So the wife and I checked out Daredevil the movie tonight. I've never been a big fan of daredevil, never got into the whole mystique of him. Plus I hate Ben Affleck and beginning to very much dislike Colin farrel. The movie started off ok, showed a good bit of how he became who he was, but I felt like the movie wrestled with itself. It kept trying to pull a Sam Raimi and be dorky cool, but then would also try to be this Evanensce bad ass movie that was too cool for school. Not sure what Evanecnce has to do with it, but their music was all over this movie and I think their music kind of sucks or really sucks, haven't listened to it to determine one way or the other.
.....I can't stand Ben Affleck and his voice over is just not good. Its trying to be like Toby Maquire's but its just not cutting it. Plus he comes off as a sleeze, which he is anyway so I guess it works out. I thought this was possibly one of the lamer well done super hero movies. I'm sure the hulk was worse but I never even bothered to see that as I knew it'd be stupid. Punisher, I'm not a fan of his either since all he is a guy with some guns and self destructive personality.
.....Nope Spiderman and Xmen seem to be the good superhero movies. But I think that genre's getting over played and they're going to have to pull the plug on it soon as I'm going to get sick of more sequals and bad remakes. I'm not looking foward to the new batman, I don't like the Scarecrow, and I think a new superman won't be done well. Thats my two cents
This weekend was a rough one on me. Not only was it a bit of a reunion for my wife and her crazy girl friends from college, I also went through the ringer saturday for an intramural soccer game.
This past week we played 4 games, though I missed one due to bible study. Last night's was the most intense game to date. WE played five points, a hall that seemingly tries to be Catacombianesque but seems to be unable to live down their Macllelan tendencies. Either, way whatever their ethos as a hall they were a tough soccer team. One gruffy looking gent was by far the best player, aggressive, smart, and a good leader. He wasn't too rough, but wasn't too soft either. Their goalie was a tall bean pole from the land of giants. He stopped many shots. The score was I think 2 to 2 at the end after two halves of rough soccer. Of course I was quilty for a little of the rough stuff. I think I knocked one guy over.
You have to understand something about me when it comes to soccer... I don't stop. As long as my body permits, I run and kick and flail like no tomorrow. One of my patented moves is when a ball is between me and another person and we're both running for the ball, I don't stop. It may be a game of soccer chicken, but the truth is, I'm going for the ball, but you might be in my way once ball is touched my me. So I took some poor guy out. The game went to two over times and then to shoot outs. We were down 3 goals to none in the shoot out when we pulled a boston. Ian Hard, Blaine, and Ute scored three goals in a row to tie up the shoot out. Then the "Scrubbs" had to shoot. We missed, they missed, then Stromosexual came up to bat and shot the winning goal. It was glorious. It was a great game. But now I'm dead. My butt, right knee, neck for some reason, and right hand all are in serious pain.
.....We also had a bit of a shindig on friday night. It was a halloween party and some local friends came by to share in the fright fest. Wifey and I dressed up as Pirates, in costumes she sewed herself. I for some reason didn't have some one take a picture of us together, which stinks cause I was a pretty dang sexy pirate if I dar say so myself. Here's the two hosts of the party Becca who was a "Social butterfly" and Mrs. Pirate herself.
It was a good time and got to meet some people I didn't really know that well at all. The food was good and there was plenty of PBR on tap... purchased by yours truly. Nothing says pirate like a PB ARRRRRRRR!
Saturday I hung out with some friends and tried to rake some leaves but found it futile and frusterating. My yard is just a big old pile of leaves and its so daunting. I got the front raked almost to the half way point but couldn't find the strength to push it on through to the end. I'll try again tuesday if the weather holds.
Saturday was mostly a pizza and PBR night (Its the nectar of the Holtons). Then the infamous soccer game.
Here's a picture of the girls, they stayed up late saturday recounting their old times they had at covenant... I just sat in awe of the girly high pitched laughs and silly stories from college years.
Sunday we churched it and were so tired from this weekend that we just sort of fell asleep and didn't wake up till 7ish. We watched a movie and thats about it.
Work's been slow again, well its just that time of the year for us. So I figured
I'd email some blogs to myself.
Well the cardinals are on the brink of becoming a footnote in history. The Sox
are one win away from breaking the illustrious curse. Though my main complaint
isn't that the cards lost, but more that the sox won. I mean one of Sports' most
cherished traditions is dying... the red sox are winning a world series. The
tragedy of this is huge. For all those people who hate the Yanks/love the Sox
because the Sox are the under-dogs, well you're going to have to change your
view. This death of the curse is comparable to Michael Jordan playing for the
Wizards, Shaq making a free throw, the Blues winning a Stanley Cup (the Red Sox
of hockey), another team besides the Dolphins achieving the perfect season, and
Kareem Abdul Jabar coming out of the closet... These traditions are once in a
life time events have defined these sports. For the Sox to win is to destroy the
definition of the Red Sox. No longer can you root for the underdog sox. All
we'll have left is the Cubs... luckily they won't break their curse for a
while... heh heh heh.
Two other complaints I can think of: I'M TIRED OF WILD CARD TEAMS WINNING THE
WORLD SERIES! If they were so good all along they should have won the division.
And I think the Red Sox are the least wild card team I've ever seen, they were
so much better than a wild card team. Florida Marlins (that was the yanks
fault), Diamondbacks (yanks fault), Angels (Giants fault)... the Red Sox however
earned this. The cruelty of the playoffs.
Another Complaint: If the Sox win, and then Kerry wins, and then the Patriots
win... I'm going to be sick. I think I will probably lose my mind in some
fashion. That would be the utter brutality of history.
So, my mp3 player broke a few weeks back. It was an Iriver 128mb thingy I bought for wifey and I to use for various workout type events. It worked ok for a while, though the computer interface for the thing was never fun to use, it was a huge hassel. Plus only have 128mb on it was a nuissance as well. I often longed for my MD player when I wanted to quickly change the music on it. But I used it a lot, mostly for mowing the lawn as hearing the lawn mower is not that fun. All of a sudden it wouldn't upsink/unlink/uppink to my computer, which basically made it stuck with London Calling and Moby---good music to have on an MP3 player but it gets old fast. So i dug through my files and found out we bought a 2 year product replacement at Best buy for the thing... which was cool.
So I took it in and they said they'd give me a new one strait up even though I didn't have a lot of the equipment or the box. I inquired if I could have a gift certificate instead as I didn't want to purchase that same defective product again... they agreed without a batting any eye. I was happy. Here's where the story gets better, I paid a $120 for the thing and after that had a $30 mail in rebate... they gave me $140 in store credit. That was Flawsome! (Like 'awesome' only better).
I checked out the MP3 players and looked at some I pods but after reading Ryedawgs post about his ipod troubles I sort of was turned off to them, that and the astronomical price they charge. And all the things that were around $140 only were the 128 type things, and I was sort of done with that. Then I saw the Sony Md player for 80 bucks. Now I'm one of the five people in the U.S. who has ever owned an MD Player, and I swear by them. I think they're great, don't skip, re-recordable, and still clings on to the disc type mentality that I like for some reason. So I thought to myself, I could buy an MD player and then spend a good chunk of change on cds or something. So I bought an MD player.
Now many will scoff at me for buying an obsolete product, I myself was a little skeptical of myself. But I realized that I already have 20 MDs at home with great mixes. I have one of a terriffic Jason Harrod Concert that rules (thanks to Morris). And I just couldn't afford an Ipod. Also I purchased a 4 year warranty on the thing so I figure, I use it for four years and before the warranty will expire I'm sure something terrible will most likely happen to it and I can use that money to possibly get an Ipod type device, which in four years will have come down in price.
Now this is about the fourth MD Player I've owned... well.... third techinically--I stole Jesse Strows. The first I bought at unclaimed baggage about 4 years ago for 50 bucks.
I thought it was great deal, until I got it home and realized it was a Japanese model and it ate up double AA batteries and didn't have the recording capabilities... so in a sense i got taken... but it was my fault.
And Luckily Jesse had an MD Player too, which I used more than he did to make the MD's and played them in my Japanese model.
His still works and has a Sony rechargable battery that still works after 5 or 6 years, not too shabby. And I still have to give it back to him....
Then I went to unclaimed baggage a few years later after my first trek and found this MD player for 50 bucks....
This one was pretty swank and had all the bells and wistles... except I didn't have the software to hook it up to my computer so I was sort of out of luck. But still it worked great... until I dropped it while jogging about three times. One time I was running down the hill in front of the gym at Covenant and dragged it for about 15 steps... I just couldn't stop on that steep hill. Thus after a few drops the head phone female hole became damaged and the thing only worked if you held the headphone male part in with your thumb. So it is sort of out of commission, but makes a great center piece.
And here's the new one...
This one should be the best, in theory as its brand new and has a 4 year warranty, not like the used ones i bought at Unclaimed. I've already used it and the Sony Software is pretty easy to use. Much more so than I tunes in my opinion. Plus it can cram a lot of music on to one mini disc I've put 40 minutes onto one already and still have about 106 mb left on the disc. Which roughly translates to about 2 cds per mini disc at the rate I have them on there. I was rather frusterated with I-tunes inflexibility which was sort of a reason I was turned off to Ipod, that and the lack of a replaceable battery scares me. I hate how I buy a song off I tunes but it won't play on different players, so I have to use I tunes.. that bugs me. Its such a microsoft thing for apple to do. So I realize, I'm going backwards in a sense, but I'm cool with it. Here's the evolution of the Minidisc player....
Oh man oh man oh man! What a game. I told everyone I wasn't going to watch, but I lied... How could I not? I didn't join in till the big inning with Pujol's double and Rolen's homer, I know when to join the game. I'm so psyched! I've been so stressed, on pins and needles ever since the Cards went down to the Arm pit of america aka Houston. But my boys came back and showed Houston what team with history and heart does. I'm sorry if I'm being mean to Houston, but really I hate the Astros. They're not like the Cubs, our main rival, in the Central division. See the Cubs I can respect, they have history and a good story. The Astros... what do they have? They had Nolan Ryan for a bit, but thats it. They've built a decent history, but too often they've spoiled my dreams, and now the Cards gave it back to them.
Now we have a match up made for history: SOX AND CARDS! What a series it should be. And I've been known to say I wouldn't even care if the Sox win. Truth is, I wouldn't. Frankly if the Cards were going to lose a world series I'd like it to be a team that deserves it, not some dumb Diamondback or Marlin, but the great Red Sox and all their sordid dirty sox history. But I'm still pulling for my cards, sorry Sox fans. Gotta support the team like Putty said. I'm still not wearing the hat in honor of the cards. Hopefully they'll win so I can wear it yet again, but even if they fall to the Sox I plan on wearing it with pride. This has been a great season and I'm proud to call myself a cardinals fan.
I didn't get to enjoy the Whitey ball of the 80s where the cards won in 82 and went back in 85 and 87. But I don't remember any of that. When I started recalling baseball in St. Louis it was the era of a lack luster Joe Torre--who I think still isn't that great of a manager. He had weapons when he was there and they weren't used. I recall the Todd Zeile, Greg Jefferies (my favorite player at the time), Lankford, Jordan, and Ozzie past his prime. It was a frusterating time. And really baseball didn't take off till McQwire decided to have a little competition with Sosa. That gave the cardinals the money to bring baseball back to St. Louis, that and ditching Budweiser as the owner who had become somewhat complacent. But its been a great past 8 years or so and this has made up so much from the heart break of 96 against Atlanta.
That was seriously the most hurt I had experienced. Up three games to one, me and my folks went to a sports bar for games 5, 6, and 7 every night hoping that would be the night they put the Braves to rest... it didn't happen. But all of that is gone now. What lies ahead is a great World Series... hopefully.
This weekend wifey made a killer pizza from scratch. Avacado, black olive, sausage, and bacon. Not all incredients were on the same sides, but all were very good.
Other than that this weekend was mostly spent watching my teams lose in baseball and mowing the lawn.
I admit it, the Cards lost today because of me. I supersitiously have not worn my cardinals hat since the post season began, actually since about the beginning of August as I did not want to jinx the Cardinals chances. However today in a moment of weakness I put on the cap to mow the lawn thinking, "Superstition is for losers, I'll prove that it won't jinx them and they'll win regardless of my hat..." Oh how foolish i was. So blame it on me guys, sorry Suppan, its my bad. They played well, but much like the game against Lima, its not that Clemens was all that great, he was good, but the Cardinals just wouldn't swing at some choice pitches. Maybe they just don't like game 3's?
The Red Sox.... um well... who knows what their deal is. I mean, you got some of the best pitching, best hitting, I think they have the best combination of hitters and pitchers, a real well balanced team, but they seem to lack whatever it takes to get you over the hump. The Yankees seem to have the confidence and I realize they have a choice team Rob and Ute, but I don't think they are as good as past Yank's teams. But I could be wrong in a week or so, we'll know.
In other news, its still cold in the house, we baby sat at a friends house so we got to experience a warm house for the night. I'll probably call the gas company on monday as we're having people staying with us next weekend and I'd feel bad to have them die of hypothermia.
Also my wife's on her death bed... she's got bad allergies and has to go see the allergist in a few days but you're not allowed to take any anti-histomeans or allergy medicine 5 days prior to going so she's feeling like a bucket o' crap right now and has been for the past few days.
So when we bought this ramshackle house we set up all the normal utilities, including the gas. However, when I received our first bill I noticed we had not used one therm of gas, yet we had to pay 30$ on top of the 50$ set up fee. I thought to myself, "Chris.... yes Chris... don't you think this is a lot to pay for gas? Yes Chris I do, however maybe it will get cheaper next month... ok Chris... we'll wait." So as my wife and my several personalties waited to see the next months bill, it hit me, we don't have anything that uses gas except the heater, therefore we won't use gas in the summer.
Our next bill proved my theory correct. We again used ZERO therms and were charged 30$ for having the possiblity of using gas. I, being of a cheap heritage, decided to cancel the gas. The evil gas company informed me that they would charge me a 100$ setup fee next time I set up my gas since I was trying to be a "seasonal user." I informed them to, "drop dead, and that I'd still save money paying a 100 bucks than 30 dollars for 4 or 5 months." Well, I didn't say drop dead, but the latter half I did. It baffled me how the gas company could charge us 30 bucks for nothing! I mean its not like I'm using the gas, why charge their customers 30$ a month???? Its rediculous.
Well the temperature has now dropped up here on the Mtn and I must say the house is a bit cold. I was late this morning to work as it was 51 degrees in our house and the bed was the only warm spot in the house. I informed my wife that we must fight the urge to give into the evil gas company and bundle up for as long as we can and hopefully the temperature will go up and winter will not descend upon us for a while.
The wife called me up at work and informed me she had enough and was turning on the heat. I told her, "Be my guest." A few minutes later I asked, "how's the heat going?"
She replied, "Not good, Its not hot..."
"Well thats cause our heater is powered by gas."
"Oh yeah..."
My tolerance to cold is pretty strong as I don't get cold as easily, and when my fingers go numb it doesn't bother me. I mean the sense of touch is so over rated anyway. However the wife is suffering from the frigid temperatures, we may have to pull a little scene from the Saint tonight to keep each other warm, if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. Maybe I'll get one of those oil drums and light a fire in it like they do in the hood.
Even poor little Copper has had the shivers. But nevertheless we will survive, for I am too cheap to bow to the powerful gas company.
Well, another game bit the dust, IS THERE NO ONE WHO CAN STOP ME!!! MOOO AH AH AH! I'm lame, I realize this. I beat Tron 2.0 tonight after a month of progressively, slowly, and steadily playing the game. I took a gradual approach to the game as it's a save as you play first person type game, and its best on the husband wife relations. The game was a good 9.0 on the fun factor. It totally played up to the geek in me. The game takes off on the Tron movie and basically has the son of the dude from Tron go into the computer to bust up Viruses, ICP's (Police of the Computer), and these data seeker worm things. The game was a lot of fun, and the weapon of choice, the deadly frisbee, really makes me want to have a frisbee that can derez bad guys and comes back to me. But alas I'm stuck in this carbon based world... oh well.
The game has a lot of nuances like downloading emails to figure out the plot, video cut scenes of the real world, different permission sets to get into restricted areas---translation: Lots of geeky stuff that appeals to computer dorks like me. Plus, I loved the idea and premise of the movie Tron, though it really lacked on the special affects, that and it was made by disney, which never helps. Its a good game for those geeks that are interested.
Tonight I went up to covenant after small group to play with the Blackwatch guys, my former hall when I was a Covenantor. IT was a lot of fun, though not sure all the guys thought so. We lost 4 to 2 to Ghetto but it was a great game. The guys played their hearts out but were just a little rusty. The hall's mainly freshman now and it takes at least a year to get the hang of covenant intramural soccer down. I played soccer my four years in High school on a pay to play team. It wasn't a scrubb team, it was more a too lazy to play for a real team.
For instance, my high school won state in soccer 2 out of the four years I was there (if memory serves me) and the team was really good and really hard to be on. I never even bothered trying as I was not really the soccer type--I was close to 200 pounds and rather short. Our team (the one I played on) was mostly guys from my jr. high who just stuck together and played as sort of a way to keep in touch (we all went to different high schools). But as the years got on, more and more of my High School's scocer players got tired of the rigid coach and tired of being forced to do things like: Practice, not smoke, do well in school, so they started playing for our team. So in esssence we were a team of rejects. But we got some really good guys who just wanted to have a smoke before the game and play without the pressure of a soccer dynasty on their shoulders. To make a four year story short, I played with some high calibur guys that helped me to improve my game, and a lot of times they wouldn't show up and so I would have to man the defense on my own.
I recall one time when I was pretty much the loan defender, no subs and everyone else was a half back or forward. I think we had about 3 forwards and 2 halves and the goalie. Basically all I did was if guys made it past the halfway line, I knocked them over. And thats how I learned to play soccer, I learned to use my body as a weapon, try to just frusterate the good players with my scrappy, kick them in the shins play.
Then covenant came... where my kick them in the shins play was pretty much frowned upon. So, I had to become a cleaner player and in the end I developed a real love for the game, which game out win or lose. I found I could play a sport, play my heart out, and still lose miserably.
Well we didn't lose miserably tonight, but we played our hearts out against a decent ghetto team. They weren't the best ghetto team I've played against, and in fact the first half they stunk but they got better when Cush showed up... Cush is a former covenant soccer player and kind of gave them an edge over us.
For me playing Ghetto is like the Cardinals playing the Yankees in the world series. I feel like Blackwatch is the cardinals, a decent team that has some great guys but doesn't have the history, money, or tradition that the Yankees (ghetto) has. But like the cardinals we still got a good history, great players, but we'll always be the underdogs cause from the Midwest (founders dorm). Though I don't hate Ghetto like I hate the yankees, its more of a healthy competition thing. I remember back in my day at covenant the guys on the hall would get psyched to play ghetto in every sport (besides football cause it usually ended in a fight or us getting our tails kicked). Soccer especially cause if we all played our best we had a chance to beat them. 2nd South and 2nd Central came to dominate the latter half of my years at covenant in soccer, but I never got as psyched to play them as I did Ghetto. Maybe its cause Ghetto is where all the "cool guys" lived on campus and Blackwatch was more of the nobodies, video game geeks, but always left covenant with a wife.
Anyway, it was fun and I hope I can play some more. Its a lot different type of exercise than what I normally get: mtn biking. Though I think the biking has kept me realitively in shape it hasn't kept me that in shape. Tomorrow's ride should be interesting as I will be most likely sore from tonights game.
The weekend came and wifey ran out on me... not in a bad way, she went to Birmingham to reconnect with her old college mates. I used the time to hang out with my brothers. Hunt and I spent most of the time playing Risk, the game of world domination. The game sucks, I mean I got beat every time. And granted when there is only two people playing its going to be a land-slide win for one person, but I was especially terrible. Lets hope I'm never called to defend america with the roll of a dice because I consistently seem to roll a 2 and 1 every time. It was embarrasing! All I can do is beg the Ukraine and Madagascar for forgiveness, "I tried mighty countries but alas my pudgy fingers were not capable of stopping the blitzkrieg of Hunt."
We watched the cards lose saturday night, which was terribly frustrating. Lima was pitching terribly yet winning the game. Every strike he pitched was right down the middle and for some odd reason the cards seemed to be watching them go by instead of blasting them out of the park, its all ok in the end as the cards played their game on sunday night, but still Saturday's game was obnoxious.
Hunt and I went and saw the movie The Village, and I must say that was by far the best movie I think M Night Shallywallybingbang has done. I thought it was well shot, great cinematography, great acting, and a hugely interesting story. Those who poo pooed it I say, "Go poo poo yourselves!" I don't know, maybe its just me, but I eat up M. Night Slammajammaman's movies. I find them so intriguing and I love the twists or the little conclusions. Plus I think he provides interesting social commentary, maybe not the deepest commentary but still relevant. The problem with his movies is if you begin to discuss them (especially in a format such as this) you'll ruin the ending, which I really dont' want to do with this one, just in case someone hasn't seen it.
Church was good too, though I kept thinking about the monster from the Village, so I went to evening service to make up for my distraction during the first service. Second time the Word seemed to take hold better as I was not so worried about a monster coming after me.
Work's been good I guess lately. Sometimes its like an episode of Survivor with all the politiking going on, but I try to keep my head low and just do my work.
I really missed the wife this weekend and really didn't like her being away. I'm kind of glad most of my friends live in town. Wish more lived in town, but there's a good contingent.
So I got home today and the cat was meandering around the yard, probably starving cause he's fatter than all get out. So I thought it'd be fun to try a little experiment. Copper (dog) was in the fenced in front yard, I picked up the cat and through/dropped him in the fenced in front yard, copper then proceeded to chase the cat. The Cat fearing for its life from a creature smaller than itself ran up a tree. I laughed, then realized, Crap, I have to get said cat down from said tree.
First thing was first, I put copper away, he folds up like a pocket knife (actually i put him inside but a foldable dog would be cool too). I then proceeded to try to call the cat down. Now I don't like talking to cats, because they never seem to listen to you. Dogs will listen and either run to you or away, but at least they're listening. So the cat wouldn't come down, so I went for plan B.
Plan B involved me throwing acorns at the said cat to try to coax him into coming down out of fear of acorns. Apparently he's not afraid of them and stayed his ground. I then began getting annoyed and wondered if said cat would come down from said tree. All of a sudden plan C popped into my head.
Plan C involved me spraying the cat with a hose till he either, ran up the tree more and was out of reach and might as well stay up there, or came down. Luckily for the cat he opted to jump down, not sure why he didn't climb down, but cats are dumb like that. On the other hand, unfortunatley though, the cat came down. So the cat was fine, a little wet and hates me now, but I think in the end we all learned a valuable lesson, cats hate water.
I can probably expect a call from my local Peta person soon.
So while said cat was in said tree, I thought this type of said event should be documented with a picture. I went outside and proceeded to take 10 pictures with my sony 5 megapixel camera. OUT OF THE 10 ONLY 1 CAME OUT AND STILL ISN"T GREAT. Said camera I can say severely sucks.
The cardinals took it yard today in the fashion that I like. No more whitey ball, just take it over the fence! It was great, but as a cardinal fan, I'm still wary. I don't want to get my hopes up but if a team was to do well, it would most likely be this team. Its not the best team money can buy, but its got some of the best in the game this year, and Larussa behind the wheel is a great thing. I hope Larussa finally gets the respect he deserves. A lot of St. Louey folks have had a hard time letting go of the 80s dream in Whitey Herzog. And Larussa is a very unapologetic coach, which I like, but i think it rubbed some people wrong. But hey, he's one of the best in the game, in fact there's only one other coach I'd take besides Larussa and thats Cox. I'm not a fan of Torre's style. Its too calm and collected, sometimes I feel like he's falling asleep in the dugout.
But my hat goes off to Walker. He gave a good interview on ESPN and just praised both his former team, Rockies, and current team and just seems like such a cool guy.
The Red Sox won in significant fashion. I don't know what people are thinking, I think the Sox should have a pretty easy time in Anaheim. I mean I don't think the Angels are that great. They won the show two years ago, but I really was unimpressed with the win. I mean the Giants were good, but not great. Plus that year they had some guys that were on fire, Salmon comes to mind, and he's been sort of out of the picture. Really their team this year is Vlad. And their pitching, much like the dodgers isn't what it might need to be. It's not bad, the ERA's are down, but the win's aren't there (Colon definate exception).
The yankees are of course the team money bought. But money can't buy everything. They have a hard battle ahead of them and whether the bats turn on and can compensate for good (not great) pitching will remain to be seen. Frankly if i were a coach, which I won't ever be, but if i were i'd want to be in Bobby Cox's shoes. I mean the guy already is a winner. He took a team of leftovers from prior years and turned them into some great contenders. Joe Torre's got the hard job of figuring out an all star team.
So, I'm psyched, and nervous! Hopefully my boys can keep playing some good baseball.
Thats it... if you want proof go to Kyle's blog and watch the flip flop video where you can see how many times said idiot flips, and then flops.
I'm pretty happy with the Astros winning, they'll play the braves and those two will beat each other up while the Cards should be able to take care of the Dodgers. They won the season 4 games to 2 against the dodgers and frankly I'm not really too impressed with the Dodgers staff. They're good, but they're not great. I'm just glad we don't have Bonds to worry about and the Astros will be tough for Atlanta to beat. I feel bad for Atlanta as I've sort of adopted them now that I live in the south (i root for them if it doesn't affect the Cardinals). I'll be pulling for the braves against the astros, mainly cause I hate the astros and they're tougher than the braves in my opinion. Should be some great play off baseball either way.
Obviously I want the cards all the way, but I'd be happy with the Braves pulling it out over the yanks mainly just to show steinbrenner that Bobby Cox is a great coach that doesn't need his high priced players to win. But Cards hopefully.
AL... well i'm not a fan of the AL, its a little inferior to the NL in my opinion. I mean maybe there'd be more injured pitchers in the AL if they had to bat once and a while. But I'd like to see those insane red sox make some noise. The twins are doomed to die, and the Angels aren't great, it will probably be yanks vs redsox before we know it here. And that will be interesting.
So most people will be talking bout the great football games today and tomorrow, but as I'm from St. Louis and not really a southern college football fan, i'm more interested in Baseball. On a side note being from St. Louis you really don't have a team to root for. My Friend Bud might say Mizzou, but they're about the biggest let down year over year and never seem to capitalize on their size and the fact they're the school in Missouri as far as football goes. I actually grew up watching Notre Dame games with my dad. I think with the catholic background, and the fact that the games are always on and the history (Rudy!) I just really connected with the team. Plus my favorite QB growing up was Joe Montana.
So anyway, back to baseball. I think this is by far one of the most exciting years in baseball's history. You got Bonds of course, which though I hate him he's pretty much the man. Then Ichiro who I think is the most amazing player right now, even more than Bonds, the guy comes from Japan and tears it up. They were saying he'd probably would have broken Pete Rose's record if he had come over sooner. Plus you have these two amazing stories of the Braves and Astros who had crappy years at the all star break and turned their teams on and the Braves won the division with some room to spare, and the Astros I think will wiin the wild card.
Plus the races in the west are so amazing. I don't like California baseball, but races that aren't decided to the second to last day is pretty dang amazing.
I'm liking how the playoffs are shaping up. True the cards have sort of closed up shop the past few weeks, but with some injuries starting to finally hit them i think it was wise--Carpenter's out for the NLCS most likely. I also like how we'll have (most likely) the Astros vs the Braves and the Cards vs the Dodgers, most likely. Either way the cards won't play the astros, which I'm thankful for because they're on fire and I think they could do some damage. Biggio and Bagwell I think want it bad enough that they're ready to win some big games. And Clemens is a machine. Just think if they had Pettite. The only thing I don't want to happen is the Giants get the wild card, i don't like them, they're tougher i think then the astros. Bonds is so difficult and throws the whole game off.
SHould be an interesting week next week.
So we've been looking for a car, as mentioned in the past few posts. We opted on looking for an Accord as SUV's are too pricey and we figure we won't need a massive car till we have 3 kids or so. I looked for the past few weeks for a used accord but chatty was just not offering much in the way of a good deal. Well I increased my search zone a bit and tried out some different car search engines and started finding a lot of stuff in Dalton. Some of the deals I was finding seemed to good to be true and I've noticed the stuff on the web is cheaper to make you get to the store then you realize they did the ole "bait and switch" on you. So we went down to Pye honda down in Dalton and weren't expecting to see much since we've had zero luck with the stuff we found online at the local shops. We checked out a few cars and they were all on the up and up. Certified, bonafied, and rectified.
We test drove a few and liked them they were around the $15,000 range with around the 50K miles. All ok, some had some nice features like a sunroof, a cd player here and there. Then the guy shows us this 2000 accord and we're thinking... "Well we want a newer one then that but ok we'll look at it" well he tells us the price. We're like, "Hmmm.. .thats a bit pricey for a 5 year old car..." We ask the mileage... 35,000. Thats about 10K mileage less than anything else on the lot. We test drive it, drives great, just as good as all the newer ones. And get this, all leather, cd player, sunroof, power everything, 100,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty, a clock (a huge deal for the wifey since she's never had one), basically the shiz version of the accord. All it needed was a dvd player. He asks us if we have anything to put down... and we go.... "Uh, that cavalier over there..."
Now here's where you gotta know something about car shopping, they're gonna get you somewhere. They'll either get you on the front end with a high price, or they'll get you on the back with crappy financing or crappy trade in. Well they gave us full blue book for the cav 3000 (it was worth about 1500 in my estimation---it leaked oil, windshield wipers didn't work, horn was broke, cigarette lighter didn't work [we don't smoke but we needed it for phone charging], bumper had a huge dent, also little plastic things had broken everywhere). So we got the car for a great deal, way less than what we could've gotten in chatty. I got a few pics but they're not great. I've found its hard to take pics of a car, hard to get the whole thing down. So if you want to see it you'll have to come over.
Its the wife's car as she is now Cavless, something she's rejoicing in right now. We really just needed something reliable. Its old but its got low mileage which is cool. They had one for the same price that was 01 that was in a better color and had a 6 cd changer but it had 50,000 miles on it. So we went for the low mileage. So check out dalton if you're looking for cheaper hondas than chatty offers. He says they get a lot of chatty traffic since the chattanooga honda places sell there stuff faster than they do and the chatty places can charge more.
We went to Economy Honda near the airport last night and basically a 2001 accord with no frills except power locks/windows with about 50-60,000 miles was about $16,000. So it saved us some serious moolah and we got a pretty sweet car from the dalton place. I might go back there for my element in the future someday if i ever get money again.
So the holton's have a reliable car finally. Now we can drive to Indiana for the thanksgiving.