ok, here's the update.

I pressed out the left side cotter, greased and reinstalled a new one and pressed it in with a vise.

No more noise, I only went around the block but I would have heard it in that amount of time...BUT riddle me this: everything feels fine when I'm pedaling, but when I coast (which I do downhills when I am lazy in the morning) and I rotate the cranks slowly just to stretch my legs I can still feel play somewhere, but I can't tell where.

So noise has stopped, beer is quite possibly owed but I want to wait til after i ride it in tomorrow to make that call. I think I'm gonna swap out the pedals like mparker says and see if that makes any difference.