This is going to be, at least what I’m hopeful for, a very good blog entry. I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about how I’m going to shape this post and I know the material comes from the heart. This past weekend I drove to Pittsburgh for the wedding of Derek and Laura. I spent 4 years of my life at Pitt and rarely return because bad things tend to happen to me when I do. I’ll add that nothing of any consequence happened to me on this trip so you can all exhale. I have very unique feelings about Pittsburgh that no other place in my life holds. They are actually very difficult to describe using words but I’m going to give it my best shot.

The first thing that comes to my mind is a sense of uneasiness and loneliness. I remember standing on the steps of the Towers Freshmen year as my parents drove away putting me completely alone for the first time of my life. How it took time to make friends and to find my place in a new place. I think I did all of that successfully in the years I spent there and made some truly fantastic friends. The hard to describe feeling is that Pittsburgh will never be my home. It will always just be a place that I lived. That I always have to leave it behind me.

So this wedding brought me back to the Burgh for the first time in many years and I got to see friends who we used to spend every day with together. For 4 years these people were a part of my life and then one day when school ends, the relationship generally stops. So meeting up again brings back these memories of the way things were and will never be again. How we’ll never be 18 again. How life keeps going whether you are ready for it to go or not. Plus add a marriage to this mix and that brings thoughts of what I’m doing with my life and how I want to spend my future.

I know the sound of this post feels depressing but I had a really great time attending this wedding and I’m glad I did. It’s just an odd feeling as I sit here right now. Pittsburgh brings back a sadness in me. It’s like I don’t want to leave but I know I have to. And with that feeling comes leaving friends behind and I think that’s what hurts the most. The city brings back my past. I went for a run while I was there and stopped by all the old shithole places I used to live. I believe it’s a feeling of nostalgia. Something that was.

I want to close this by giving a huge congratulations to my man BG and his beautiful bride Laura. The wedding was first class all the way and I appreciate the invite greatly. The best to both of you.

Multiple reasons are causing this blog to slump. For one, I haven’t been feeling so hot as of late. I had a good time at Union Transfer for NYE and made it out in one piece feeling tip top. I got home and had a good night’s sleep and woke up feeling fine. New Years Day is where things started to take a turn. I headed to Steve’s for some drinking at noon or so and we headed out to the Mummer’s Parade. We carried on the 2nd year tradition of signing the board at the Kimmel Center and headed to Time for a few drinks. We then left time for a house party in South Philly and everything was still fine. Only little issue was I didn’t have anything to eat aside for a breakfast sandwich in the morning. So come the end of the night I had been out all day and hadn’t taken care of my body. Let’s just say after that it’s been a recovery to get to where I am right now.

I did meet a few girls from my high school who identified me with blogging which I found pretty obscure. I know I post the link on Facebook every so often but I didn’t know people actually read it. That was a minor surprise and for some reason I don’t feel it’s “cool” to be known as a blogger. I guess if you do something for 4 years eventually someone will hear about it. I do find my social skills pretty adept though when I’m hanging out on days like these. I hold good conversations (in my own mind) and they feel somewhat relevant. Now if the other person knows that I hardly remember anything after the 6th hour of drinking they’ll be disappointed. This happened when some girl was like “I remember we had such a good conversation the last time we saw each other.” I just sort of nod and pretend. There is this constant balancing act of getting a decent buzz but not letting it impact your life negatively. Sadly to say, “I still can’t master this.”

I’m heading to Pittsburgh for a college roommate’s wedding so it’ll be a lot of driving for a short period of time but I’m going to make the most of it. I rarely get up there and this is a good opportunity to do so. So there will be hiatus until this weekend ends but I hope to take some pictures and come back with a story or two. My success in Pittsburgh has been poor to say the least.

It seems fitting to finish off 2012 with a post. Considering I haven’t created anything in 4 days I’m sure people are wondering what is going on. My simple answer to that is nothing. Life has been pretty simple due to work slowing down and people checking out till the New Year. I’ve been going into work for an hour or two and making sure everything is tight but other than that I’ve just been trying to enjoy the time off. I think I’ve moved past summarizing my actions and will focus more on creative entries. This may mean I might not be posting as much but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I could write a 1,000 word post on exactly what I did and what happened over the past few days but it just seems boring. So that being said, I’ll probably sit down tomorrow and write a list of resolutions because that seems like the obvious thing to do. Or maybe I’ll write some non-resolutions because that would make for a better entry. Either way this will be the final post of 2012.

My last few days have been pretty normal/unblogworthy. I’m sitting here deciding if I want to go into full detail on things that I have done countless times before. After writing that last sentence, I’ve decided to be quick. I deposited in Bovada but only made 2 bets and went 1-1 and didn’t lose a dime. I lost 150 in fanduel this week for my first losing week in the past month. The Wild Turkeys won the championship for the 3rd consecutive year and I was unable to be Sam Levin for the 2nd time in 3 years. We saw a Badfish concert at the Electric Factory on Friday night and Saturday was fairly standard. Brunch with the Schmidt’s was yesterday and I watched football most of the day. I can’t think of many more interesting things.

It’s not every weekend where I can say that I had a baller couple of days. After staying in on Friday night, I was ready to have a nice Saturday. I finished the 2nd season of Walking Dead and then started watching some Homelands. Shee came over at 4 or so and we played some Ping Pong where I was 3-3 which is a moral victory. We went back to his place and got something to eat at Sowe. They had some slamming pulled pork nachos and I also had a nice pork and pastrami sandwich. The bill was 54 bucks and we gave 80 dollars. Adam wanted to leave it all as tip but I don’t believe in 48% gratuity so he made sure to let the staff know that he would have left it all and I’m the cheapskate. We then played some Gin Rummy, which I never win, and we parted ways when my plans were to meet the Rock and Jon at the Public House.

The Rock said Chris Duhon was there but I just figured he was at the bar. After I somehow got in with sneakers and no collared shirt, I see the Rock sitting right next to Chris Duhon at the bar. For people who don’t know, Duhon is the starting guard for the Lakers with Nash out. He was a really nice guy and even bought us a round of shots, Tullamore Dew, to be more specific. It was good to see his night out didn’t effect his performance as he dropped 14 on the Sixers, 4-10 from behind the arc. We stupidly left the Public House to hang out with our commoner friends. I tried to be a bad ass like Duhon and buy 8 shots at Smiths but this proved to only hurt my wallet and not raise my reputation.

I woke up on Sunday pumped for an action packed day of football. I drew Evan for the 2nd time in 3 weeks for our semi-final matchup. As I did the week before, I watched some of the games with my opponent and got to watch A-Pete run wild just like last week. I ended up beating Evan and moving on due to the fact that he had more points on his bench than his starters. Lesson learned, don’t sit the #2 pick of the draft (Aaron Rodgers) for Josh Freeman. Special thanks to Cecil Shorts and Heath Miller. I left Evan’s at halftime of the first games to meet up with Rock at Xfinity Live which was a decent spot to watch the games. He went to the Sixers game so I left them at about 4 only to head over to Ed’s place who was my opponent in the other league I made the playoffs. Janikowski pretty much sealed my win over Ed to put me in the Championship in two leagues. If all goes well next week, I could net 950 bucks from my fantasy investment. Not too shabby. I also picked up 75 bucks from Fanduel with my expert team netting me a W. Fantastic plays by me in Dennis Pitta and Michael Crabtree.

2 weeks ago I was hanging low and now I’m riding high. Funny how that happens.

It’s 9am on a Saturday morning and I’m not hungover.

When you’re a one man show it’s hard to keep up with blog duties when you aren’t feeling 100%. Yesterday was a bit of an odd work day because we were helping out with one of my dad’s pet projects. He tore down a lot of “rubble” for lack of a better word from the upper floors of our building in the city. We rented a 30ft dumpster, which was also a process getting a permit (which we didn’t use), and I think the discussion of making this happened took weeks. So this process consisted of us filling barrels to somewhere between 50-100 lbs and then lugging them down flights of stairs and dumping them in the dumpster. This work was absolutely filthy and labor intensive. After the first hour I had sweat through my sweatshirt and I Jeff claimed “I looked like a raccoon or a drunk girl who’d been crying a puking and whose makeup was running.” This was coming off of a few days of drinking and after the work was completed at 5:30pm, let’s just say I wasn’t feeling great.

I came home, showered, and passed out for a few hours only to wake up and watch the Sixers and the end of the MNF game. My BarStool fanduel team was 1 point away from cashing for another 100 bucks. I’m up $317 in 2 weeks of playing with a strategy that has performed well in the past two weeks. I was having a hard time sleeping last night and awoke today feeling pretty yucky. I got through the day and just woke up from another 3 hour nap where I can say I’m feeling much better. I’ve been drinking tons of water and my eating schedule is almost back on track. To say that blogging was not a priority would be an understatement. I know the blog suffers from this but I don’t have much of a choice with a staff of one. Moving forward I should be able to get back to a more normal routine.