This weekend we're going to Hotlanta to celebrate wifey's birthday with her folks, then we'll cruise over to the Crabbs on Sunday to chill it with them. This week has been a busy one at work, just trying to do my job and do it well. I often joke about work, about not doing much, or knowing what the crap I'm supposed to do but I really like my job and like doing it well. And this week thats what I've been trying to do.
I'm trying to wrap up my article for the pulse but I've been havign a hard time working on it.
We celebrated the Wife's big old birthday today. I got her some bagels from Panera for breakfast, then we went to work (thats not special we always do that), then I was going to take her to the Brick Oven Grill but two of my co-workers disuaded me from going so I made reservations for Belagios. However Wife felt guilty for going there since the price was so much so we skipped out on it and went out to Macaroni Grill. I got the same thing I always get some sort of super pasta with proscuito, shrimp, and chicken thats not to expensive and the wife got some garlic pasta that i don't like. Their bread is so dang good, I'm not sure whether Carrabas or their's is better. Carabas is more pure wholesome bread whereas Macaroni grill has all sorts of herbs and weed in it that make it good.
Then we went to Target to buy stuff, then to DQ for desert, the traditional dipped cone, pure, innocent, yet delicious to the cone--just like me. Then we came back and opened her gifts. I did pretty good i must say so. I got her the Clay Aiken Cd which she wanted, the Dumb and Dumber DVD which is a favorite of hers, a picture frame with some pictures in it, and a pillow for the bath tub. Good stuff. I told her what i was going to buy her which was a slip cover for the couch but felt that she should pick that out so i didn't buy it. We had a good time then she watched the Bachelorette and watched some chick pick the wrong guy or something. All I know is that I'm Emperor Mao in Civ 3...
Anywho I worked pretty steadily on a review for the pulse that should be done by tomorrow, i would have gotten it done today but I actually have to work a few hours out of the day as to not warrant me getting fired.
We had a great time today and I love my wife very much and can't wait till her next 23rd birthday.
Well its official St. Louis sports are dying. Today Joel Quenville, the
Blues winningest coach was fired for sub par performance. I'm not sure how
much of it was his fault since he wasn't given much to go with this year. I
mean he's got Kachuck who is an ok Forward that's like a more physical
version of Brett Hull, though Hull had/has a better shot than Kachuck. They
have Doug Weight but i mean isn't he like 89? And Pronger who is the
backbone of the team but doesn't have the leadership qualities that he is
looked to for. Why they didn't sign say Darrian Hatcher or some other high
powered guy in the off season is a mystery to me, granted Hatcher is out of
commision right now. They let the other teams gobble up the great players
and hope that the tradition of going to the playoffs year after year won't
end. Well it looks like this year is the year it ends. Personally I blame
Pleau the GM, he hasn't gotten the great stars in that he should. He lets
teams like Detroit and Colorado hog all the great players and expects to go
up against these powerhouses with has beens and unproven youth and no goalie
and win?? Hockey is a like baseball at times with Detroit being the Yankees
and Colorado being the Braves of the 90s. However unlike baseball these
great players can be gotten because their salaries, though big, are not
astronomical like baseball players. Though the cool cool thing about hockey
is a nobody can always have a shot against a juggernaut, Miracles happen in
hockey.
But then theirs the Cardinals... what are they doing??? They make one big
deal and thats keeping Poo hole. Great he can't win the division by himself.
They didn't go after any big name players either this off season. And now
the Cubs and Astros will dominate the cards all season long and we'll have
something similar to the blues's season this year, disappointment.
Then their's the Ram's Mad Man Martz is running the ship like an
insane assylum and is foolishly squandering his players. Guh.... where's teh
St. Louis Steamers?? WHere are you St. Louis Storm??? St. Louis Stampede WE
NEED YOU!!!
This year I'm sort of torn. I think Edwards is kinda of cool since he's a southerner he's not as bad as Kerry. I find it funny that so many people like AFL CIO and all those Union groups endorce Kerry a man who's never had to work a day in his life. And if you want to brag about your service in Vietnam then lets vote in a real vet who lost a limb or something, at least they'd have some perspective. Plus Kerry is frankly the ugliest politician I've ever seen, i don't want him representing america to the world because frankly he is one ugly dude.
Though Bush isn't really helping himself appeal to the working class. This whole odd thing with the new overtime rules, that seems to me to be a way to screw people out of their overtime pay, what i've heard of it i don't like. Then there's the whole dumb immigration thing, that idea was dead from the get go though so its pretty much a moot point. Iraq war??? Well Ok bush here's the deal, plant some massive destructive weapons in Hussein's beard and call it a day, or put them in that spider hole, i mean just frame the guy we'd buy it. No child left behind hasn't been a great idea though I admire the courage of bush to get somethign going no other president has really gotten anything done as far as education is concerned, granted this plan has failed and screwed up a lot of great public schools.
I don't know what to say about the Bush Presidency' its been a weird ride. I'd like to think he's better than the other guy but really I haven't been too convinced on anything or impressed by much. I go 50/50 with the Iraq war so I don't hold that against him. I like the tax cuts I think that was a great idea and fear a democrat merely for the threat of more taxes. HOwever I don't agree with all the spending, Nasa to me is a boondoggle thats not necessary, the Military has so much wasted money but thats not bush's fault thats just the way it is. I mean you think of how many things are taxed in this country insurance tax, sales tax, income tax, land tax, property tax, inheritance tax, and I'm blown away with the lack of ability to take all this money and create not only a balanced budget but a budget that is decreasing. Thats the odd thing here with Bush is Republicans have tried to become the small federal government that doesn't spend much however Bush has thrown that all up for grabs making most of the world going WHAT THE??? That leaves democrats a perfect position to come in and go, "Look he's spending more money than we did, and at least we spent money on domestic stuff not wars." Which is what they'll argue and it will be very convincing to much of the American public. Granted teh economy is not related to the President in the office, most people know this. Thats why I don't give the great economy of the 90's to either Bush/Regan, or Clinton because I think it was all a matter of timing and things working out right. I think the tax cuts Regan had in place did maybe help but frankly it was the tech boom that made the 90s boom not the tax cuts. Now if the economy gets going again it will be because large companies have cut the jobs, trimmed teh fat, and now they've been working on their infrastructure and once thats secure they'll go on and expand again. Its a cycle of expanding and contracting.
So who am i gonna vote for this year? I have no clue. I'd be tempted to maybe vote Edwards but he's got an uphill battle. Kerry's too ugly, and Bush I think is sometimes a little too out of left field for me to handle. Maybe Nader will do?
The weekend ended well. I played lots of Bond on Sunday as well as lots of Civ. Work was arduous today as I feel like I'm torn sometimes between my working life and my personal life and find that sometimes I just can't leave the home stuff at home. So it was a bit of multi tasking at work, work for a while then make some phone calls to get things settled. House stuff is going ok we're not really any where farther though on progressing towards anything.
We went up to Covenant to play Volleyball and I pretty much lost the game on a few key hits, or should I say mishits. I did have a Meet the Parents moment when one of the guys spiked the ball right at my nose, luckily it didn't bleed though I kind of wanted it to so I could get the attention and sympathy.
We have these old Time Magazines at work that a guy used to bring in so the men could have something to read while in the men's room. Unfortunately he got fired so the influx of Time was halted. However the ones he left still get read and re-read from time to time. I was reading an issue from back in October or so and it had this commentary/opinion piece bashing bush and why people like to bash bush. It spoke a lot about the "Stolen election" and it really bothered me. For starters let me just say I'm not a huge Bush fan. I think in general he hasn't been all bad but he's really dropping the ball on a few things thats allowing for his critics to just easily decimate him. But the whole democratic/liberal slant that Bush stole the election is the biggest crock of horse crap I've ever heard. The election was in no way stolen. Democrats are just mad, and still mad cause they can't let things go, I mean look at how they idolize Kennedy he didn't do squat yet they praise him as if he were the messiah of American Democracy.
And really, I mean come on democrats, you're a party for the people, you're the middle to lower classes's party. You bank on the people who are either poor, dumb, or both with funding from hollywood and the Northeast. Without California or New England/New York you wouldn't even exist. So you're all upset because of some hanging chad bull or some fact that the ballots were hard to read, I mean come on! You're the party going for the dumb people's votes you got what you payed for, them voting for the wrong people. Its not George Bush's fault your voters can't read or select a candidate from a simple list.
I mean and come on Al Gore??? What were you thinking? He's the Bob Dole of the Democratic party. He's the never winner who doesn't belong in politics because he's never even step foot in his home state. The guy is the typical washington politician and that is the one with all the bad stereotypes. I mean Al Gore vs George Bush---looking back they were both putz's but lets face it, the cuter putz won. I mean at least Bush is kind of funny and has a personality be it sometimes oddly childish at times. That was just my feeling on last election, moving on to this year's election....
I just don't really see a huge need for guns being pretty much a passive man myself. I figure if someone comes in my house they probably got a gun and are less afraid to use it than i would ever be, so pretty much I'm a goner if a burglar gets in, unless its the Hamburglar, I think I could take that sissy. I'm just not a gun man. I remember when i was a kid my dad let me shoot his berretta peewee pistol. The thing looked like it was a cap gun but i shot it and it felt like the world had ended. I heard nothign, saw nothing, and in a complete daze whirled around and pointed teh gun at my dad and was like, "Here take it I don't like it." That was one of the last time's i fired a gun.
I like 22's there simple don't really do much damage but can be used for target shooting. A shotgun....OK i'll give its fun to shoot the skeet so i deem that one ok. But really do we need semi automatic rifles, pistols and bazookas? Is Cobra mounting an assualt on the US?? No are the British ever coming back for us?? No they gave up and moved on to better things like... British comedy... they failed at that too by the way. I mean guns are so 90s, I mean what are you going to do Snoop dawg go bust a cap? Thats stupid! And second ammendment rights... give me a break. They didn't have computers back then, now we can just simulate shooting if we need to go kill something. And if we want to protect our house call Brinks security up and let the pros handle it there Rambo. Either that or Lousiville Slugger makes a wonderful bat that when swung at the proper angle and velocity will crack almost any skull: the criminally insane, trespassers, robbers, gang members, white's, asians, blacks, greens... it doesn't discriminate. IT HITS HARD AND HURTS!! Regardless of creed, religion, ethnic group, or left handed or right.
The wife got asked to do a special project at work today. Her boss mistakenly told a client that they'd clean a house the day before the clients moved in without thinking about who would clean this house. It being noon on a friday and the people wanting to move in on saturday he was a little hard pressed to find someone, luckily wifey was more than willing to get out of the office for any reason especially to rake in some big bucks. SO she was exhausted so we stayed in and watched the Runaway Jury, thats where all this gun talk arose from. It was better than I expected, I mean that John Cussack he's so hot right now. It was pretty much an antigun lobby movie and if you hate the NRA, guns, or Charlton Heston movies then you'd love this movie. I liked it being somewhat of an anti-gunite myself. The movie was good it had Gene Hackman in his usual role, in fact he may have been the dad from the Tenenbaums reincarnated or something in this one. John Cussack was his suave nerdy self that makes us geeks have an Uber geek to look up to. The chick from the mummy was fine and Dustin Hoffman was the liberal lubricant greesing the wheel. But really the star of the movie has to be Jeremy Piven who in my mind is possibly one of the greatest actors of our generation. Check the link to see who i'm talking about.
I mean PCU just is one of my favorite movies. That was truly his best work but he does a good job of some support work in this one being the counterpart to Hackman though he lacks both the cunning drive and the money. Lets raise our glass to an unheralded actor--Jeremy Piven. . So the movie was good, liberal, but aren't we all in some corner of the bleeding heart?
Notice the sudden drop in posts now that I'm backed to the dial up? Yeah i miss the cable. I figure we'll get cable modem in the house, at least I'd like it and we'll probably get the 10 dollar a month cable since we won't probably have reception.
The house stuff is coming together, hopefully. We're getting out with some cheaper costs as for closing costs n stuff thanks to the connections wife has. So hopefully that will be all taken care of soon.
We had a intramural vollyball game tonight so we made the journey to covenant and got beat by some carter girls and guys. It was a good game we just blew it at some key points... ok I blew it. My brother Concerned might be coming up this weekend which will be good to hang out with him.
Oh, exciting news, no more south beach! I figured it best to get off the band wagon before it crashed and went up in flames. We had Little Ceasers on monday, which i mean 5 bucks for a large is pretty unbeatable. Then with last week's escapades with the kids and then last night was the kicker. Wife made this amazing ham soup and we were sitting there soupin it up and the wife asks for my culinary expert opinion, "Whats it missing?"
"Nothing its great."
"Its missing something I know it. What is it?"
"Bread would be nice."
"YES! Bread!"
We put the meal on hold, I thoughtfully played Civ 3 while she whipped up some yummy bisquick buscuits that were awesome with the super soup. (I should point out per the request of my wife that she can and does normally make real made from scratch buscuits that are way better than the super quick bisquick ones however the rumbling in our stomachs called for something quicker than the delicious made from scratch biscuits that taste better than manna)
And thus the carbless lifestyle was flushed down the toilet. We still plan on doing the salad thing for lunch, I've gotten to really enjoy it. Breakfast will go to a more fiberous All Fiber or Total type of cereal while dinner will remain a sensible meal now with possibly the addition of whole wheat pastas and or bread. We figure we tried, we lost, now lets go back to a normal way of eating. Though I still might get that carb friendly ice cream i like it for some odd reason. Also i must say the sugar free resees peanut butter cups are quite good.
Tonight the wifey went out to Moho Burrito to meet a friend while I finally got to endulge myself on Mesh's Donnie Darko. I must say the movie was quite the mind job. The movie was amazingly shot and directed and was just a really well done weird movie. Much like how people praised the Matrix for its many levels and dabbling in philosophical stuff one could easily say this movie far surpassed the Wachocoski bros attempt. And thats not just because of my bias against Keanu Reeves and love of Jake Gylnhall, he's so hot right now. I must say Donnie Darko will definatley be one of those movies I ponder in my cube tomorrow. And man o man was that a freaky bunny... i had to turn on a light in the room...I was definately fearful, Patrick Swazey would not be happy. Then again I also drank a beer thus adding to my transgressions.
Well then I took a wonderful movie going experience and almost shoved it down the tubes by catching the tail end of Jurassic Park 3: The Desire for More Money. I mean on one had I have this great Indy film, I assume it was an indy film... it did have noah wyle in it and he only does indy films, and then you have the utter epitomy of Hollywood bafoonery. The fact that Steven Speilberg, who was behind the making of Jurassic Park 3 but didn't want to put his name on it for obvious reasons, is even considering, and has considered, making Jurassic Park 4 is possibly the most horrifying thing. I swing back and forth from liking speilberg to completely hating all that he makes, sentimental drivel that is at times thought provoking but usually just visually overstimulating. You kind of come out of a traditional Speilberg movie and be like, "Was that good? I'm not sure but man those graphics were amazing.... what was the movie about??? Spaceships or Nazis??? ....... Dinosaurs? I never knew the man had so much talent."
Oh and just for the record Nazis, Dinosaurs, and Aliens are pretty much all the same, same casting at least. A dino is a tame version of a Nazi, aliens are just out of place Nazis, and nazis are just dino wannabes. Make sense? Didn't think so, bed time.
Man I got get me a cable modem!!! So we aquariumed it today, good stuff. I like that place, people smell, but the fish are cool. We then went to Covenant and saw some old schoolers there. Shot some hoops and kicked a soccer ball with the kids, tried to wear em out... backfired. I'm pooped. Though i needed a little exercise. It'll be nice moving up here we'll be able to use that gym without any fees. That was a huge seller for me, free gym, i mean the YMCA for two people costs about 60 i think and for two at Sports Barn, the classier gym in town, it costs like 80 or 70. So we'll hopefully use it when we move here. Plus it will keep us from ever being tempted to buy a worthless piece of exercise equipment. I hate buying exercise equipment, i feel its a waste of money cause you know, I know, and the belly knows that that treadmill, health rider, nordic track, rowing machine, weight set, bow flex, and personal trainer won't be used in two monthes time. This way least I'm not shellin out the big bucks, well i am for the house but least i get equity with that. Wife's gonna cook up some taco's tonight, we had some chinese for lunch which was too much. We went to the one by the now defunct bi lo in stelmo. I heard Bi Lo's trying to get out of Chatt, which would be cool since they pretty much just suck. We need like Kroger or Publix here to class things up. Win Dixie's good but a little weak and small. Man i tell you what nothing beats Shnucks, the grocery store chain in St. Louis. its awesome. They're huge and only in St Louey. No other chain can bust into the st. Louis scene because all the big grocery stores there are st. louis owned and operated. An outsider would have to buy one of the existing st. louis chains to break in. But man Shnucks, Dierbergs, and Straubs are the big three fave st. louis grocers and they're good. I'm telling you Jews know how to run a grocery store, right Mesh? They're always clean, friendly, and good food. Got a good Kosher selection too! Well I'm diverging from sanity, time to go see what the crap those kids are up to.
So one thing i realized going through my whole crisis about law school was
the story of the dog who had a steak. I remember reading this old story when
i was a kid and it involved two things i like, dogs and steaks. The dog is
happily running around steak in mouth, so happy that he had foudn this
wonderful precious piece of grade A beef. When all of a sudden he goes
across a brook (there was a bridge he didn't walk on water or anything). He
stops midway over the bridge and looks down into the creek and sees another
dog with a steak just like his in his mouth. He became so jealous and wanted
that dogs steak too, he wanted to have more steak. The once perfectly ample
steak that was his pride and joy was now not enough he wanted that other
dogs steak. So he opened his mouth to bark at the other dog when all of a
sudden his own steak dropped from his mouth and into the stream.... then he
looked at the other dog and saw his steak was gone too.
That story was so poinant, or at least i will make it so in my own head. I
was like the dog. I had a great job but i wanted more, i saw the possiblity
for more but what i realized was if i went for more, i might lose what i
had. SO instead i kept my own steak and bought a house and now I can finally
have a BBQ and invite all my friends to share in my steak. Hmmm.... maybe I
should have gone with The Little Engine That Could....
When the working day is done, I just want to have fun. We took the kids to Pisa Pizza and that was a living hell. I think the boy had more pizza on his face than in his mouth. Then when he hugged me in my white button down shirt i was just so overjoyed. Then we went to blockbuster so the kids could rent some movies. They picked out two real hum dingers, Pocahontas 2: Poca My Hontas Some More which was the most lame cartoon since the Land Before Time 340. Something happened with John Smith and then Poca and then some other dude then they went to England and Jackie Chan started doing stuff with Owen Wilson.... oh wait that was Shanghai Knights.... the movies were pretty much on the same level on the crapometer. Now we're watching... well the kids are, Batman Beyond which for some odd reason I've already seen. Tomorrow is the house inspection and then we may do the aquarium. We'll see. After tonights time at Pisa Pizza I've become a firm believer that children should been neither seen or heard. Actually I like kids, especially when they're asleep.
A cable modems, so fast so sweet. Up here on the Mtn, Chattanooga looks so small, how high i am, and how low is the rest of chattanooga. I can see why the people of the mtn think they're better than the rest of the scum... er chattanooga. I mean they're so much higher than the rest of them... so... so much higher. One thing i love is how if you live on Lookout you say, "I live on the mountain." Where as if you live on Signal or any of the other so called "mountains" of the area you have to specify, "I live on signal mtn... *sigh*" As if they know that their mountain is not the true mountain. I wonder if the mtn folk even say that they are even more spiritual than the rest of chattanooga and the other mountains. I mean they got Lookout Pres the preverbial Mecca of Pres churches and its more reformed and uptight step brother RP. Interesting, the higher the mtn, perhaps the higher the spirtualometer??? Who knows.
I asked the boy if he wanted to play, he said "no" and is playing by himself. I wouldn't wanna play with me either I'd probably sit on a Gi Joe or something crushing the very life out of Commander Duke.
Work is getting more interesting. We finally have a boss, she seems nice. Bosses have never really bothered me one way or another. I usually just do my job and really the only time I've ever had interaction with a boss is when I go up to them, "Hey I've been working here for over a year... can i have like a raise or something??" Which usually ends in me getting a 10 cent an hour raise... or to translate that into corporate lingo, i get two honey roasted peanuts instead of one. Also had my year end appraisal today, overall I guess I'm good. That was my self appraisal. Though since most of my time has been spent in training there's not really much to reflect upon. My job is getting more and more busy as those who used to receive five to ten emails a day from me are now lucky to receive one or two. Though special exception is always the Crabbinator as we always seem to get a good email conversation going. Roe's emails usually consist of him claiming that I am some sort of Spaceman, which although true is totally irrelevant.
baker is so cool!!!!
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Well, the kids are watching some crazy cartoon now so i got away. Ahh TV, what would parents do without it, they'd probably actually have to raise their own kids.
So we got this house thing done. Its pretty crazy how fast it happened. We heard of the house a few weeks ago from the wife's boss. She told us of a house going up on the mtn a little above our price range but pretty perfect for what we want. They kind of hooked up the people by showing it for them and doing all the paper work for free. So wife's boss showed us the house on sunday, we really really liked it. We called the wife's folks to see if they could come up to check it out, while at the same time were informe that the sellers wanted to get a contract squared away fast so they can close on their house that they're moving into. So that put us in the hot seat and luckily the wife's folks weren't too busy and came up tuesday afternoon. They looked at the house, liked what they saw, we filled out a contract and boom done and done. Well we wanted them to do some repairs and they countered with a bit of a higher price for said repairs and we agreed to it. Buying a house is a pretty crazy situation, its pretty exciting yet deathly terrifying. We hope to have all the funds ready by the closing in april. So its official i guess, the Holton's have a house. At least now if you come visit us you won't have to sleep on a couch.
Well its official, we put a contract on a house. Its fessyt8 \fn-ppkth 4t7o0-9tyuj6, that was Baker, the child we're babysiting for the rest of the week/weekend. He's five, and the girl is 6. So that should be funn.... right... so anyway back to the 0 house. The house is Lookout mtn, stop by you crazy covenant students on your way down the mtn, granted we won't live there till april but i'm sure the current owners won't mind. WEll i'll write more later, the kids are out of control
So we churched it today, churched it good. We then hung with the Roes and had our usual intense gaming session. I won settlers heh heh, but we won't go there. Also the guys were well, well, well on their way to a victory in spades when we had to cut it short to book it up the Mtn to check on a house. THe house was pretty swank! Its a 4 bed 2 bath up the street from the Handy Andy. It was nice, needs work but all stuff we want and can do. The thing is we wanna get it all situated before the deal and queer but our parents, who sort of give us a good barometer of unbiased opinion can't come up for a few weeks. Though granted we say this everytime we look at a house, but this could be the one. We really liked this one and think its got both the location and size we want. Plus with me settling the question of not wanting to go to lawschool we feel that we can pursue this without fear of having to backout of it. On another note... my worth as a husband was proven last night....
No, not that. The extremely thoughtful and wonderful gifts were given to my lovely wife. Oh yeah thats right gents, I am the man, with the plan, who can, beat stan. First the wife opened up her gift of sensual bath bubbles, oils, a massage ball thingy, and a contoured bath bar to much delight. Then she opened the second gift and my worth as a man was proven: Pride and Prejudice on DVD... oh yeah eat and reap boys and girls hope that your husbands, boyfriends, or male gigalos are as thoughtful as I am. Whether i actually watch these dvds remains to be seen. We went to go see Along Came Polly and to my surprise it wasn't as funny as expected. All the good parts of the movie were seen in the previews so it was a bit of a let down. Also three, count them three! People's cell phones wrang in the movie all in a one person radius of me. One guy was right next to me and i will relay the conversation he had....
"Mom I can't talk right.... mom I'm in a movie.... I can't.... really?... thats great...."
This whole time I'm staring right at him in amazement, my jaw was wide open and i was maybe 6 inches from his face... WHAT IN THE WORLD! I mean for the love you turn your bloody dang phone off when you go see a movie and if you forget you then don't pick the bloody thing off and start talking as if everyone won't know you're talking. ITS A MOVIE RETARDS TURN OFF YOUR DANG PHONE! I was about to start ripping heads off but luckily I didn't.
After that we waited for ever to get into carrabas. It was sooooooo carbirific good. I ate so much bread and apetizer that I had two bites of my dinner and felt like my stomach was going to explode and kill everyone in the room, luckily it didn't. We then went home and did things... THE END
I just tried to enlighten the wife with Bill and Ted's excellent adventure... it proved to be one of those movies that you just go at the end, "You just should've been there...." A lot of the historical late 80s significance is lost in time, much like how Bill and Ted themselved found themselves lost in time, themselves. Just thought I'd drop one more themselve's in that sentence, mostly. I think Fred Thompson and I should do a third movie Fred and Chris's Excellent Adventure where we play and older version of Bill and Ted only our names are Fred and Chris and instead of going back in time we have a zaney adventure through space that takes us to the planet Zurtron. Sounds exciting and mystifying.
I came to the conclusion that I'm dropping my cell phone from our bill, i figure i never use it, no one ever calls me and i hate paying a ton of money for it. So we'll get rid of wifey's and she'll take mine, thus my number will remain the number. I just don't like paying a ton of money for something that basically is a "husband locator." Besides wifey i don't think anyone bothers to call me. Plus with all the minutes we have one should be more than plenty. We decided last night not to do the super duper fancy shmancy knock your pantsy dinner tonight. We were gonna try to do belagios but really we just don't feel like paying tons of money for it. So we'll probably Carraba it. We like their food, and it will be a huge treat for us anyway since we'll gorge ourselves on bread and pasta. We'll also catch a flick, a wife pick, Along Came Polly which she's been wanting to see for some time. Things are good here. Though I must say once a civ game ends its hard to get one going again. I was the chinese and i made it all the way to 320 ad and i still coulding my lazy chinese people to discover any technology.... they still didn't know how to make an aqueduct or let alone a map... dumb chinese... in the game, not in real life.
Brah, work was the pits today, trying to get myself out of the mucky muck. I had an intense head ache all afternoon, possibly from the large amounts of nuts i ate. I've heard if you eat a lot of nuts it can cause migraines so maybe that was the case. Either way i felt like crapola and went home and hopped in the bed and then an hour later downed a few cups of coffee and i was back to normal. We went to the church meeting at the C-stone and it was very productive. We called two deacons, two men i think are both well deserving of the call and hope that both accept the call. I think they'd both provide the church with the additional leadership that the church needs. Plus the church seems lost in itself at times with the amount of general stuff and i think two more deacons will help be able to organize and carry out more projects of sorts. I was happy both got called as i thought it was going to be more of a "pick your favorite one" which I thought was a little odd, thankfully it was "elect who you want and you can elect both." Our ONE existing deacon has worked his tail off but has been unable to keep up with all of the tasks at hand, which is totally understandable, i mean its a lot of stuff to do.
Also wifey volunteered for the building comittee to help find us a permanent home. Our church still meets in an office building on mtn creek road. Both janelle and i think finding a permanent home for our church will really help solidfy the church and give it both a bit of permanence and possibly a more formal atmosphere for worship. Though i'll probably be scolded by any presbo-terian (spelled improperly for humorous reasons), i think that an actual church building is sort of important. Obviously not important in comparison with say preaching, teaching, fellowship, and worship however a building, in our case, can convey a sense of this church is here to stay. Plus maybe its the catholic in me but an actual church building seems to convey the mindset of worship. I mean i don't need a crucifix, stained glass windows, or any statues or anything but an actual building helps, i don't know maybe its my weak mind coupled with my weak faith. They might as well excommunicate me...
Work went bye quickly thankfully. Our workloads are increasing by a 1/3 so i should be sinking faster in the quick sand here soon. So apparently the Pulse wants some game articles... I should maybe bust one out tomorrow. I need to brainstorm a bit at work, I have some ideas but i need to write them down otherwise they'll get lost in this big empty head of mine.
After work the wife's boss, the Trump of Chatt, offered us some free junk. They rent houses out over in Redbank and said their former tennents left some junk if we wanted it... Ah, nothing better than rootin through other's garbage... a lesser man might be insulted by such an insinuation that I would like someone elses man, luckily I'm a great man and don't succomb to such fits of pride. Most of the trash was too trashy for even the likes of me. Their was an old Koss cd player that seemed adequate but we really didn't need it. There was also a vacuum but it looked like it had sucked its last suck. The big find of the day was a 1959 copy of the game Risk in pretty much mint condition. Looks like it was almost never used. Its really weird too nothing like the nowaday risk. No major plans for the weekend, doing the valentine thing on saturday but thats hush hush, and no its not cause i don't know what i'm doing yet... thats only part of the equation. Well my computer's making weird noises, time to blow this popsicle stand before it blows me... thats sounds bad... ditch...
I officially have reached old age... sort of. You know you're an old fogey
when you go to Best Buy and want to complain to the manager that their music
is too loud. I was in the cd section and I felt like my ears were about to
bleed the bass was so loud. I thought to myself, "Someone should really tell
them that they're music is just too darn loud." Then i stopped, gave a
little gasp, and realized I am my father. My dad won't step foot in Bestbuy
because of the overload of noise, funny, I too wanted to step out of Best
Buy. It was so sad, I actually hated being in my favorite store. I felt
every thing I knew in the world was a lie... well not really
I mean whats the big deal with Bass? Thump Thump Thump... wow that's cool!
I'm being sarcastic of course. Oh and another thing... Rap music sucks.
So I went out the mall, or if you will I "malled it" today. For those outside of St. Louis or even perhaps the Mid-west that joke may be lost. "Maul's" is a barbeque sauce made in St. Louis, I think. And the theme song on the Commercial goes something to the effect of, "A grills a grill, a thrill's a thrill, but what makes them great is Maul it!" Or something like that.
So the Mall eh? Yeah went to the mall to buy some Valentino gifts for the wiferino. Its hard for me shopping for anyone really. I have a hard time thinking of what people like. Though I think I came out with some good winners, it was tough and believe it or not the Game Exchange did not have anything for my wife... neither did the Nintendo Game Cube Section of Best Buy... how odd. Actually i've been trying to write some articles for the Pulse on the insistance of a few cohorts of mine. I was hoping to become sort of a psuedo game editor however I've only written one article and it never got published. Plus my pursuits of further material has been met with some serious dead ends. What stinks for me being a gamer is I have the Cube, which is a great system but just not in the mainstream. Most people, gamers of my age and class, are into the PS2's or the Xbox's, which I can't really blame them those sytems make more adult oriented games. So what I thought of doing was taking games that cross all systems like the Madden's, the Tiger Wood's, or various other games that are on all three systems. The problem there is those games are usually pretty popular and out on rental. I am too poor to go out and buy these 50 buck games and so far have been at the mercy of the ever crappy Blockbuster.
I've come to the conclusion that blockbuster is just rolling over and dieing. I mean first the no late fees thing and now the fact that they really have stopped bringining in a lot of games. The Ft. O blockbuster has hardly any games and most of them are either kid oriented or out--no doubtedly at the punk teenager's house who works there. A friend of mine who worked at Hollywood Video all throughout his highschool days would always rent the new releases of games before the general public could thus we got to play the games before anyone else could, and we'd have them for weeks.
So anyway, I went out to the mall area hoping i could find some games for cheap that could use a good review, but alas the games i wanted were no where near the price I wanted to pay. And Best Buy and Media Play have stopped carrying games that are a few years old. They're sticking with the brand new hits and the classics but don't carry the not so popular games.
Plus my computer is on the fritz and needs to be put down with a flamethrower. Even teh simplest of games seem to be not working well and it takes forever for windows to load which is always a sign of the begining of the end of your PC. I wish i could get a new one but there's no way to justify spending that much moolah for a video game machine, especially for an old geezer like me... maybe its time this old video gamer got put out to pasture.
Yeah the thing with me was I took the LSAT to see if I was good enough to make it into law school. Kind of a "Hey if i do super good and I"m smarter than I look, I should go to law school." Well then i ended up with a mediocre score of a 151. Good enough for some schools, not good enough for most. I was happy with my score, mainly cause I thought I did horrible, but it hasn't proven to be good enough... which is kind of reassuring cause now I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be at.
I wouldn't think being a lawyer could help more people than a teacher. A lawyer can help some people, but really they can also hurt some other people. Same goes for a teacher I guess, but they truly do have a huge impact on children's lives. I mean we all have that one teacher who was the bomb and taught us there's more to life than just video games and diet coke. ONe of my favorite History Teachers was a football coach slash world history teacher. He was a football coach and had to teach something so he taught world history, but instead of shluffing it off like most of the teacher/coaches did he took a huge interest not only in teaching it to us, but also learning it for himself, finding new and exciting little tid bits that made it cool to learn history. There was also my News Writing teacher who taught me how to develop my writing skills, though he could never get me to put a comma in the right spot. But he also taught a novels course where we got to read Best Sellers like the Godfather, One Flew Over the Coocoo's nest, Shibumi, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and The World According to Garp... all really awesome books, except Garp was a little disturbing, the movie sucked big time too. So I say be a teacher if you can, I would but I don't have the patience for some kids and don't have the brains to be a college prof. I'd be the professor who's corrected by students in every class. "Um excuse me Mr. Holton, the Civil War wasn't started by the execution of John Lennon. John Lennon was assasinated for one, and lived in the latter twentieth century... the Civil War took place in the 1860s" Stupid know it all kids.
This is my 100th entry, I feel old. My newness as a blogger as wore off and now I"m just one of those lame bloggers who are trying to get their little voice heard, kind of like Howard Dean I guess. We had a friend of ours over for dinner tonight who's a teacher in a local Chattanooga Christian School. It was good to see him, and see how God is really moving and working in his life.
Life is bumming along right now. Work's slow. My life is often marked by transition, changes, progress but right now it seems life has sort of reached a sort of plateau state. More than one aspect of life in the Holton house right now is contained in a holding pattern. Wife's waiting to figure out her job situation, I'm sort of waiting to hear about law school (though i'm leaning to not going), we're waiting to here about houses as far as moving, it just seems like we're going through the rythems the next few monthes. Oh well... could be worse... could be in Russia. Wow this is a lame 100th post. So how bout that Janet Jackson... ?
On the Civ 3 note I beat my game... I won with a cultural victory, which can be pretty tricky. I teamed up with the greeks with only thirty turns left in the game and then we kicked the tail out of the romans in egyptians and they liked me so much that the kissed my butt. I gave them rights to a few luxuries too like ivory. SO its good to be king on that note.
Yeah so life's exciting right now... Got any three's? Go fish...
So was that Janet Jackson's boob....???? or Michael Jackson's? That was offensive whatever the crapola it was. Overall the Super Bowl started off boring and ended ok. It wasn't the most exciting but it ended strong, though i was hoping for carolina, went for the underdog. The diet suffered heavily this weekend though. Pizza, cookies, chips and dip... it was rough. I've taken my tums for the night though so i should be ok. I'm debating the law school thing, whats your opinion? I've already been dejected by Mizzou and SLU all that remains is Georgia State and Mercer... and its only a matter of time for GSU to say No Way Dude. Mercer sent me financial aid stuff, though I haven't been accepted... I think a school sent me stuff last year even though I didn't get in. I think they do it as a precaution in case they decide last minute to let me in. Though I'm just not so sure I wanna go anymore. Reasons: I like my job right now. It pays nice and there is a chance to move up some. I can support my family whereas with law school she's have to support me which is something i think husband should never wish on his wife... unless she's like super rich chick or something. Mercer is a private school and butt expensive thus driving the Holton clan way into debt. There is no guarantee that I'll come out of making mucho buckos. Also the life of a lawyer is frought with long hours at work and years of working your butt off. I dunno know, put your two sense/cents in even if you don't know me.
So Alias Season 2 has officially been watched. We got through the sixth disc of the series tonight, however we had already seen the two episodes on the disc as it was the time last year we started watching the show. Now we must wait for the third season to come back on. Its frusterating watching it on the networks time as they usually take months of breaks, especially now in awards season. Most shows are in reruns because of Super Bowls, Grammys, Oscars, and Cleos. In fact i'm not sure when the reruns will end... we are all at the mercy of profit hungry networks... well those of us who don't have cable. Our diet is taking a beating this weekend. I've lost a good number of Lb's on the southbeach at least 7 pounds and the most 10 pounds. Though wife made some cookies for a bridal shower today and somehow a few ended up in my mouth. Also we can kiss the diet goodbye for tomorrow. Through a mess of confusion, finger pointing, and Josiah being unable to read emails word for word the burden/priveledge of a super bowl party came upon the Holtons. As the week started I realized wife and I had no plans for the super bowl and we needed to secure a party either to go to or host. I volunteered our house and sent some invites out to friends thinking maybe two or three might show up, it came close to ten. Oh and the volunteering the house thing, that was run by the wife after the fact, I bought her off with the promise of her own pizza and crazy bread from our man Little Ceaser. So tomorrow Mesh, Roe, Andy, and perhaps some of their co-horts who either come post-evening service or with them will all descend upon these Luxury Apartments. We say luxury as a joke as the sign says it, but the apartments' themselves don't. I'm really glad we got to have the party here... frankly cause I didn't feel like driving anywhere. BUt also it allows us to get Little Ceasers and for us South Beachers thats a rare treat. The diet will be suspended for the day so that we may enjoy the game (which without good food will be hard to enjoy), also it would be stupid for us to have a party with only meat, cheese, and occasional vegetable and watching people eat delicious mouth watering pizza in our presence is a cruel torture even the super spy Sidney Bristow could not bare.
I spent most of the day taking over the world... in Civ 3. Though I took a break to get the third spiritual stone in Legend of Zelda. The third level was really odd though. I'm playing the Master Quest which takes the original Zelda 64 and rearranges the dungeons to make them more difficult. THe third level takes place in the belly of a giant fish... kind of like jonah. In the original version the the fish's belly was filled with jelly fish, sting rays, and various other aquatic life one would normally find in a fish's belly. In the master quest version, there was a lot of cows... yep thats right cows. Like there were cow heads in the fish's stomach, entire cows just hanging out in this giant fish... I guess a cow's gotta do what a cow's gotta do. So thats enough game talk, I apologize for the digression into pointlessness.
One of the wife's friends came over and we went out to LOGANS STEAKHOUSE! WOOWEEE! It was the grand opening weekend and was packed to the gills. Luckily redneck Ft. Oians are incredibly impatient and not willing to wait for 30 minutes to get into the restaurant, possibly why there are only three sit down restaurants on teh Ft. O strip--Bucks Pit BBQ, O'Charley's, and now Logans, take in mind that all three were not present on the strip in 2002. The steak was surprisingly good, I usually expect steak chains to give me a piece of horsemeat that is passed off as steak however the sirloin was good and juicy and within South Beach standards. Plus the peanut bucket was a nice touch. Though after being on this diet i am quite sick of peanuts and most nutty products.
So tomorrow is the big game, does anyone care? I don't I hope the pats win just because I hate expansion teams. That and I think Bill Bilicheck is good coach and his team has proved they have what it takes to be champs, unlike the sorry excuse known as teh St. Louis Rams. Is mike martz fired yet? I need to write my former congressman and get on that. "Hey dick gephardt! Now that you're not gonna be president, would you mind getting Mike Martz fired? Hopefully you can do that better than running for president." I don't know what Gephard was thinking... or for that matter the Rev Sharpton, i mean are these guys that clueless that they think people would ever vote for them? Especially Sharpton i mean the guy isn't even an elected official he's a reverend... and of what? Political Causes? "I'm Revernd Al Sharpton vote for me... I'm a Revernd." Yeah and I'm a bloody pope.