Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my favorite week of the year – the start of March Madness, St. Patrick’s Day, and my birthday (the 19^th). I told my mom last night that if this happened when I didn’t have a child, responsibilities, a mortgage, and graduate school, I would have probably exploded into a fiery ball of beer, blarney, buffalo wings, and brackets. But alas, I am turning 35 years old, and indeed have a child, responsibilities, a mortgage, and graduate school. If I were to explode this year, it would be full of stress, bills, research papers, and a trace amount of beer and buffalo wings. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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This week, thou shalt not make one Charlie Sheen joke or reference, however his brother Emilio Estevez  is still fair game. But the real issue today is that my commute to work is getting the better of me. According to Google maps, it is 8.3 miles from my doorstep to my workplace of Drexel University. Not bad, right? But the commute takes me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour each day. My folly is that there is no good way to go. The options I have all gobble up money, time, my safety and my sanity. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, travel & foreign lands by Marty O'Connor
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This past Friday night, my girlfriend Cailin went out, so I had our son Jack all alone. I wasn’t wild about the prospect of watching Thomas the Train on repeat, so I thought of things to do. I am devastated that I couldn’t make my friend Rita Marley’s going away/wig out party, but I was thinking that showing up with a raucous, manic, wild(almost)three year old might not be a good idea. Then again, Rita is one of my brother Patrick’s best friends, so it may not have been so bad after all. But I hit the open South Jersey road with Jack, and while he played Angry Birds on my itouch, I thought about a place we could wander around and explore. I was having a comically bad day on Friday, and the place I decided to visit certainly didn’t help matters. I took Jack to the Voorhees Town Center, the shopping destination formerly known as the Echelon Mall. Instead of a fun night out, I wound up depressed over a once glorious shopping mall. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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Why was I wearing an Eddie Bauer fleece vest this weekend and listening to songs like “Far Behind” by Candlebox? Well, it was because this past weekend I had the opportunity to go to a basketball game at my alma mater – Mount Saint Mary’s University in the bustling metropolis of Emmitsburg, Maryland. And since I still can’t really let go of college even after almost thirteen years after graduating, this was a very special occasion to me. It was just what I needed, another reason to get outrageously nostalgic.   [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, sports by Marty O'Connor
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Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovebirds out there, Cupid’s arrow has hit me in the rear again. Last week, I fell in love with a new establishment in my town that serves a very tasty buffalo wing. And yes, while I am still on my diet, once a month I will need to allow myself to gorge on wings. A man can only eat so many twigs, nuts, and berries before he loses his mind! Plus, I am a card carrying member of a Wing Club. (Well, we don’t have cards….yet)   [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, recipes & food by Marty O'Connor
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This week, I am not really digging how I have been feeling lately. I’m in a bit of a rut; at least that’s how it seems. I’m not depressed or anything, but I guess I am down because of the weather, the time of year, and the fact that the Super Bowl featured two teams that weren’t the Philadelphia Eagles. Or maybe my rut is based on the fact that I think my proudest recent accomplishment is that I haven’t eaten a hot dog in nine months. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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Here in the Philadelphia region, we are up to our asses in snow, ice, and misery due to the poor weather. It’s had me cursing more than the lovable foul-mouthed 1980’s arcade legend Q-Bert. And as mentioned last week, I am also up to my ass in work, graduate school work, dirty diapers, and stress. And the ass of which I speak has been struggling to get into my wrinkle free pleated cotton Dockers lately. I can’t afford new pants, so it’s high time for me to get in shape! [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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This week I am teetering closer and closer to my first nervous breakdown. I am knee deep in graduate school work, we have an uninvited “mouseguest” problem, and my little boy bounces off the walls until midnight every night. My sleep is messed up, I’m out of shape, unmotivated, and out of sorts. The realization of my problems came to a head last night when I hazily sat through 1/4th of the movie “You’ve Got Mail” with my girlfriend and was actually getting into the storyline. My cure-all for this is time traveling in my mind back to the glorious mid-90s. The band joining me on this journey is the much misunderstood band The Goo Goo Dolls.     [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs, music by Marty O'Connor
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This past weekend, for the third year in a row, I joined my father at a religious retreat in the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia. And luckily, for the third straight year, I didn’t burst into flames the second I stepped on the retreat grounds. I spent some nice, holy, quality time with my very kind and caring father. It was a time of prayer, a time of reflection, and a time to catch up on all the sleep my toddler son is taking away from me. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, religion & philosophy by Marty O'Connor
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This week has been a walk down memory lane for two interesting milestones in my life. Twenty years ago this week I wore English Leather cologne to a high school party and a girl thought I peed myself. That’s a whole other story that I’ve told a million times, but I’d rather talk about the ten year anniversary of foolishly taking a job at an Iranian man’s lock and door hardware company. It was a nightmare from the get-go.     [Read more →]

Tags: all work, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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Welcome to 2011 ladies and gentlemen! Hard to believe that in a mere four years we will be riding hover boards, at least according to what Back to the Future 2 told us. I hope that 2011 is going to be a good year, and while I haven’t made any crazy resolutions, I want to make some positive changes in my life. This year I am hoping to get my groove back, like Stella did. However, I am hoping that doesn’t involve me being seduced by or sleeping with Taye Diggs.      [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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The local KMart store in my area has closed, it has apparently been there in Brooklawn, New Jersey for over thirty years. It has definitely been there for as long as I remember. And for some odd reason, I am bothered and saddened by this. I have this weird nostalgia/comfort zone thing where I hate to see businesses go under, and especially something that has been there forever. I almost had a stroke when the restaurant my grandfather owned for over 50 years (and that I basically grew up in) was getting gutted by the newest owners. My relief came when I called my grandmother to tell her and she said “things change Marty”, which is ironic because her shore house has not changed once in my 34 years of life! [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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This week I am doing a little soul searching. Well, maybe it’s not soul searching, but the revelation that I know way too much about music and way too little about practically everything else. Lately, I have been realizing that while I have the vast music knowledge on the level of someone who lives in their parent’s basement and has never been laid, I know very little or at least the bare minimum about other things in life. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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I made the tragic error yesterday that I have made many times before this — I foolishly tried to go to Chick-fil-A on a Sunday. As you may or may not know (and if you don’t know, please remove yourself from under that rock and brush the dirt and ignorance off), Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, recipes & food by Marty O'Connor
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Last night I went by one of my best friend’s parent’s house and saw that his dad decorated the house. The decorations have been roughly the same my entire life, and always instantly put me in the Christmas spirit. So I thought I would devote this week’s entry to the things I love about Christmas since I am brimming with holiday cheer! [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, music by Marty O'Connor
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No, I am not talking about the heartwarming 1993 movie about the love affair between a young boy and a killer whale. I am talking about the weekend arrest of grizzled country music star Willie Nelson for marijuana possession. It just ain’t right.

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Tags: drugs & alcohol, Marty digs, music by Marty O'Connor
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Ladies and gentlemen, as we dig into a new Marty Digs posting, I am asking you to excuse me.  My son Jack and I had the weekend together as mommy away doing another running race.  Jack decided he didn’t want to sleep much this weekend, which culminated in coming home from the Eagles game last night at 1am and finding him wide awake at home.  If there was a way to slur speech via typing, I am probably going to do it today. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, recipes & food by Marty O'Connor
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As the weekend came to an end, I realized that I spent it sobbing like a child at Toy Story 3, and almost getting mugged at the bank up the street from me. Just another typical weekend for Martin Joseph O’Connor. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, movies by Marty O'Connor
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It has been a very bizarre couple of days for me. I went to a hockey game and met a hair band legend, I have mice in my house, and I drank one of the malt beverages that the media is up in arms about and facebook is all abuzz over. Ahh, the highs and lows of a 34 year old father who still thinks he is 22. [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, Marty digs, sports by Marty O'Connor
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I live in Gloucester City, New Jersey, which is directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, PA. Not exactly the hustle and bustle of the big city, but still a relatively urban area complete with traffic jams, drug problems, stray dogs, and row homes. However, in a mere half hour drive south, you find yourself in what I like to call “God’s Country.” Southern New Jersey is almost all farmland and wide open space. Yes, the cookie cutter mansions and soccer mom SUV’s are starting to creep in, but it is still a peaceful, beautiful area. Regardless, a far cry from North Jersey and the smog, chemical plants, annoying accents, and rude folks that give my New Jersey its bad name.   

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Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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