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There will be an heir to my AWESOMENESS!!

Posted in life, personal with tags baby, life, personal on April 23, 2010 by Paxton

I’ve not mentioned this on the blog yet because I didn’t want to jinx anything but my wife is pregnant. She is right at 19 weeks along and we went to the doctor yesterday and found out what we are having.

We are having an AWESOME baby boy! Yay! Since it’s a boy, we already have the name picked out (we were undecided on a girl’s name). The little boy will not only be born with my awesome looks and sense of humor, but my awesome name as well. Paxton Ted Holley, Jr. We’ll call him PJ for short. So never fear, the total collective bad ass awesomeness I currently carry on my shoulders will be passed on to my first male heir, PJ. Hope the little guy can handle it.

So we are now having a boy. You want to see the first thing I bought after finding out?

AWESOME shirt

Are you surprised? I couldn’t NOT get it. You know?

So that’s my kick ass news. I am uber excited right now. I can’t wait for this kid to get here.

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Weekly Geeks 2009-20: Guilty Pleasures

Posted in life, personal, Weekly Geeks with tags life, personal, Weekly Geeks on June 1, 2009 by Paxton

Weekly Geeks time!!!

What’s your non-reading guilty pleasure?
Trashy TV?
Trashier movies?
Junk food?

Guilty pleasures mean that you are embarrassed what other people think about that particular action. For the most part, I enjoy what I enjoy and am not embarrassed about it. Everyone that knows me knows I like this thing or that, I don’t try to hide it. However, here are a few of my non-reading habits that might be odd to a normal person, but are just another part of the magnificent AWESOME-ness that is me.

1. Checking out supermarkets I’ve never been to.
Whenever I travel by myself or with my wife (or family) if we pass a cool looking supermarket I’ve never been to, I have to go in. It’s just something I enjoy. When my wife and I went to Paris in 2007 I actually had us go to Mona Vie, a Parisian supermarket/department store. I found a bunch of cool sodas and chips. When I go to one of these new groceries, I check out the soda aisle first to see if that particular place has any new sodas I’ve never seen before. I then go check out the snack food aisle for any cool goodies I’ve never seen before; chips, snack cakes, etc. I then check out the cereal aisle for any cool boxes I’ve never scoped before. If I find anything cool, I’ll either buy it on the spot or take pictures of it while in the store. The links within this paragraph go to several of my Flickr sets highlighting the appropriate items I’ve found during some of my travels. If you click the picture of the Giant Eagle up there you’ll go to my Flickr set of Supermarket chains I’ve visited. Check them out.

That would probably be the biggest “guilty pleasure” of mine. What else do I like to do….hmmmm…

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Star Wars Celebration I: The 10 Year Anniversary

Posted in Colorado, Denver, movies, nostalgia, personal, pop culture, Star Wars with tags Colorado, conventions, Denver, movies, pop culture, Star Wars, Star Wars Celebration, Star Wars Roadtrip on April 28, 2009 by Paxton

Well, I was going over some pictures a few months ago trying to pick some good ones to upload to my Flickr blog when I came across pictures of my trip to Denver, CO in 1999 for the first Star Wars Celebration. While looking at them, it dawned on me that this trip happened 10 years ago this weekend. TEN YEARS!!! Man, time flies.

The Star Wars Celebration I occurred from April 30 – May 2, 1999 in Denver, CO. It was held as a “celebration” (obviously) of the original Star Wars trilogy as well as a “release party” for the new Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace (which was set to release in less than a month from that time).

At that particular time I was on a client site in Tampa and I went to the Celebration with my friends Jason Collier and Jonathan Loden. Denver had inclement weather the entire weekend so it was either rainy or sprinkling at all times. Plus, since this was the first official Star Wars convention in many years, some of the mechanics of the operation were not as well oiled a machine as you would come to see in Celebration II and Celebration III. Despite that, it was a lot of fun and I’m glad I went.

Let’s take a little photo walk through some of that weekend’s festivities.

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Gate River Run: My declaration of intent

Posted in Gate River Run, life, personal, running with tags exercise, personal, running on February 16, 2009 by Paxton

Jacksonville’s biggest (read “Most Popular”) race is the Gate River Run (click image up top for more info). I”ve been lurking around the event since I started running several years ago. However, I’ve been too chicken to actually sign up and run it, preferring to only run 5K races. Well, the wife got fed up with me saying that someday I would do it so she pretty much has forced me to do it under threat of spousal violence (ie kicking my ass).

So, I officially started training this past week and I turned in my entry form on Saturday. And just to keep myself honest, I’m making a delcaration of intent to the 3 readers who randomly happen by my blog looking for info about the Hula Burger. I’ll be running the Gate River Run 15K (9.3 miles) on March 14, 2009. It’s possible I may (repeat MAY) try to parlay this into a half-marathon by the end of the year. We’ll see.

Today is President’s Day. My wife, as a first grade teacher, has today off so I decided to also take it off so we can spend it together. Have a good day whether you have it off or not. I’ll be back in a day or so with another article.

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Battle Scars: Running the Winn-Dixie Obstacle Course

Posted in humor, life, personal, work with tags personal, work on November 18, 2008 by Paxton

obstacle_course_finish So, every year, Winn-Dixie throws its employees a picnic and calls it Associate Appreciation Day. They have vendors come in and give out tons of free stuff. Pepsi and Coke show up and give out cans and bottles of free soda. Sometimes they even give out test flavors. Last year we got to try Squirt Citrus Power before it hit the shelves earlier this year.

At these picnics, Winn-Dixie will organize events that we, as employees, will participate in. One year they had a tri-sport challenge where you threw a football, shot a basketball and kicked a soccer ball to win prizes. Another year they organized a “Winn-Dixie Jacksonville Idol” karaoke contest. Usually management organizes their groups into teams and watches us compete. Days before this event, these managers will start smack talking each other saying their department will win this, other departments are scared of their team, etc, etc. It’s like the Associate Appreciation Day events are the equivalent of the “Coliseum Games” in Rome. We employees are the gladiators, the CEO and management team are the Emperor and Senate. The employees team up and compete in the “games”, trying to outdo each other and entertain management while they gorge themselves on food and drink. It’s fun for all. 🙂

This year there were several events and collectively it was called the Winn-Dixie Olympics. I competed in two events; the tug-of-war and the obstacle course. The tug-of-war almost became a blog article in and of itself. Our team won 2 matches then was told we were eliminated because we didn’t beat our opponents quick enough. I didn’t realize there was a time restriction. We dispatched our first opponent in just over 7 seconds. The second one took a little longer but not much more than 12 seconds. We were all a little ticked that a team that went 2-0 was being eliminated. Come to find out later, we actually did win the Gold in that event. I don’t know who fell asleep at the wheel, but I’m glad they finally recognized. IT PeopleSoft came to REPRESENT, yo. Here’s the winning tug-of-war team: