Before I entered the digital age in camera technology, this was the most common style of picture I had. Currently the most common pictues I have is a tie between Drunk Sean/Kara doing dumb stuff. If NYC wasn't in the background wouldn't you think we would be in Maimi with the brightness of our apparel. 

Sunday, Sunday

WARNING: THIS IS LEAST OFFENSIVE PIECES I HAVE EVER WRITTEN. THOSE WHO PREFER MY ATTACKING AND POINTED BARBS, DONT WORRY THEY WILL BE BACK

This weekend I went home for my mothers 50th birthday on Friday. My dad threw her a nice surprise party at her favorite Mexican restaurant, and it was a very simple and plain home weekend until Sunday. Ohhh Sunday. Anyways before I discuss the bad parts of the day I want to touch on the highlight of my weekend by far, which happened on my way back to Delaware...

Instead of taking the boring 3 1/2 to 4 hour trip back to Delaware I decided to make a diversion and visit a friend of mine in Hoboken. Now I know this doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, considering I did the exact same thing 2 weekends ago on my way home. This time though instead of going to visit Katie Dip I went with the purpose of visiting Gina P, her roommate.

Now considering my icy and erratic treatment of her in the past this may seem like an odd thing for me to do. I really haven't had a real conversation with her in about 2-3 months and none were imminent. But last Thursday I started thinking about how Justin and Nora went to a DMB concert together a couple weeks ago. They had dated, had a similarly serious relationship, and were able to hang out and have a good time with one another, and I actually got a little jealous of this. SO that same day I im'ed Gina and asked her if she wanted to hang out on Sunday. Now given my previous treatment to her I didn't expect her to be interested in hanging out with me, but to my surprise she thought it was a cool idea. Anyways as usual I think I'll use bulletpoints to express my thoughts

• I've been to Hoboken 3 times and despite me finding the girls place quickly the first two times, I was hopeless this time. My usually reliable sense of direction failed me, and it took me 25 minutes or so to meet up with the Ms. Pitera.
• Talking to Gina was probably one of the most refreshing things I have done all summer. It felt so good to talk to someone so freely about events in my life, without having to backtrack and explain details. I know this sounds pompous but this is one of the little things I loved about spending time with her, as she is one of the few people I can have an quick hitting intellectual conversation with.
• Gina has a great freaking memory. Maybe my admiration of this has to do with many of the people I have been associating with recently, but this thoroughly impressed me.
• After dating someone, most people have the feeling "I can't believe I dated that person!" Well I totally feel this way too, but not in the common, spiteful sense, but in a reverent one.My feeling is that I can't believe I was able to impress and date this girl. I am proud to have her as an ex-gf because I feel it proves what good taste I have in girls.
• This may sound wired, but several characteristics Gina has will be future benchmarks in judging girls. It is funny because I never realized how important these qualities/traits were to me until I have recently dealt with girls who have been lacking these key characteristics.
• If I didn't hate NYC I, and lived in the area I would live in Hoboken. It is the a very chic/young place, and feel like you are living in a smaller, quainter city then the Big Apple, while being right in the shadow of Manhattan.

Talking and hanging out with Gina was one of the simple things in life that I may have overlooked or taken for granted in the past. My appreciation of this time is concurrent with my new resolution to make sure I appreciate the small things in life. Although for about 95% of ya'll this sounds kinda boring and inconsequential, I had a genuinely great time doing nothing, and I hope that this friendship can be preserved and enhanced.

Oh I forgot to mention, my dad and I both punched eachother in the face on Sunday morning. I haven't been in a fistfight with someone since I was 8, but my it came to blows yesterday. Ironically enough, my dad and I were talking a few hours later and our relationship will probably be stronger because of this in the long run. Stupid hot tempered Greeks.

Oh BTW I am going to write a political piece on this site in the next few days so Katie Dip can use it on MSNBC. Don't be alarmed, as my usual fluffy/superficial/ self centered type pieces will still be written on a regular basis.

All the small things.

I think I figured out why I have been bored so often recently, and I feel the need to be constantly entertained. It's kind of simple but it being a little slow, it took me a while to understand my ailment. My problem is in the title, I haven't appreciated the small things in life. I realized this after this Saturday night. This Saturday night was one of my top 3 favorite Saturday nights this year, and by far my favorite one of the month.

So did I go on a drinking binge?
Did I hook up with some chick?
Did I go to a sporting event?

Nope.

I sat around with Justin, drank good beer, watched the Phillies and just bullshitted around at his house. After Justin and I left Brian "I have become the lamest 21 year old of all time" Dingerdissen, and his outspoken wife, at the beach we decided to go out have food and then hang out at his house and just chill. Now I understand how lame this sounds, being that we are not 45 years old, but this fun and subdued night has reminded me what I have been missing an appreciation of the small things in life. In the past few weekends I have been getting caught up in trying to force myself to have good times, but I have forgotten about the fun things and times that I have that don't need tremendous planning and backgrounds. I'm going to try to start to concentrate on these things much more often.

Quick hits:

• Dinger has become the poster boy of settling and accepting what life has given him. I've never seen someone go from dynamic and fun college student to boring husband soooo quickly.
• Charlotte came to Newark today to visit me! My first visitor to Delaware! Anyways we went out to eat and I took her Coldstone virginity. I've decided one of my next 2 entries will be a Charlotte to Kara comparison, because the similarities are eerie.
• I love the bars around here, Very chill places, amazing specials, and a 2 to 1 Girl/Guy ratio, I am really going to love this semester.
• Sean has a job in Florida. I'm a little saddened by this, as it means he is staying down there. I am more upset for Michael Fiorentino, because he is now the loser in the get a job contest and has to kill himself.
• The Yankees not sucking anymore makes me happy.

As usual my ramblings have no point or conclusion, and my poor writing skills have once again resurfaced. The sad thing is that you had to read it, and i only had to write it, making it 84% less painful for me. HAHA.

WEST SIIIIIDDDDDDDEEE!!! Look!!! Dinger was actually at a party once 

2 of these thugz are gainfully employed full time by real corpororations. We sure fooled them. 

Random Matt Fact of the Day.

I really have the attention span of a 12 year old. I realize when I am not entertained at least hourly, I get very bored. Maybe I should try to concentrate on appreciating the little things in life a little more. This is one of the reasons I feel that I will need to have a roommate or roommates for the foreseeable future. I need the constant social interaction they provide and if I don't get it I am prone to getting in a bad mood. Alright I am going to go find something to do. This post has most likely added no value at all to anything you deem relevant . Thank you for letting me waste 30-35 seconds of your life by reading this.

My drinking problem

I have a drinking problem, and it isn't in my frequency or ability to control myself. My drinking problem is one of speed. I drink too fast. I've been realizing this s lot recently, as I really haven't been able to go the drinking distance at parties. This in particular affected me way too much last night. Charlotte had a grad party in CT this weekend that I decided to come up for for a variety of reasons, but number one being that I probably won't see her for at least 7 months. Here are some quick hitting facts about the party:

• I rolled up at 5, about an hour into it, but it had barely gotten started, of course that means in my head start drinking
• Charlotte has a ton of good looking friends/sorority sisters from college, but they are eerily similar to Kappa girls at 'Nova. They are all very attractive but only about 35% of the are approachable and 20% are good to talk to. Basically they were just eye candy with some limited exceptions.
• As expected it was the nicest catered/ put together grad party I have been to ever.
• I saw a girl there that I so should have hooked up with in high school, but as with most things back then I was wayyyy too picky and didn't close the deal. The past 3 years in college had done her very well.

Herein lies my drinking problem. From about 6-11 PM this girl hung out together and she wouldn't leave me alone. We had some nonstop convos, were beer pong partners, and we were planning on having a late night swim to conclude the evening. She has a very distinct personality/sense of humor, and our convos are very Seinfeldesque in nature. Well here was my problem and why I failed once again last night. My drinking stamina sucks. Like I was already laying down on the couch at 12:30 ready to pass out. If I had been smart about this situation I would have paced myself or not drank at all until later in the night, what an idiot I was once again. Oh well. I'll probably have another chance with her sometime later this summer when I come home again, but I do have a little regret that I could have hooked up with the hottest girl I've had a chance with in the past 4 years. Oh well now time to go drive back to Delaware with s fun stop along the way in Hoboken to see Katie Dip:)

Will this one make the cut? Only time will tell.... 

A new perspective.

I think I have grown up a heck of a lot in the past 6 weeks. As I sat in a meeting today I thought how uncanny my transition has been. I have started to act like an adult in more ways than one, and I can't believe how much responsibility I am able to handle. Go Me! I have been living totally on my own, and it is actually very satisfying. I had never thought that I would like to pay for my own stuff, and would rather have my parents cover my finances, but the independence makes me feel very in control of my life. I have dealt with a multitude of setbacks in the past 2 weeks but I feel so much stronger for dealing with them. I also have realized which people I am most likely going to talk to during my post collegiate days, and who is going to fade away quickly. I am not going to name any names but the past few weeks have been very telling to me. It is a little sad but inevitable. I have also been getting very excited about the social scene down here, as on an off Tuesday night in the middle of the summer this place still had fun bars. I was exhausted today at work, but oh well. My current and future roommate is having people over tonight so I gotta go get to the gym, come back, and shower, before these people take over my house. Peace Out.

I suck at endings, revised

Ramblings Part Deux.

• I love Busch Gardens. Kara and I went there on Saturday and even though it was shitty weather, there were long lines and we both were a little hung over from the night before I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I know it sounds corny but some of my favorite times in the park were standing in line. I loved the conversations and banter between us, as this time spent cracking each other up is the true definition of friendship. Although I have compared Kara to my best friend at home, Charlotte, she is truly one of a kind and such an original and valuable person.
• In direct contrast to this I feel my friendship with Megan has regressed about 20%. In the past I felt we had a very good chemistry, almost too good for people who have only hung out with each other on very rare occasions. This visit though, I felt very distant and awkward, and that unfortunately that I was losing a friend. This sucks because quality individuals such as her don't come around very often, and these situations tend to really hurt me because I have such a soft spot for my friends. Hopefully I am dead wrong about this but I don't know, I'm kind of afraid to even talk to her now, which exhibits my dorkiness in its full effect.
• I really hate saying goodbye. Finality is something I have a hard time dealing with, ever since the end of high school. I really feel that I am way too sensitive, and that I really need to toughen up, and stop dreading goodbyes. They are a formality in life that I really must start dealing with, and life is full of these situations.
• Does anyone miss freshman year as much as me? I really would give up 5 years of my life to travel in a time machine and experience one more semester of 2001-2002.
• Kara uses more text messages in a day than I use in a month. I never have seen someone as proficient at typing/good at verbalizing an idea on their phone. She truly is a "texting" machine.
• Ok I want to write more but being drunk and tired is preventing me from extending my thoughts......

Okay time to continue this rambling....I swear I will write an entry someday that isn't a giant pile of poo.

• I feel a little bad about my demeanor this weekend. I feel like I was a downer for some reason, and I was preventing Kara from having her normal type of weekend that she has down here. I got this vibe while talking to Megan, as she thought that I was having a poor time this weekend. Overall I just felt like a pain in their ass, and getting in their way, leading me to not be as much fun as I should have been.
• Ok this while ramblings is getting a little too dramatic. We went to this bar last night, called the Green Leafe. Kara and Megan had brought me there last year too, but I totally forgot many of the characteristics of the place. This place seems like it was designed specifically for Gregory P Byrne. It is a pub with a ton of microbrews, an oldish type setting and very few TV's which makes it much more pub like and requires you to me much more interactive/social. If we ever are taking a trip down south together, I will for sure convince him to take the diversion off 95 to hit this place up.

Trying to have a coherent thought.

My head is in a fog right now. I have no idea why, but my brain currently feels like it does during mid finals week, so I'm warning you that I have no idea where this post is going. For this reason, and in standard mattyb form I'm using the bulletpoint approach so this doesn't turn into a stream of consciousness piece because I obviously don't have William Faulkner"esqe" skills.

• So I decided for the next year I am going to be a Delawarian. My current roommate Eric and I are going to rent a place in a VERY college apartment complex, but not in a courts type of way. My new place is a poor man's Radnor Crossings, both in price and in accommodations. It is so state school living because they expect you to pay late and will actually discount your rent if you pay on time!
• My next job search is not for me. For the next 3 days or so I have a mission, find a suitable job for Mr. Sean Michael Bennington at JP Morgan. I really don't think this will be all that tough, and if I am able to land him an interview or a contact I feel that will up the chances by at least 35% of him coming back up here. For those of you who want your favorite Irish Dancer back in the Mid-Atlantic, stay tuned.....
• I'm actually in Virginia now, visiting Kara and we went out to the "Country Western" bar last night, which was a very mixed experience for me. For one it wasn't as country as I would have expected, especially since I am now currently south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but it did have some good country music and line dancing so I'll give it props for that. Overall though it was more like a Brownies/Finnegan's wake type place dressed up in a country outfit and put in the parking lot of a strip mall, and the specials were $4 not $.50. Also the crowd was a bit odd as it wasn't a college bar, it wasn't a young professional bar, and it wasn't a place for older people either. It was a conglomerate of the three, making it much like the bar of a restaurant where all of them collide. This is a dream for a people watcher, and probably the highlight of my time there.
• I now know what it feels like being that girl. You know the fat/ unattractive girl among the group who guys are superficially nice too so they can make a good impression in front of the girl they are trying to go after. Kara and Megan put me in this position last night and it made me want to jump into the lake behind the bar. Since I valued the clothes I was wearing I decided to instead, just walk around the bar and enjoy the sights and sounds of this one of a kind establishment. Overall I'd have to rate it as a better night than when the Yanks lost to the Marlins in the '03 World Series, but worse than the night they lost to the Angels in the ALDS in '02. Wow no one is going to get this reference.
• My night as the fifth wheel or "spare tire" was saved by one incident. Though..... Remember when we were all 19 years old and there was at least one of your friends puked during any given weekend. Well ladies and gentleman I felt like I was back in 245 Sullivan again, thanks to Ms. Kara Elizabeth Barton. She one uped my puking on the side of the road of Lancaster, coming home from a Beta party disaster last night. Ms. Barton found out the hard way that 6-8 Rum and Diet Cokes, mixed with slices of pizza tastes worse the second time, when it is coming up. Not a good enough story yet? Well it happens that she felt the dinosaurs calling when we were on an interstate highway in her own car. Also as we found out this morning Kara' shot accuracy is not the greatest, as we found a disgusting mess both on the inside and outside of her 2005 Altima. There is comedy, there is high comedy and there is the highest of high comedy, and this display of skills had my stomach in knots for a good long time.

Ok I am getting yelled at now to go......Probably doing somewhat of the same thing tonight, so we'll see how this goes. Bye Ya'll.