are grouped in pods with tiny computer modules bolted into the center of each. Most of the classrooms are outfitted with these PCs. There is no computer lab here, every class is hooked to the Web. A boy and a girl are at one pod, cutting out templates from a piece of paper. Another boy sits slumped over at a chair with his walker in front of him. He is staring blankly at the front of the class with his headphones turned up.

I assume this is some sort of study hall or free period. I start asking Mr. Kaufman questions about the school. He tells me he has been teaching for 12 years and that makes him one of the oldest people at Aspirations. The staff here is young and progressive. This makes for a fun atmosphere, but things can be a little disorganized.

“It’s a teacher’s dream school,” he says.

He tells me there are 271 students. Not a single one is white. It takes a toll on the kids, makes them feel like a lower class. It doesn’t help that the school is a “transfer” school, which means the population is made up of kids who are overage but still need credits to graduate. Others were kicked out of their old school or had to leave for gang reasons. There is a nursery in the lobby.

Another boy stumbles in. He’s got a Dunkin’ Donuts bag in his hand. His iPod is blasting loud in his ear.

“This is Jamel,” Kaufman says to the boy and me. “Smart kid. I tell ya, if he cared half as much about school as he did music, he could really be something.”

Jamel slumps in his desk then gets out his breakfast and starts eating. Mr. Kaufman pulls out a piece of paper and tells him to get working on his essay.

Then, it dawns on me. This is second period. This is an actual class. Today, four kids showed up for Kaufman’s second period class. His roster shows thirty.

When the bell rings ten minutes later, none of them will have put pencil to paper and even started their essays.

Third period. We move one classroom over. Kaufman is a “traveling teacher.” His next class is a little larger. It starts with six kids and by the time the period is halfway over, the ranks will have swollen to double.

It’s Regents prep week, Kaufman says, which means he has to focus on getting these kids to pass the test which is required for them to receive their diplomas.

He doesn’t hide the fact that expectations are low. He states it plainly at the beginning as he goes over the practice prompt.

“It doesn’t matter what your score is,” he says. “You just have to pass. They don’t care what the number is, as long as its above a certain amount.”

His attitude is probably realistic, but it hurts to watch how plainly both the teachers and students handle the fact that these kids aren’t outstanding. There is no hope that they will be someday.

Just get them to pass.

This is Snow and Layla. Snow, the white one, is a nine-year-old pit bull. Layla, her daughter, is five. I’ve been hanging out with Layla and Snow a lot this week for my master’s project which is a piece on pit bulls in New York City and how they are such a polarizing dog, loved by some and feared by others, here in the city.

The dogs live in the Grant Houses in Harlem with their owner CJ. I came along with CJ and his friend, Jay, while they took the dogs out for some exercise in Morningside Park. It was a balmy 45 degree day in the middle of January (no complaints here) and the dogs were enjoying the sunshine.

The thing that inspired me to focus on pit bulls was that the New York City Housing Authority recently passed a law banning 27 breeds, including pit bulls banning rottweilers, pit bulls and doberman pinschers from city housing. I was curious to see how this is impacting pit bull owners in city housing. The law goes into effect on Jan. 31. CJ says he has no intentions of giving up his dogs.

In attendance were Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, New York Governor David Paterson, US Senator Kristen Gillibrand and a slew of New York City politicians.

They all spoke of the devastation and pledged aid in the form of money, political will and prayer.

Senator Gillibrand was there as well as Harold Ford, Jr. who has been ruffling Democratic Party feathers lately as he has been scoping out a bid for the US Senate seat in 2010 election. As I was leaving, I watched a daring reporter get chewed out by Sharpton for trying to get a comment on Ford’s potential bid. “I don’t want to talk about politics right now, I’m here for Haiti,” the Reverend barked before hopping into a large black SUV.

I’ll just say I’m glad I have long arms. It was a zoo.

The crowd was small and dense, probably between 50 and 75 people. Only a handful were not media or politically-affiliated

The few Haitian-Americans and other pedestrian supporters out for the vigil had to crane their necks to hear what was going on in the massive media crowd. I felt bad for them, they clearly weren’t the focus of the event. However, Sharpton did lead the crowd in a rousing sing-a-long of “Amen, Haiti” before the crowd dispersed into the night.

The most notable moment of the evening was when Sharpton announced that he was going to travel to Haiti to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day there. Since then, he has said he is going to be there by Friday. Quite a powerful decision not to spend a holiday that he is so powerfully linked to anywhere in the US.

A couple more of my paparazzo shots:

NY State Assemblyman Anthony Weiner gives his phone number out to a Haitian-American. While I was in the media huddle, some guy on the sidewalk kept muttering “whiner” to himself until the NYPD told him to move along.

I borrowed my roommate’s bounce flash and by the end of the evening it was being quite sluggish. I had probably 20 seconds of face-time with Jesse Jackson but the flash was dead, so this was the only usable shot I have. LESSON LEARNED: Bring extra batteries.

When I got home, I did my part and donated $10 of my money (Graduate PLUS federal loans) to the American Red Cross International Relief Fund. You should too. There are plenty of ways for you to help, here is a great resource that lists six simple ways to help out.