In New York State

I know this blog is called Sandy in NYC. But sometimes I do things outside of NYC. I've been debating (since this morning) on whether I should keep it NYC focused only or incorporate the other parts of my life that happen outside of Manhattan.

Sidebar: I live in Astoria, which clearly is not Manhattan. In fact it is Queens. However, I do pay NYC city taxes and am a NYC resident so this blog name does count!

I realize that I'm updating this blog at about an average of 2 times a month. At this point in my life, sustainability, in terms of it's actual meaning, is most important to me at the moment. If I can maintain over a period of time, that's better than going crazy with one blog post everyday for 2 weeks and nothing for the rest of year.

Now onto the main part of this post!

Over President's Day weekend, I took a trip upstate to the Catskills. I've never been but I love excursions to nature. The Catskills is the perfect, long weekend getaway, it's just far enough to feel removed but it's not 5 hours in the car. I stayed at lodging via VRBO near the cute town of Phoenicia (which I kept reading as Phonetica).

View from the kitchen dining window

The place I stayed at had sugar bushes aka maple trees! But before you get too excited about tapping your own sap for breakfast, please note: maple sap is not the same as maple syrup. I might have been a little naive about this as well... But I did get to enjoy glasses of maple sap which tastes a bit like sugar water and is apparently very good for you. The property owner was wonderful enough to explain the sap/syrup collection and purification process to me and provided a sample of fresh syrup which was perfect for breakfast.

Meditation Hall- Zen Mountain Monastary

I visited the Zen Mountain Monastary and participated in Sunday morning service. It was extremely refreshing and interesting. Part of it included seated meditation or Zazen for 35 minutes. It is a very inclusive, interactive refresher course for anyone curious about exapanding his knowledge on spiritual cultures. I highly recommend it. I'm not sure if I would be able to meditate as determinedly (ironic, I know) if I had not bin a room full of monks but I do have a better understanding of meditation and believe that the right practice can be very beneficial to physical and mental health.

Making use of materials on hand to roll out a pot-pie crust.

Don't worry, I haven't gone all hippie granola on ya'll.

Other activities included antiquing and hiking. It was COLD but very invigorating to take a walk through nature. Honestly, I love hiking in the winter. It might be cold at first but there are no bugs, you don't really sweat and the snow-lined paths are something I still find a novelty because I didn't have such scenes growing up in Texas.