Girl Info

Ok, everyone seems absolutely flabbergasted at this news because I've got about 6 emails in the last 10 minutes, plus an IM from the long, lost Marcos last night. First, let me post a little picture collage that Kel made to send out to family and whatnot. As you can see, she's roughly half my size:



Believe me, I was less than pleased posing for those pictures a couple weeks ago in 90 degree heat, but these are the kinds of things that "Relationship Matt" has learned to do. Worlds are colliding!

Anyway, I'm ecstatic that I found the right the girl, and I hope all of you have the chance to meet her sometime. It seems like several of you are down in DC, and we're planning on coming down there at some point if we ever can get the timing to work.

I'm sure you all want to know how I proposed and all that. I'm not going into the juicy details that may or may not include one of my patented poems, but I did it at a little bed and breakfast in amish country that we stayed at last week. As Bottitta would say, it was "too cute".

I didn't know her ring size so I told the jeweler just to leave the ring like it was and we'd come in and get it sized later. Well, it turns out the ring I got was a 7 and she's a 4 1/4. She could almost wear it as a bracelet. Needless to say it was sliding all over the place this weekend, but she didn't want to take it off. We're going to have some skinny freaking ninos some day.

Ok, back to work kids...everyone enjoy your day!

haluego...

Mateo casado?!

Hey everybody! I don't have a ton of time here, but I wanted to make a quick post to the blog and let everyone know that as of this past weekend, I am prometido! For those of you that don't acordarse of much espanol, that means I am engaged to be married. Yes, to a woman, and no, this is not some sort of sick joke. I'll post more detail when I don't have people breathing down my neck at work.

One quick special shout out to Lobo who I somehow left off the email list about the blog. We love you, Lobo. Can you hear me now?

Sangria

Great comment by Betso on my original post. It got me to thinking about sangria parties that we used to have. As you may remember, our sangria parties usually started out something like this:




And ended up on top of a table something like this:



Notice Rick and Zoe's facial expressions. Priceless stuff here.We then of course stumbled into Heartland and generally made fools of ourselves prompting all the other patrons to ask, "What the heck goes on at those Spain parties?"

Well, my sister decided to make me dinner last weekend to "practice for when [she] gets married". She decided to make me some sangria and used a recipe that she found from some American cook that didn't know what she was doing. By that I mean the recipe didn't contain Franzia, Fanta, or 3/4 of a handle of Gilby's gin. Rachel Ray DOES NOT know sangria.

On a side note, congratulations to Bottitta on her pending wedding. I'm sorry mi amor, but I can't make it because I'll be stuck babysitting the family that's in town for my sister's wedding the day before. I wish I could make it!

Hasta la proxima, chicos.

Las Ramblas

Las Ramblas del hostal
Originally uploaded by ndbutter.

Hola de nuevo!

Not sure if anyone is keeping up with this at all, but I figured I had a few minutes here at lunch and would post.

So I was driving to the train station this morning and listening to radio. The guys on the morning show I like were talking about "nicknames" for somewhat perverse acts such as "Tea Bag" and "Cleveland Steamer". Automatically I thought of the now-infamous "Coversation" in Barcelona involving los cuatro Chorizos, Delay, Lobo, Finnane, and (possibly?) Bethany. I still have the covert video of this I shot, by the way. I can't remember if this was before or after I bought a fifth of Smirnoff for 4 Euros, mixed it with lemon juice, and drank it by myself in the hostal while everyone else was out. What a terrible night.

Anyway, here's a shot of the Hostal Benidorm where we stayed from the balcony overlooking Las Ramblas.

Who would have thought that one of my most vidid memories from Spain would include the terms "Rusty Trombone" and "The Ole' Houdini". Joder!

Anda ya, Estif!

Raf is a payasa
Originally uploaded by ndbutter.

Great to hear from Estif. When one hears the word "Estif", one can't help but think of the word "Raf". Raf is near the top of my (and probably all the chorizos') list of things I miss from Toledo. Unfortunately I hear that after being heartbroken by Estif, she became a monja and took on a life of celibacy, which once again proves my theory: nuns are hot.

Notice what "celos" Cesar has in the background there--of Raf, that is.

Hola!

Hi everyone! If you've reached this blog, I'm amazed. You're likely someone who studied abroad with me in Toledo, Spain during the Spring semester of 2002. I got to thinking recently that we haven't stayed in touch as well as many would have liked. The fact is that life is so incredibly busy that it makes it difficult to keep in touch.



If you're like me, you miss Spain a lot. Unfortunately the only time I've been back since our time there was for spring break senior year. I think one of the things that I'm going to attempt with this blog is to upload some of my old photos and maybe rehash some old memories. For those of you who don't know how blogging works, you can then post comments as you so desire.

If you're new to the world of blogging, you should check it out. You can do it for free on blogger.com and it's pretty easy. Also, for those of you familiar with XML and RSS feeds, you can subscribe to my feed for this blog so you can be updated whenever I post. For those of you that don't know what RSS/XML is, it's pretty much taking over the news world. If you go on Yahoo! News, CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, or basically any other news source, they have XML links. Basically this allows you to subscribe to a feed in a news aggregator so you can be updated automatically whenever something new is posted. All you have to do is drag and drop the little "XML" icon that you see to your right into your news aggregator, and you're good to go. Therefore, whenever I would post something on this blog, you would know within minutes (which I'm sure will be very important to you all).

Additionally, I've included a few links to Spain-related content that I thought you might find interesting. A guy named Ben Curtis does a podcast from Madrid that I find pretty enjoyable. A link to some of his sites is included. If you don't know about podcasting, it basically works like RSS/XML only it is audio content (hence the name derived from the iPod). I like to listen to this stuff during work.

Anyway, depending on the response and/or interest I get, I'll keep posting away.

Until next time,

haluego