Zach Dotsey

Took Cobb to vet first thing this morning, just for a checkup.  Had another very busy day again today.

Amanda worked until 3, kidnapped Michael after picking up Cobb.  She just forgot to turn to take him home so he hung out for a while.  Cobb’s lost weight, I think it was about a pound, which is good for a cat.

Played a little basketball with Michael- HORSE then Charge, and Charge turned into Foul.  Charge is a game where one person drives to the basket and the other tried to take a charge.  In Foul you try to Foul the person taking a shot, ostensibly because you’re going for a block.  My ear got hit a couple times.

Small small group at McAllister’s.  Justin and Lisa got a flat tire on the way and it ended up just being us, the Van Zandts and the Boscaljons.

Brooke White was voted off American Idol.  When Jason Castro was announced as safe Amanda reacted as silly as the girls in the audience.

On last week’s Boston Legal, which I just watched tonight, Alan Shore went to the Supreme Court.  At the end of it Alan and Denny were having a cigar and a scotch as they always do and one of them mentioned that there wasn’t much more for them to do in their lives.  The other suggested that they should do Wednesday.  That was their sneaky little way of announcing that they were moving to Wednesdays.

Karen called Amanda tonight and told her that a girl at her school had a sixteen pound ovarian tumor!  Knowing that Amanda’s was only about two or three pounds and how big it was, I can’t imagine how big this girl’s must have been.  Then one of Karen’s friend’s daughters was riding in the car with Karen and her mom and they were talking about Amanda’s tumor.  The girl had noticed that her stomach hadn’t been as flat as it had been and went to get it checked out for the heck of it, and it turned out that she had one as large as Amanda’s!  I think what’s so cool about that (not that it’s cool to have a cyst on your ovary) is that it kind of gives a reason for Amanda having had hers, you know?  Maybe this girl wouldn’t have ever thought about getting it checked out and it would have become a major problem.

Ladies, let that be a lesson- make sure you make regular visits to the gynie doctor!

Zach Dotsey

Stood in line with Michael to get Grand Theft Auto IV last night then stayed up a while playing it with him.  It’s a really good game so far, of course, but the multiplayer setup seems pretty awkward if you’re bringing in a party.  And it doesn’t seem to even out the teams very well, or to let you even them out.

Busy busy day at work.

Amanda went in to work at 8:00 this morning.  She had lunch with her grandparents then they took her shopping, as many of her pants are a bit loose on her now, having lost both a tumor and a few pounds from her recovery diet.  She was pretty exhausted when she got home though.

We were fixing a Stouffer’s lasagna when Amanda remembered that Trish was bringing food tonight.  She remembered this because Trish walked up to the door with the food.  So we ate her tortellini and let the Stouffers cool off and put it back in the freezer.

American Idol was not very good tonight, no offense Neil Diamond.  Tonight each contestant got to do two songs, but nobody had two good songs.  Everybody went through the first set of songs before the judges did a speed critique, but Paula Abdul messed up.  She critiqued Jason Castro on both of his songs when he’d only done one.  Apparently the judges sometimes watch the practices so she already knew what she thought about his second song, but it was very awkward.  And the judges were fawning all over David Archuleta, especially his second song which, frankly, sounded dead.  They really seem to be pushing for him.  All that said, I think Jason Castro or Brooke White will go home tomorrow.

After Idol Amanda saw that a Saturday Night Live Best of Alec Baldwin was coming on so we watched that.  Two things struck me, watching that.  Alec Baldwin used to be really skinny and man is that guy versatile!

Zach Dotsey

Amanda got to sleep on her side for the first time last night, which she really liked.  Previously she said she was much more aware of what all is "inside" there and thought she could feel it all shifting when she would turn over, although she admitted it might have been in her head.  But she was able to sleep on her side so she enjoyed sleeping better last night.

Amanda went back to work today at 10:00.  I almost understand some of those people who secretly keep people they’re caring for sick.  Not that I’d ever do that of course, but I feel almost like an afterthought.  It’s great that Amanda is getting better, and I wouldn’t wish otherwise.  I guess you just get used to feeling useful and needed, then when you’re not it’s like you’re coming down off of something.

I think I forgot to mention it yesterday, but Amanda drove to church yesterday.  We wanted to make sure she was comfortable driving before she took any half days or anything.

I always thought it would be annoying to have Amanda around the house all day, like if she didn’t have to work or worked from home, but I missed her today, actually.

Harvey hurt me twice today.  The first time was this morning when I was letting him inside to feed him.  He ran in when I cracked the door open and headbutted his skull against my patella in his exuberance to get back to his crate and receive his tribute of food.  The second time was this afternoon when he stopped on my junk.  It hurt so bad that I reflexively pulled one hand back in a fist and was about to punch him.  Accidents of course, but man did they both hurt.  The knee’s still bugging me a little.

Work was very busy.  Lots of people needed stuff, and I tried to take care of everyone today.  I didn’t get everyone, but I got a lot done.

Michael told me sometime over the weekend what his birthday present for me was.  He’d ordered it off of eBay before my birthday, but it hadn’t come in.  He finally got up with the guy who was sending it and I guess it ended up going somewhere else or something.  He’d gotten me a basketball autographed by Mike Krzyzewski, which was really touching.  I wouldn’t think Michael would ever have done anything like that.  I certainly wouldn’t have bought an autographed basketball from a Carolina person.

Michael came by today and asked if I wanted to stand in line with him at midnight to get Grand Theft Auto IV tonight, which I didn’t until he showed me some videos and reviews and said he’d get it for me as my replacement birthday present.  After seeing all that I decided I’d go.  So much for beating all the games I have before getting another one.  But it is supposed to be the best game in like ten years or something.  And it’s got a multiplayer aspect to it that looks really fun.  That’s what I’ll be doing in less than an hour.

Amanda ended up working until about 4:00 although Laura told her not to push herself.  Amanda said she certainly couldn’t sit in her chair for eight hours yet, but I think she enjoyed getting out for a bit.  She had planned on just staying until about 3:00 in order to get a half day and have lunch with everyone there.  She stayed as long as she did because she wanted to finish what she was working on.  I’m like that too- if I’m working on something I hate to stop.

Michael and I played some HORSE (he won both games) and then went inside to play Settlers of Catan before he went off to small group at his apartment.  He won that too.  I did terrible- couldn’t get any resources it seemed.

Amanda and I watched some TV.  We really don’t like the new DVR software.

Big Duke recruiting rumor: earlier this week Miles Plumlee asked to be released from his commitment to Stanford since the coach who recruited him was leaving to go to LSU.  His brother, Mason Plumlee, had accepted a scholarship to Duke for the year after next.  Apparently Miles liked Duke when he went there with Mason and their family and the coaches were in Asheville this weekend recruiting him and he’s expected to accept.  This is great news because it gives Duke some more depth in the post, and he’s not supposed to be too shabby of a player either.

Of course, that sucks for Johnny Dawkins.  There’s still a lot of talk about who new names will be on the coaching staff.  A lot of people are expecting it to be Nate James, who was hired this last year as the strength and conditioning coach.

Zach Dotsey

Happy birthday, Mom!

The dogs were terrible last night, particularly Harvey.  There was just all sorts of moving around and getting up and such.

Amanda and I figured yesterday that since we both missed church last week we’d go check out the Mayfaire service for the first time this week.  The Mayfaire services are a week behind the regular services and since the series titled Pursuit ended last week the Roland-Greis service was supposed to be a transition service this week, so we won’t get off track really.  I woke up before 8:00 and asked Amanda if she wanted to go to the 8:15, but she didn’t so we went to the 9:45.

It was cool going to Mayfaire, although I think we both preferred going to the regular services.  The seats were certainly more comfortable.

After church we went to Wal-Mart and picked up some groceries and such.  Amanda wanted to get a casserole dish with a heating/cooling bag and we’d gotten a $75 gift card for the ovarian cancer study she donated some blood for the day before her surgery.  After that we headed over to Mike and Kaitlyn Boscaljon’s for brunch with them and Blake and Stephanie Konny.

We all got a little sunburned yesterday.  Mike and Kaitlyn hadn’t put on any suntan lotion, but I think they’ll learn that lesson pretty quickly.  Mike wasn’t too bad, but Kaitlyn’s legs were very red.  My back was burned and Amanda had an odd burn pattern, but at least we’d put on some lotion.

Amanda made some potato casserole and there were also eggs, fruit and pancakes.  We all sat around and chatted for a while. Blake and Stephanie are thinking of buying a house.

After we did that Amanda and I swung by Circuit City to pick up some extra Wii classic controllers for Michael.  He had gotten MarioKart for the Wii last night and wanted extra controllers for people to play. 

We went home and let the dogs roam around for a bit and printed up all the cards for our homemade Settlers of Catan that we hadn’t printed up yet.  After that we went over to Michael’s.  he paid us for the controllers and we all played some MarioKart, which was pretty fun.  They had some of the classic tracks in there.  Amanda fixed some spaghetti while Michael and I played MarioKart and Smash Brothers.  We all then ate then played Settlers.  Amanda won.

Zach Dotsey

We stayed up a little and talked to Amy and Ben last night.  Ben and I were both falling asleep while the girls did most of the talking. 

This morning everyone got up and we took Amy to the salon where she was to spend her whole day before the wedding.  After that we went to breakfast with Ben at Sweet & Savory.  I had the Wrightsville Beach Toast.

We all went back to the house then met Mike and Kaitlyn at the Wrightsville Beach park to go to Wrightsville Beach itself.  For some reason they didn’t leave until we had already gotten to the park.  Us guys played Bocce and Ben did really well.  I didn’t do too well until later, but Ben certainly dominated me and Mike.  Mike and I jumped in the water, but I didn’t stay in long because it was too cold.  Every time a wave hit my chest it forced me to take shallow breaths.  Ben got in as I was getting out.  Other than that we all laid out and Amanda, Ben and I took a walk to the jetty.  We were out there from about 12:30 to 2:30.

Back at the house Ben and I played a little HORSE (I won) until he had to go take a shower to get ready for the wedding.  After he left Amanda took her first solo shower since her surgery and she did just fine.  She also was able to finally clip her toenails.  She’d been trying to get me to do it since she couldn’t bend quite right for it, but I just don’t feel comfortable clipping toenails.  I mean, she’s got cute feet and all, I just don’t feel comfortable clipping toenails.

Every time I think of Amanda having cite feet I think of Frank Lowery.  He worked with me and when I pointed out Amanda as the girl I was going out with that night, he said, "She got pretty toes."

Amanda and I went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshal tonight with Cyra and John.  It was a good movie, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to look at Jason Segel the same again when watching How I Met Your Mother.  I mean, he wrote a lot of schlong showing into that movie.  John and I decided after the movie that the weiner to breast ratio was really not favorable.  Either way, it kinda makes me want to move to Hawaii.

In sports news, Danny Green has decided to test the NBA waters.  This came as a surprise to a lot of Carolina fans.  Apparently Roy Williams had no real forewarning. 

Bigger news, as a Duke fan, is that Johnny Dawkins, long time assistant coach of the Duke Blue Devils, will be taking a head coaching position at Stanford.  I saw yesterday that he was a candidate for it, but the news seemed to come rather suddenly to me.  I wish him luck of course, but hate to see him go.  Hopefully Duke can slide the coaches around a little and get a big man as a big man coach now.  There’s a lot of talk about who the new person on the coaching staff will be.  And will Dawkins take anyone with him?

The biggest upside to this is that it will give Johnny Dawkins enough head coaching experience that, should he do well, he might be able to effectively replace Coach K whenever he decides to retire.  It’s always been thought that Dawkins would take over from Coach K, but the worry was how much experience he’d have as a head coach.  This is like trimming a bush to help it grow more, as I see it.

Zach Dotsey

Work was busy this morning.  There wasn’t a lot to do, per se, but there were a lot of phone calls and follow ups to do.  I spent probably two hours on conference calls alone, which is a bit more than usual.

While Scott and I were on hold during one conference call he mentioned what a nice day it was.  Amanda had mentioned she’d like to try to get out to the beach so I mentioned that if possible we were going to try to get off a little early and go to the beach.  Around 3:30 I had pretty much finished everything up and I told Scott that unless he had something he needed me to do that Amanda and I were going to head on out to the beach.  He told me to have fun, and I told him that he was okay for a boss.

We parked, as we always do, at Anna and Barry Frazelle’s and they went out on the beach with us.  It was nice out, except the wind was pretty cold.  We walked to the jetty and back then sat on a bench and talked for a bit.

In non-personal Frazelle news, Christian, Hannah’s boyfriend, will not be going off to Australia to study music afterall.  I think Anna said he’s going to go to Cape Fear Community College for a bit then transfer to UNCW for business.  Also, Hannah is going to get an apartment with her friend, Maddie.

We stopped by Old Navy for Amanda to exchange a few items of clothing that her mom had bought.  She had an issue with the exchange in that the clothes had been bought at 20% off and they weren’t going to either give her the discount for the things she was buying or they were going to only give her credit for the discounted price of the clothes in exchange.  Amanda talked to a manager and they made good for her.

Adam and Renee brought hungry boy casserole, which was really good, and the four of us played our homemade version of Settlers of Catan.  Amanda won first game, Adam the second.

Amy and Ben Farmer came by to stay the night after a wedding rehearsal.

Zach Dotsey

Work was pretty busy for the first part of the day, but at 2:00 I took Amanda to see Dr. Gajewski.  When we got to the hospital Amanda was asked who were were to see.  Amanda tried to say his name and couldn’t remember it.  I said his name, which is pronounced guy-ow-ski.  He said something about spelling it so I spelled it for him and when he checked my spelling he was impressed.  It’s not that hard: Ga, Jew, Ski. 

Originally we were scheduled to be there at 2:15 but yesterday morning that called and bumped us to 2:00.  We got there real early and still weren’t seen until probably 2:30.

The exam went well though.  Amanda had prepared some questions last night.  The answer to just about everything was "not until six weeks."  That includes my main question.  May 14th.  May 14th.  Fortunately for Amanda there was no poking or prodding for this exam.  She was weighed and it turns out that she’s down to 102 pounds, which is what I weighted in eighth grade.

Amanda had to drop some stuff of at work, so we swung by there since we were in the vicinity.  Well, she didn’t actually have to drop it off- she’s been delivering things via Mary, a coworker who lives on the street behind us, but she wanted to stop by and see everyone, so we hung out there for a few minutes until she could say hi to everyone who was there.

On the way back home we discussed how we’d like to play Settlers of Catan so we stopped by Wal-Mart to see if they had it.  They didn’t.  We got home and I worked on work while Amanda called around.  None of the game places, Toys R Us or Target had it either.  So we decided to make our own.  After I finished up with work we went to AC Moore, a craft shop, to buy things for it.  We got different colors of foam board to make the hexagon tiles, wood chips for the ports and the values, a miniature bear thing for the robber, little wood pieces for settlements and cities and pipe cleaner for the roads.  We couldn’t find any dice so we used two from our Risk game and for all the cards we used some business card paper and software we already had.  Amanda drew sketches for each of the resources and I scanned them in, colored them in Photoshop and printed them up on the cards. 

Settlers of Catan costs $40 for the basic game plus another $30 to be able to play with up to six players.  Dotseys of Catan, expansion included, cost us $17.  Pretty awesome.  We would have been willing to pay for it but we wanted to play it tonight and there wasn’t any way for us to do that.

Michael came by as we were finishing everything up and helped us punch out all the cards.  I still have to do a couple cards, but we hand wrote those for now.  Michael grumbled about the game until he got the hang of it.  I won.

While Michael was here he watched some NBA playoff games.  The DVR continued to do funky things so we missed Smallville and Supernatural.  The problem is that we had always set shows to record at whatever time a new episode was coming on, but ever since it upgraded itself it only recorded shows at the time they were originally coming on.  We have really not been happy with the DVR upgrade.

Zach Dotsey