Maryland Fun

I was in MD visiting family and friends from Wednesday to Sunday of last week. I don't feel like making this a super long post, so I'll quickly recap the highlights. 1) Got to eat blue crabs at Rachel's bday party. 2) Ate venison steaks for the first time from a deer Dana's father hunted. 3) Shot a 45 caliber handgun (see picture). 4) Went to Dupont Circle in DC, namely Buffalo Billiards and played pool all night. Sid (Atlanta friend) met me there for a bit and me, him and Fark had a carbomb together before he had to leave. 5) Saw Fark slide down the super long Dupont escalator (see picture). Maybe the carbomb gave him super powers. 6) spilled ginger ale on the leg of the 6'5", 275 lb guy sitting next to me on the flight. Luckily he didn't care at all. Not one bit. Must have been gellin.

Time to go to a pig roast. If you really want to know more about my weekend, call me.

Matt's journey down the Dupont Circle Metro escalator. 1) Makes eye contact with a "just try and stop me" look in his eye. 2) Assumes the position on the escalator rail. 3) Surfing down the escalator rail at a high rate of speed, no turning back now. 4) Makes his not-so-graceful transition into a face-forward slide. Notice the legs flailing in the air.

He stuck the landing and did it all without injury, WELL DONE.

Shooting a Sig Sauer P-245 (45 Caliber) at a range in Upper Marlboro, MD. Look at those flames!

Dream

I had a dream last night that I remembered, so I thought I'd share:

I had a dream last night that I was working for Dave Chappelle, helping produce the newest season of the chappelle show. It was sort of like post-production because all of the skits were already taped and we were just putting them together. All of the skits seemed to consist of him just doing his trademark laughs and quotes. I think in one skit he had no arms and no legs... interesting.

Anyway for working on the show I got some package of free dvds, including the season 2 set of the chappelle show, which I thought was really cool cause it's not out yet. Also I got a CD called "Ray Charles: songs from the campaign trail", obviously a made-up CD, but I was pretty happy about it. Then I looked up and he (Ray Charles) was sitting there next to me. I noticed his sunglasses had autographs in silver pen on the lenses over his eyes, but I couldn't read the names. I guess only he could have that because he doesn't need to see out of them. Or maybe someone had played a trick on him and he would never know. I told him I liked his movie ("Ray") and I think he smiled and said something like "Thank you, I try."

Super Size Me

I just watched Super Size Me and it made me really hungry. I haven't eaten at McDonalds in probably a year, but it sort of made me want to get a big mac... it's been a while since I've had one of those. Maybe I took away the wrong message.

New job and going home

Started my new job/internship today. Sounds like it's going to be some grunt work at first, but I really do not mind doing thoughtless tasks, in fact at this point I welcome it. Hours seem very flexible, but I hope and plan to work as much as I can to pay the bills.

More importantly, I will be going back to MARYLAND next week from May 25 - May 29. I'm excited about this, especially at the idea of a crab feast for Rachel's birthday on the 25th. There's nothing like rolling off the jet from Atlanta straight into a good ol' Maryland crab feast. So if you're in the area, I should be in CP in the May 25, 26, possibly 27th region, then back to the Dorf for at least Saturday and Sunday to see the folks.

And in other Ben news, I now set up AIM so that when I am not online, you can still IM me and it will go as a text msg to my cell phone. So stay in touch, suckas.

Also, Erin H. from undergrad is here for a week doing some class thing for her job, so we will be hanging out. And Dara from high school is coming in Saturday to look at apts cause she is moving here in September. Should be a good week overall. Later.

Great week

The last week was perfect for relaxing after the end of last semester. My summer full-time job (well something like 53 hours/week actually) starts monday, so hopefully we can keep up the past weeks events over most of summer.

Mostly it consisted of going to piedmont park and bbqing by the pool at Post Renaissance apartments. Also mixed in there was the Sweetwater Brewery tour. That was real fun, but unfortunately they only had 2 of their beers available, which was lame because my favorite one (the Porter, dark guiness-like beer) wasn't being served that day.

As for this weekend, Saturday was spent all day at the park again throwing the frisbee, football, and bocce ball. That park is really fun, and you never know what kind of people you'll see. This time we saw a "Yogathon" in progress, and then a large group of high-school girls sit next to us doing all sorts of weird group activities, like what looked like indian leg wrestling. Gotta love Midtown Atlanta.

Me chillin with the wildlife at Piedmont Park. Just kidding, it's Laurel's pet lizard, Guacamole. Nice name.

View of the fountain the next day. Who's idea was it to put a table in there?? Oh, that's right...

This is the result of the unwinding process after 3 weeks of 24/7 work. That's one of the fountains on campus Saturday night around 4am. "Someone" cleverly spiked it with laundry detergent. I am attemping to give myself a foam beard... I think. Other shenanigans were to be had that night, if I get ahold of the pictures I will post.

Summer!

It's not even close to the official start of Summer, but mine has started. I haven't updated in 3 weeks because I have been eating, drinking, and (not) sleeping schoolwork. Basically made my hell week of last semester look like a breeze. Although my car didn't get broken into this time, which made it a lot more bearable. However, I did spend around 8 consecutive nights past 2am in the lab, 4 of which were all-nighters.

But anyway, it all worked out great in the end and it's behind me now. Way behind me. Because ladies and gentlemen, it is all downhill from here. Very downhill. This summer I decided to take the Volpe internship instead of classes. I will be doing the work from campus, so I will still be in the ATL, but this time with zero homework and tests. Also, even though I am not taking classes this summer, I still only need 3 (count em, three) classes to graduate by next May. That means I will be taking 2 in the Fall and ONE in the spring. Brilliant!