The Holtonian

Do you smell what the King is cookin

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/03/12/lkl.larry.vs.vince.extra.thq

2007 Silver Honda Fit for sale $14,000

I am selling my 2007 Silver Honda Fit for 14,000. Only 16,000 miles on it mostly highway between Chattanooga and Atlanta. I've had it one year and it still has a 6 year 100K mile warranty (originally was a 7 year, minus a year, now its 6).

Runs great, great gas mileage, lots of fun to drive. If you're interested shoot me an email at holtoch@hotmail.com

The thunder rolled

Just in case anyone was wondering we made it through the tornado weekend unscathed. The storms were intense, Fridays more than Saturdays, but Mableton faired pretty well. Saturday the storms were looking like they were going to hit us pretty hard but they stayed closer to Highway 20 and slightly below so we were ok. Downtown, obviously was a different story. I stayed home today and worked out of the house. I tried driving downtown but the traffic was bad even here in Cobb county and I was listening to the radio and it sounded like it'd be a 2 hour commute. So i turned around and went home. My office is literally 3 blocks from the CNN center and all that and a few of the buildings near mine were hit pretty hard but ours is sort of smaller than the ones around it so I think it was pretty well shielded.

Today I'm studying for my Certified Benefits Specialist Exam next week. Essentially its a certification saying "This guy took an exam to prove he knows a thing about benefits." The stupid thing is I do know a few things but they phrase the questions so that you'll fail. I mean it doesn't test knowledge, it test whether you can figure out how to decode their questions and answers. Thats why I never test well, because questions aren't ask coherently or in layman's terms... otherwise I'd get them.

We're trying to do a bunch of home improvements to the exterior. The big one being putting in a fence to sort of mark our land boundaries. Our yard situation is unique as we have alarge hill in our backyard that half is ours and half is the neighbors behind us. However their portion is downhill from them and unusuable for the most part, still its theirs. But in their minds out of sight out of mind so they don't take care of it. So if we fence it off we won't have to see it. Which will be nice.

If you know of any good fence folks in ATL let me know.

odds and ends

I got a new phone after my last one (an 8525) died for the second time. the first time it died it was a hardware issue and they gave me a refurb one that never worked right. so i got a blackjack 2. The black is pretty slick, super light, and works... which is a vast improvement over the last one.

The drawbacks is a smaller keyboard, an interface that is more cell phonish where the 8525 was more like a computer, and a huge drawback is the lack of a touchscreen. the touch screen made playing cell phone games like solitaire and bubble break so much more fun.

so as you can see there is tons of stuff going on at the holton house

joys of parenthood

For many reasons I could never be a stay at home dad. I think I'd get cabin fever in about two days. furthermore the childrens songs get in my head and drive me insane. I've had the thomas the tank engine song in my head for days now.

they're two their four their six their eight shunting freight....

that thomas he's a cheeky one...

Xbox 360 Games I be Playin

My spare time, what little there is, has been filled a lot, sadly, with playing BioShock for Xbox360. The game is insanely amazingly fun. It is my opinion that first person shooters are only fun if the story is compelling, and this story is pretty compelling. Lots of mystery, a little bit scary, lots of cool power ups, decisions, choices. A cool motif/setting/plot of an underwarter capitalistic utopia where everyone pulls their weight. You have the idealistic leader who gets corrupted by power, and the inevitable corruption that destroys everything. I beat the game and immediately started another one because it was that fun.

I beat Halo 3 pretty handily, even on Legendary it wasn't as hard as the first two. The game was insanely fun but felt a little short. I thought the story ended well and wrapped up everything nicely. I heard some complaints that the story was weak, but I disagree. Especially if you beat the game on Legendary you get a good ending. One of these days I'll get xbox live maybe and play online. I've talked to a few of my neighbors about some how doing a neighbor hood network where we could all play but we don't have any wimax towers in our garage so that might have to wait.

Oblivion was another game that I beat a few months ago. That game was seriously the best RPG I've played since Diablo 2. Now I have never played WOW, for good reason, but I would classify it as a 1 player version of Wow. I've had a few Wowers accuse me of herasy but I think they're just being snobs. The game is a lot more realistic, one of my complaints with the Warcraft games... they're just too cartoony. Where as Diablo and Oblivion were very realistic. I'd play the game again but its pretty time consuming and time is not something I have a lot of.

The only other game that is peaking my interest is Mass Effect, which I've heard is like Oblivion in space. But I'll probably wait on that one and do some renting for a bit.

Ryan Elliot Holton

For those who haven't heard, Ryan was born 2/22/08 at 3:29 and was 8 lbs 10 oz. or in other words a chunker like his old man.

It was quite the ordeal again. Janelle went for the Vbac (Vaginal birth after cessarian) and had the best and only doctor in town performing, Dr. Tate. And we did just about everything under the sun to get this baby out the old fashion way but he got stuck like Anna-Kate did and after his heart rate went up Dr. Tate called it and we got the C-section.

Janelle went into labor on Tuesday night, early labor mind you and contracted all day wednesday but due to the big consignment sale at the Cobb County Fair grounds she just crossed her legs and shopped. It was kind of funny because people kept calling and I had no idea where Janelle was, so I of course told them when they asked, "How is Janelle?" "Oh she's fine she's just in some ditch giving birth to Ryan."

So she labored all day Tuesday night and all day Wednesday and all day Wednesday night. Thursday morning the contractions were pretty intense and close together but we stayed home all day until about 3PM when we decided we should pay her doctor a visit. We drove all the way from Norcross from our house in West Cobb, he said, "Go to the hospital (Crawford Long downtown)." So we went all the way back to West Cobb to deal with Anna-Kate, then drove downtown... and all in Atlanta Traffic and also a wonderful rain storm. It was terrific.

Then all night Thursday she labored with some seriously intense contractions. However, after essentially three nights without sleep she was getting a little tired. The doc suggested an epideral to allow her to get some rest. So we did that, and then she labored all day Friday, started pushing around noon, pushed for 2 hours and the little booger wouldn't come out.

So we got the C, and had a bit of scare because he didn't cry when he got pulled out. Basically he didn't breath on his own for about 10 minutes (he was bagged), they put him in NeeQ and kept him in there to do some tests (looking forward to that hospital bill--the underwriter in me is cringing). Everything was in the end fine but it was pretty scary there for a while.

So after a less than ideal birth, Janelle's recovery has gone about just as smoothly. Her incision got infected and she got a staph infection in her nose from the Hospital... fun times. Shes fine now but her incision still hurts like a mug.

The Happy Family

Anna-Kate's new friend... FYI she calls him "Rynan"

He's doing great, he sleeps well, which is a blessing. Anna-Kate, well she's moving a million miles a minute. We appreciate all the prayers and support.