The Holtonian

Don't Like Hockey?

Anyone who doesn't like hockey due to the lockout or if they never liked it even before the lock out should watch Miracle. That movie is Hoosiers on Ice without a doubt. After watching it on tv last night i can't wait for hockey to start again. Granted these hockey players in miracle were playing for totally different reasons than the million dollar boys of today but still the sport is still the sport. I just love the gracefulness of the game and the grit and toughness that it takes. Its like football (grit and toughness) with the finess of soccer. Plus now there won't be anymore ties... all shootouts now.

Meet Mr. Gordon Fisherman

I got some pictures from my childhood friend Ed. He moved away back in Jr. High and went to boarding school. Since then we've kept in touch via email and letters and what not. He went to college to become a professional fisherman, yes they do have degrees in fishing. But he's on his way to get his masters in fishing... not sure exactly what kind or type but as I understand it its a general study of Fishing incorporating philospy, sociology, history, and maybe even some of the pratical. But here's a great picture of where your fish comes from... aren't you glad you don't have to do this?

Not sure if you can see on this pic but those are fish in the background that have been cutted and cleaned.

And here's the Gordon Fisherman himself.

If i wanted to be a fisherman he'd be my hero, but as I don't I'll just give him my respect and amazement instead.

Cards win game without a starting pitcher

I just read about today's cards game against the Nationals. It was awesome. Mark Mulder was scratched due to a stiff neck so they went with Cal Eldred, one of St. Louis relievers who actually isn't the greatest reliever on the team. Cal teamed up with four other st. louis relievers to shutout the nationals 6 to 0 for the second strait game. Granted I might give these past two games to terrible Nats play because Jason Marquis is not a shutout pitcher and frankly today is just pathetic for the nats, but i'll revel in it as my boys sharpen up some skills. This gave all the relievers some good playing time and frankly gave the cards another possible option of just throwing in their relievers in there for a few innings in case the starters get hurt or don't play well in the post season.

I bought a Stripper and I'm bloggin in the kitchen

Or should I say I bought a stripper agent for getting the paint off the floors in the office... sorry for the miscommunication...

Yeah due to the fume-age in the office and my fear for my wife's health i've moved the computer into the kitchen for the time being. Hopefully I can get the floors going fast and strip it quickly but so far its not been an easy task. I've scraped up a lot of the paint and tried using a stripper to get some of it up but the stuff is highly toxic and the fumes get to you quickly. You have to work in 30 minute intervals too because you can only work on a 3x3 foot patch at a time according to the directions, plus its harder to do much more than that because of just the logistics of reaching the parts you've done. The stuff can be super sticky when mixed with the paint that its working on. But its coming up, the problem is i've got three layers of paint to deal with. One white around the edges from the baseboards, and then two layers of brownish paint that they used on the wood. On a few of the planks that are done, or close to done it looks really good, but it will be a few weeks of working all night before I can move this computer back in.

Mckays run

I took in my old computer games yesterday to mckays as well as a dvd and some cds. I got more than i was expecting, 35 bucks, which for what i traded in was very surprising. They didn't take the original command and conquer as well as the command and conquer tiberian sun expansion pack, which doesn't make much sense since they took Tiberian Sun so you'd think they'd want the expansion pack that went with it.
      What I bought was a Mario Kart for the SP which is similar to the SNES version and will be played by roe and myself over our wireless links. I also got the Two towers Super Duper edition for only 13 bucks! Which was awesome. They had the first one tooo for that price but I boiled it down to the Two towers is the only one I care about getting the special edition of. I think the theatrical editions of the other two movies were fine, but the extended 2 towers was far superior to the theater version. Though i might end up getting the super editions just so i can have the cooler dvd boxes.
   Then we spent the rest on books of the wife's choosing.

      Today will be busy, its 7:39 on a saturday... so you know i got stuff too do. I'm having to attack the squirel in our attic/crawlspace. I'll just have to get some poison, and maybe a trap too. He's been making quite a rucus up there. Plus I have to make a hole into the crawl space as there is no point of entry. I'd also like to possibly work on the floor today, plus i have to mow the yard... so i got my hands full and hopefully can get to it soon.

St. Louis Visit (with pics)

Well I promised I'd write about st. louis so here goes. We went up for my birthday last week to st. lou and also to see Hunt before he headed back to Iraq. It was a pretty good birthday weekend because I got to spend time with both Pete, Pete's new wife Joy, Hunt, and Bud and Leslie... the wife of course was there being a super trooper through a hectic weekend of TWO CARDS GAMES!! Yep I got to go to

Friday night's game to see the Cardinals make one of the best comebacks I've ever seen. I've never seen a game won in the ninth and man did i pick a good one to witness. The birds were down 4 to zero and the giants were just not giving much up for the Cards to gain anything. Its not that the Giants pitching and defense was all that great, its just a matter of the Cardinals not hitting anything. So the 9th starts off with a double by Mabry (this is all by my memory so details and players may be wrong) then someone else got on and we had two on no outs. Then the big catcher my main man Molina came up and hit a three run shot and we were all of a sudden only down by one run. The place was electric, the giants fans next to me were quivering. Then J-rod or John Rodriquez came up (he's a rookie who's pretty steakin good, the closest thing the cards have to a Francoer), he gets up and gets a good base hit. Then Nunez (Rolen's replacement at third who's batting a respectable 300) gets up and hits one and J rod makes it to third. So we got first and third one out (someone had struck out or something). So then mighty Casey walks to the plate, my man man Poo Holes. He gets up and the place is going crazy because one swing of the bat and its tied and a good swing and we can all go home and get into our Air conditioned cars. So Pujols works the count and gets to a 3-2 count. And bam! he hits a pop up to shallow right that the second baseman easily grabs... no one scores. THe mighty Casey has popped out. But then the big man himself, Big Jimmy Edmonds steps up. 2 outs bottom of the ninth go home a winner or a loser. First pitch... BOOOM A ball that sails to the outfield its going... its going... its..... hits the wall and rolls back in, the right fielder miss places it, Jrod easily scores to tie it up, we're tied!!! We're tied!!! Oh wait!?!? Whats this, Nunez is running all the way from first he's running, he's running... he rounds second and running... rounds third... the relay isn't in time and he's safe at home.... GO CRAZY FOLKS GO CRAZY>>>> CARDS WIN CARDS WIN CARDS WIN... oh my it was glorious. So beautiful. The cards came back to win 5 to 4...

Woowee, that was an emotional coaster. So the next day we go to the game with our friends Bud and Leslie. Bud got some good tickets behind homeplatish that gave a great view of the stadium.

The only problem... it was a 100 million degrees out. My shorts and shirt were completely soaked to the core by the end of the game. I don't think I've ever sat through a more intense heat. This game didn't have the excitement of the prior game, but the cards did win 4 to 2. But it was soooo hot you couldn't really even muster a cheer. But it was great to see Bud and Leslie and i met my quota of two Cardinals games a year.

The new stadium's coming along nicely too. I was opposed to the new stadium initially because i was like, why? They got one that's perfectly fine. But this new one does look nicer and will open up to the city sky line... well mostly just the arch will be visible, but it will give the city a nicer stadium that is appealing both in and out. Busch is great inside but the outside is very boring and very mid 20th century. This new one has the classic appeal. It reminds me a lot of the Braves stadium especially with the open view of the city.

They're building the new around the old, and when the season's over they'll tear down the old one to finish the new one.

They're already doing chairs and stuff in the new one basically doing everything they can so that when the season's over they can put a 100% into the remainder of the stadium.

These were taken from inside the old stadium on the outside of it.

So we had a great weekend but it ended on a sadder note. Janelle had to take Concerned to the airport to send him back to Iraq. It was hard to see him go but he's coming back in a few months into 06 and we'll have a major throw down then to welcome him back to civilization.

If you have something you want to send to him let me know and i'll stick it in one of our packages.

Lead Head

Well I finally got around to testing the hardwood for lead... granted if it had lead we would have been exposed to it for days... but luckily we only have aespetos in this house, not lead. Though we took care of the Asebestos and it no longer poses a problem. But the lead test from lowes did not show any traces on any of the paints on the floor. I say any because there are two paints on it, brown and white... the white from the baseboards and the brown from who knows what. So I might buy a sander tonight or tomorrow to do some sandin. I might see what I can scrape up as a lot of it scrapes up well, then sand it to get a good floor. I figure a large area rug will go down on most of it so I"m not too worried, our bed room will be the true test of my skills as we'll want that to look good.

   But i should make my mckays run tonight. It sucks I can't believe i lost two games. I need a new portable game as not having an enjoyable game boy game is killing me.

Pat "Raging" Robertson vs. Captain Venezuela

SO what's the deal with Pat? I mean can a Christian leader call for the assassination of a political figure? Who does he think he is Pope Pius II... (Not sure if he ever assassinated people or called for the assassination of people...frankly I'm not sure if he even was a pope). But seriously since when do Christian leaders call for people to be assassinated?? I never heard pastor bob calling for people to be assassinated... though I did skip evening service a lot and I heard he really got kind of out there in the PM.
      I'm sorry but frankly I don't think it's a great idea to go around killing political leaders... that's just not the way I role. I can understand a good Coup and appreciate it as much as the next political revolutionary but I'm a fan of the home grown coup de tat's not the U.S. ordained ones (or in this case Pat Robertson ordained). I mean what if someone had intervened on the colonists' behalf and overthrown King George for us... what would the U.S. look like? There's some definite flawed Holton logic in my argument and analogies so I won't push them too much. That and I'm not sure where I stand on the whole revolution by the people vs. revolution by someone else for the people thing. In one way the people need to lead it otherwise it won't work well, but on the other hand if the people are so oppressed they can't fight/defend for themselves then they'll need some outside help. In history there are examples of when outside forces hurt revolutions and where they were necessary. The Holocaust/WW2 is a good example where outside help was definitely needed to over throw Hitler and his thugs.
      And I must plead a whole lot of ignorance to the Venezuela thing since I don't know much about this guy down there let alone much about Venezuela period. But I'm pretty sure Robertson shouldn't be dictating U.S. global policy, especially if it involves offing other people that aren't Christians... I mean is he Tony Soprano? I mean sure if this Venezuela dude is bad then it'd be nice to get him out but shouldn't the Venezuelans do that? I mean look at South America, they've proven they can handle a little revolution here and there, they got it down pat.
      I'm not sure if this is making any sense, and I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I do know that Bible's not in favor of offing my enemies. I'm pretty sure it says love thine enemy above thyself.
      There's so many other directions you could take this in but It's late and I'm tired. Maybe more to come later. Also need to write about this past weekend and one of the best cardinals games ever witnessed by mine eyes!

Another game missing...

As I was driving back from the Roe's I realized I'm missing another game... Super Street Fighter Two Turbo for the GBSP.

I know Crabb has Metroid Zero
Strow has Tennis
I thought Roe had one of those other two but he doesn't....

So I either lost or someone borrowed the other two.

I'm afraid Megaman i might have lost. I travel with them a lot and might have left it on a plane or in a hotel room or something. I checked all are luggage and couldn't find anything. But Street Fighter I haven't touched in a while so I'm wondering if someone borrowed it and I just forgot. I'm losing my mind...

I also brought back from St. Louey all the boxes of my old computer games. I plan on selling them, you get more if you bring a box for it. But they're mostly pretty old so i don't expect much.
Deus Ex, Tiberian Sun + Expansion (I'd keep it but last time I played it, it crashed my computer), the Sims, Red Alert 2, Hidden & Dangerous, and the original Command and Conquer which might fetch 20 cents. Like i said not much is expected out of all this.

missing game

OK so i'm starting to get annoyed. I'm missing a Megaman and Bass gameboy advanced game... anyone seen it?

More thoughtful blogs to come later...

Blog clean up

I've threatened to do it for a while but I finally cleaned up the side blog of the lazy bloggers who post once a year. So if you find yourself insulted then blog more. Its a pretty exclusive list... no not really just people who actually post more than 5 months out of the year.

401 entries that have wasted your time... I sincerely apologize

Well, (I start a lot of posts with "well'), this is my 401st post... pretty killer. I can't believe you keep reading this stuff... get a life... I don't have one, so get one for my sake. I've been slackin lately due to my computer being hard to access. We pulled up the carpet in our office and found some good wood... err i mean good hard pine. It needs a little work, some white paint from lazy painters got on the edges near the wall and it looks like it might have been painted brown at one point... but with some sandin and what not I think I can restore it. I'll buy a lead tester tomorrow though before I do much of anything. There's only one or so flaws so far, one is a big old square where some ply wood is due to an old vent that they filled up. But we can put a piece of furniture over that easy. Though Shoe molding will be interesting since its a good inch to inch and half in some areas between floor and base boards... so quarter round is out... I might have to get creative in here. But the goal is to redo this room this week. I want to get the floor to liveable standard, basically scrape the paint up and sand it and refinish it in a few months, but get it to a presentable rustic look for now. I got so many other projects that this one will have to wait till later.

I almost started to paint the fence this weekend but decided at noon to stop mowing (ran out of gas and was too lazy to go buy more) and went and ate lunch.. by the time i was done it was pouring which meant no more mowing or painting for the day. I wish it could stay dry for a week and that I could be home one stinkin weekend this summer. We were home this weekend but I spent the morning trying to tame my lawn and the afternoon down at c-stone. They're trying to redo the floors so I tried to help the able bodied studs of the church. Pretty much everyone was a handy man but me so I just did what they told me to do.

We went down to Atlanta today to see the crabb's baby and let me tell you the pictures don't do the kid justice, he's pretty dang cute. I have yet to see a cuter baby than myself, but he was pretty darn close. Crabby also gave me a nice suprise, my birthday present. Crabby and I exchange video games for our birthday's. I gave him zelda for the gameboy sp and he gave me WarCraft 3 Super Edition which comes with Warcraft 2 as well. Its pretty slick and looking forward to playing it. I've played both before but WC2 I played in highschool and on a friends computer so I was always being kicked off. And WC3 I played when I lived in Stelmo but it wasn't a legal copy and my computer didn't have a good video card so it ran super slow and with terrible graphics. So hopefully i can get that going when the room is back to some semblance of order.

Wifey had her college friends up this weekend to visit which is good for me because it gives me a free pass to play games as long as i want. And man did I. I played till midnight friday and saturday and actually got tired of playing both nights and went to bed before the wife and the girls got home. I'm digging the Zelda on the gamecube but man its just one of the those games you have to play in hour time spans to make it worth it, which is one reason I'm not super keen on it. I just don't have that kind of time to devote to it so its just kind of a pain to play sometimes.

THis week will be another short week at work at least. I plan on taking friday off and we'll go up to st. louey to hang with Hunt and see a cardinals game. Should be fun though it will be a quick trip up and a quick trip back. Not much else to say, I might have some good news this week, but will devulge that at a later date.

Pedro Gets Married

Well, my brother got married and is off touring the North East with his new wife. I had possibly some of the most fun at a wedding in a good long while. No stress, lots of drink, and great food.

It started out with a great bachelor party at a hunting lodge up in CT. Lots of drink, and poker as well as some ribs, all of that equates to a great time. Here's a round of some of the best Tequila I've ever had, which by the way I hate Tequila and this stuff was pretty dang good.

It tasted like burning, but I think that mean's its good.

I came in fourth out of 10 guys in the Poker tournament, I lost because it was 1:30, I had been dealt my fourth Jack/4 off suit in a row and was tired of playing and went all in on the Jack/4.

Then I spent most of Saturday recovering from Friday. I laid in my bed watching parts of Sphere on TV. Side note: Sphere was pretty disappointing, it was my favorite Michael Creighton book and it was interesting to see the book visualized but overall disappointing. I was enjoying just relaxing though when a disturbing phone call from a disturbing person interrupted my movie experience, it was none other than Concerned himself! Back from Iraq for the wedding he had miraculously made it back to the states a few days early. This was truly an answer to months of prayer as Hunt really helped make the wedding so much more joyful. It was just so spectacular to have the entire family together.He missed the bachelor party but that's ok he was there for the important stuff.

Here are some pics of the rehearsal: Me recovering still from Friday:

The lovely and talented Mrs. Holton

Rehearsal’s can be kind of confusing...

And boring...

I'm sorry but I'm a huge opponent of rehearsals. I mean I love the Rehearsal Dinner don't get me wrong, its usually my favorite part of the wedding weekend, but a rehearsal is always too long and too boring. I mean come on, we stand somewhere, we walk in only two directions, and can’t we just figure it out the day of the wedding? I've never heard anyone go, "Oh man I'm glad we had that rehearsal otherwise I would have been completely clueless..."

But I'm a cynic and have been part of too many rehearsals. The dinner though was great. We had it at the Pettibone Tavern, a great old tavern in CT that is really top notch. The wine and beer flowed again and it was a lot of fun and very emotional. A lot of great funny toasts, myself included of course, and a lot of emotional and sad toasts. You become so introspective at a wedding and the Rehearsal dinner seems to be this magical time where you can thank the person getting married for being better than you, helping you, and just all around being pretty freakin awesome. I mean that's what the general theme of Pete's toasts were, because frankly Pete's a pretty freakin incredible brother and frieI mean some toasts reminisced about his olden days of crazy spur of the moment stuff but most were rather respectful and thankful for the opportunity to know Pete. Don't worry Joy had some good toasts too! She's a great woman and Pete has carried on the tradition that I set by marrying up.

But the wedding day came like all wedding days do. Though I really don't have any pics because I was busy standing up sweating my tail off. They got married in a beautiful old historic church that thinks AC is of the devil or something... not really but they didn't have the AC that most of the known free world has today. It was hot, it was long (though all weddings seem long compared to mine 30 minutes, no more no less, I was in and out and ready to shout!). Pete was Pete, he put the unity candle out with his fingers instead of blowing it out getting a loud and audible, "BABY!!!" from Joy, one of those classic funny wedding moments you'll always remember. They came out to four Navy swordsmen who drew swords in salute of Mr. and Mrs. Holton and they drove off to the reception in a private limo (I still have never been in a limo...). I guess I'll just have to buy one.

The reception was at the Simsbury Inn, one of the nicest hotels in the area and it had great food, again great drink, and lots of dancing. I must say I sure do wish we had a DJ back when we got married, but people aren't usually up for dancing at noon and when their blood alcohol content is zero so say la vee. It was one of the most fun receptions I've been to. I busted my groove and then some; Scott has the pictures to prove it and to shame me. Hopefully he won't send them around the office...

Get a room! Oh wait they did...

Then they drove off and headed up North to honey moon it up.

It was a great wedding supplemented by a great time supplemented by being able to see Hunt. Unfortunately I had to go back to chatt to work but we hope to make it up to St. Louis to see him before he has to head back to Icrack.

NHL Alive and Kicking

Yes I am talking about hockey in the middle of summer, come on I've been starving for hockey for the past two years... ever since the apocolypse of hockey happened. I think the end was marked by the mark of the beast otherwise known as Tampa Bay winning the cup. But if you've looked at the NHL its insane, every major star is on a different team now. Guys are signing left and right to any team. Guys who were franchise players with Colorado are signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets (Adam Foote), the Blues star Defenseman is now with the Oilers (Pronger), and Detroit is no longer the dominating Yankees of Hockey anymore. Now they may turn into something else, with a younger team, they may turn into the oakland a's of hockey because frankly that's what they got going on right now, tons of young talent and they've smartly let go of their aging over the hill super stars. Its crazy... hopefully they'll actually get around to playing this year.

Once Upon a Time in Mexi Can't.

So this weekend we went to a wedding shower down in Birmingham. And while the girls were out and about me and another husband of one of the girls went out and bought some dvds to pass the time. I bought Once Upon a Time In Mexico... and let me tell you how the story goes...

      Once Upon a Time in Mexico, a terrible movie was made by the same guy who did Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2: Spy Harder, and Spy Kids 3: Why not? This Mexico movie was the third installment of the Desperado/El Mariachi series and was probably the worst... though I never saw the first but it can't be as bad as this one. It had Johnny Dep as a CIA spy who was more comic relief than bad A spy. It had Willam Dafoe, who should never ever play a man South of the border, i'm sorry just cause you get a tan doesn't make you a mexican. It also Enrique Igloosias who was by far the worst part of the movie, that guy can't act worth a nickel. Then there was the lead, El Mariachi himself, Antonio "I'm not always Zoro" Banderas.

      Now, Desperado wasn't half bad, this was. The best line of the movie by far was Johnny Dep asking a mexican thug, "Are you a Mexi CAN or a Mexi CAN'T?" Now that was so cheesy I just had to laugh. And Johnny Dep did have some great humor in the movie, sort of a Fear and Loathing in Mexvegas Character, just off the wall insane and possible on drugs.
      I think Crabb hit it on the head when he said it felt like the movie was on ADD. "Uh oh we're losing the attention of the audience, quick shoot someone and have his carcas get blown across a town square." "Uh oh we're losing them again, have Johnny Dep kill more innocent civilians."

The movie really had no interest in making sense... and I wonder if it wasn't the prequel to Lava Boy and Sharkgirl or whatever that movie's called. I really think they dropped the ball though on the third Mariachi. They have Enrique, Antonio, and then some other guy, they really should have gotten George Lopez... because he's funny... and more mexican than Willam Dafoe.

Anyway the movie was terrible but i figure it cost 10 bucks to watch, i'll sell it to mckays and probably make at least 5 in return credit and I'll come out even for a rental fee.

Oh and to answer Dep's question, I'm a mexi maybe.