Philly Steaks

I meant to do a weekend wrap up but never got around to it since I had a midterm in my management class last night.

All the same, this is where I kicked off this past weekend:

For anyone in the Mansfield/Grand Prairie/Arlington area Donnie's is located at 8020 Matlock Rd. in Arlington, TX. On this particular day I made the trip with my boy Doc Patton. The second you walk in the door you'll hear "Hey! Love you!" I'll admit, this caught me off guard at first but I'm used to it now. It's just Donnie's way of greating you. She does it ALL by herself. No help whatsoever. She doesn't write anything down. You place your order and she goes to cooking and tells you to "pay me later" (as in after you eat). She's originally from Philadelphia and while I've never been there, I've concluded this Philly Steak has to be just as good as anything I can find in Philly. From what I've been told, many people from Philly often frequent this place to get their taste of home. I'm going to bring my boy Steve here one day and get his take.

Quick peak at the menu:

My version sports mustard instead of mayo, no tomatoes, grilled onions, peppers and jalapenos, cheese (provolone...not the Cheese Whiz variety) and some special sauce she throws on them as well. She also does fries with salt and vinegar (or sweet potato fries if you prefer). At any rate, mine didn't last long:

She also makes tons of different desserts from scratch including all kinds of cheesecakes (my favorite is the sweet potato cheesecake...it didn't last long enough for me to snap any pics), bananna pudding and even gets Tastykakes flown in from Philadelphia. My mom loves the butterscotch ones so I always buy her some when I can.

Give Donnie's Hot Dog Shop & Philly Steak a try if you're in the area. I don't think you'll be sorry.

-M.G.M.

The One-Armed Bandit

I only have one arm for 10 more days.

Literally.

On Wednesday, February 9th, I had shoulder surgery to repair my torn labrm in my left shouler. It looks similar to this:

I tore it in college playing football and pretty much self diagnosed myself with a torn labrum the more and more I researched it but I just kept plugging along. We devised a nice little pad that rested between my shoulder and shoulder pads to minimize the impact on it during contact but it never stopped hurting. It eventually gave out on me during my Pro Day in March of 2007. Yea. DURING Pro Day. Within the crowd of NFL talent evaluators was Lovie Smith, head coach of the Chicago Bears, and I even think the GM of the Packers was there. Talk about bad timing.

Now I was by no means anything close to a star in my time at Texas. I was a role player that worked hard and enjoyed the experience. That being said, I knew if I could put together a decent Pro Day I might get a shot at trying out for some NFL team. Well God and my shoulder had other plans.

I was in the middle of doing reps of 225 on bench press and when I got to about 6 or 7 it tightened up really bad, pain shot through my arm and I just couldn't physically do anymore. Despite that, I was approached about playing in some arena leagues in the following months but I'd always told myself I'd give it one solid shot and let the chips fall where they may. I wasn't going to chase it. For some guys, they're ok with the journey. In my situation, I just wasn't comfortable with the ups and downs of always having to move every few months and never knowing what the future held.

I still have really tough days where I miss football to no end. That'll be a good blog one day. Prob a pretty long one. But for now I'm just counting down the days where I can successfully tie my shoes on my own again.

-The One-Armed Bandit aka M.G.M.

YouTube Thursdays: The Favorites

YouTube. I can seriously get lost in YouTube for hours. Below are some of the users I subscribe to as well as just some of my favorites over the years. I know I missed plenty so be sure to add them in the comments.

Foxxhole radio replays - I used to be a HUGE fan of the Foxxhole back when Claudia Jordan was an active member but she's no longer there. All the same, it's an entertaining show that comes on Sirius/XM radio on Friday afternoons and the segments are broken up by this user and reposted on YouTube. These four audio clips of Jamie Foxx and Kevin Hart crackin on each other was classic. It'll probably take out at least 30 minutes of your time but I PROMISE it's funny.










Phill Wade - Extrememly interesting. Pretty funny as well. The first two videos are what started it all.








Kid Fury - This dude is a little bit of everything but he's a damn fool too. Speaks a lot of truth but the comedy is all in the delivery. I don't care that's he's gay. Doesn't matter one bit to me for the record.








hotdamnirock - He's pretty much a damn fool. Complete tom foolery. Uses lots of foul language though so be careful where you are when you decide to watch any of his videos.







The rest are just some of the favorites. Enjoy.

Return of 4eva

I'm back! Ok so I never really "went" anywhere but I realized I suck at this blogging thing. I haven't blogged since August 11th, 2010.

That was 196 days ago. Or 28 weeks ago. Whichever you prefer.

At any rate, a lot has gone on in those 195 days so I figure I'll try to get you caught up as quickly as possible and to do that I'm going to put a slight spin on something I saw my homie Ben Baller do on his blog several entries ago. This is basically going to be huge chunks of what I did each month. I probably won't go into much detail at all on this thing but I figure it's a quick way to give you a brief overview of what I've been doing since I last posted. I figure I have a fairly limited following but from what I list here, feel free to ask me to blog about something in a bit more detail if you're interested. It'll be random words, phrases, locations, etc to describe what my life has been like the past few months. Some will have links to click, others will be just brief descriptions...who knows. At any rate, here goes...quick snapshot of August to February.

1. Swindled DirecTV for Sunday NFL Ticket
2. Buc-ee's, City Meat Market - Giddings, TX, Picked up a BBQ pit in H-Town for my pops, Chi'Lantro
3. Frost fantasy football league draft, bannockburn fantasy football league draft and NED Fantasy Football draft
4. Flew to Chicago on Friday morning for my boy Matt Melton's surprise birthday party that night. Flew to Houston on Saturday morning for Labor Day weekend. Texas football vs. Rice at Reliant Stadium with my brother and his girlfriend, my mom and dad. We got the W but it wasn't pretty. Jonathan's house for our live fantasy football draft. Remotely drafted for two more fantasy football leagues.
5. FFPC fantasy football draft. If you're keeping score at home, that's 7 fantasy football leagues total. 
6. Started graduate school. Working on my MBA at the University of Texas at Arlington in the evenings.
7. Texas football vs. Wyoming. We got the W.
8. Drove to Lubbock to visit my grandparents and to watch Texas play Texas Tech. We got the W.
9. Drove to Austin to watch Texas play UCLA. We got embarrassed at home. Sign of things to come.
10. Texas/OU weekend. House party the Friday night before. Torre aka DJ Swavor ripped it. Texas lost to OU in relatively inspired effort. Still doesn't matter much though. We still lost and all my Sooner friends let me hear it.
11. Off campus recruiting for work.
12. Texas went to Nebraska and kicked their teeth in. Gave me a false sense of hope.
13. My Aunt Brenda passed. Funeral was the same day as Texas losing to Iowa St at home. Yep. Iowa St.
14. Texas lost to BAYLOR at home. Officially done with this team for 2010. We don't lose to Baylor in football. Just shouldn't happen. Texas goes on to lose to KState, Okie St and A&M (with a meaningless win against Florida Atlantic in there somewhere.
15. Drive to Austin then San Antonio then Houston over the course of the Thanksgiving Holiday.
16. Finished the semester with a 3.5 GPA. Suite tickets to see Mike Vick and the Eagles beat the Cowboys at Jerry World.
17. Got some new furniture for the crib
18. Christmas party at the crib
19. Hooping on Saturdays at the gym with Marty, Mike, Toasty and the fellas. Church on Sundays. Pretty consistent weekends.
20. New watch from Ben. I'll have to go in detail about how I was able to "meet" him in a future blog. Whether he knows it or not, he's inspired me a great deal here recently.
21. My Godson was born. Charlvin Torian Doty.
22. Christmas in Austin and Houston. Managed to get out of the H with my Aunt Lorraine's legendary Lemon Cake. Love getting to spend time with my family.
23. Crowned champion of Jonathan's, FFPC's AND MILF's fantasy football leagues. Finished 3rd in two other leagues. Netted about $4,900 on the year from that. Who says fantasy football is just a hobby?
24. Flew to Austin and back in the same day to make sure I had enough AAdvantage miles to carry my status' into 2011 (I'm gold)
25. New Year's dinner with the neighborhood crew (Doc, Pink, Coby, Andrea, Art, Michelle, Trey, Tammy, Jorge and Carmen)
26. New Year's Eve party at the crib. Fish fry at Trey & Tammy's crib.
27. Added on to my outdoor kitchen
28. Started my second semester of grad school. Taking statistics, ethics and a management course this semester. So far, so good.
29. Got hooked on Big K.R.I.T., Dom Kennedy, Kendrick Lamar- preciate the recommendation Kandyce. Also started jamming Vado, Yelawolf and Big Sean a lot more. Keep Rick Ross, Wale, Bruno Mars, J Cole, Kid Cudi, Travie McCoy and Wiz in the rotation.
30. Stupid snow on top of ice
31. Super Bowl 45 festivities in Dallas with my brother Matt and my patna Ernest (Torre bailed out too early..sucks for him). Ended the night at Onyx and saw Keri Hilson, Money May, Drake, Jeezy, Drake, Trey Songz, Ace Hood, DJ Khaled, Andre Johnson, Eric Berry, etc. Nuff said. Super Bowl 45 watch party at the crib that night with a few friends.
32. Stupid ice and snow...again! Surgery to repair my torn labrum in my left shoulder. Oxycodone. Promethazine. #every4hours Thank. You. God.
33. Post-op appointments. Rehab.
34. Back to Dallas. Met up with my pops at the airport.
35. Picked up truck from being serviced. Had inspection done. 
36. My boy Coby's wife's (Andrea) birthday celebration that night at Skye Bar.
37. UTAAA conference at work. Discovered Delicious, HootSuite and Google Reader. Streamlined my life.
38. Rehab. Work. Class. Story of my life these days.
39. Love conference at church. BJs Restaurant Brewhouse for dinner. PIZOOKIE!
40. Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Errands. Back to the crib. NBA All-Star Saturday night. Church. Picked up my Little. Errands. Flipped between the NBA All-Star game and TV shows.
41. Discovered Kid Fury on YouTube. Hilarious. Thanks Lauren.

That's the quick recap. I'm sure I missed a ton in there obviously but I'll try to keep this thing a little more regular from here on out so hopefully I never have to do that again. I think I safely say that I'll blame Twitter for my lack of blogging. I think I say so much in my tweets that I don't have anything to blog on...then again...I only get 140 characters on Twitter...maybe this will turn into a continuation of my tweets.

At any rate...that's my Return of 4eva.

-M.G.M.