Zach Dotsey

Amanda finally got to see Iron Man tonight.  Nick Warkentien called and asked if we wanted to watch it with them tonight.  She still wasn’t feeling good, but she said if they didn’t mind coming over here for it she’d be fine with it.  So they picked up the movie and some Chinese food and we all watched Iron Man.

I was the only person who’d seen it before.  This was Amanda’s third attempt at seeing the movie.  The first was with Nick and Amy a couple weeks ago, but it was all rented out.  The second was at her cousin Stanton Pickens’ house a couple weekends ago.  Technically I guess it was her fourth, since she was going to go with me to see it in the theater, but she didn’t feel too great that night.

The rest of my day wasn’t as nice.  I woke up and remembered that I had to take our cat, Cobb (Mr. Cobblepott) to the vet.  Nothing big, just a checkup.  I got up in plenty of time, but I had to look around for the pet carrier for a bit before I remembered that we’d let Amanda’s brother, Michael Mercer, borrow it a couple weeks ago and he hadn’t brought it back yet.  So I called Bonnie Narron, our neighbor, who told me we could borrow one of hers.  In fact, she told me we could keep it.  (When I said we had one but Michael was borrowing it she said we could give it to him.)  Bonnie sounded really tired and when I asked her about it she reminded me that she was visiting family in Tennessee and was an hour behind.  I felt bad about that.

So I got the pet carrier but then I had to clean it up a bit.  When Cobb saw me bring it inside he ran upstairs and hid under the bed, where I couldn’t get him.  I finally had to lift up the bed to scare him out, so he ran downstairs.  I got him, but I couldn’t get him into the carrier and he ran back upstairs.  Repeat, but the next time after he darted out from under the bed he hid between the couches.  I tried to pull him by his collar, but the collar snapped off.  After one or two more times of him running under the bed I finally got him in the pet carrier by lowering him down into it as opposed to stuffing him in horizontally.  Our pet carrier is much easier because you can open the top of it.

So I eventually got Cobb to Banfield, which always takes a while with the check-in process, then I swung by Chick-Fil-A since I was right there and had a coupon for some free chicken minis.  I heard on the radio on the way home that presidential candidate Senator John McCain was going to be speaking today right here in Wilmington, NC at Cape Fear Community College’s Schwartz Center.

I got home and worked stressfully.  I was hoping this week wouldn’t be as hectic or stressful as last week, but it’s shaping up to be the same.  I met Amanda, Michael and their grandparents, Peggy and Earl Lemons, at the mall for lunch then went right back to work.

I stayed busy until a little after five.  I was in kind of a sour mood at this point, although I can’t really tell why.  I think I was just feeling a bit fatigued.  Amanda came home and I went upstairs to talk to her while she changed, but I ended up just sitting on the bed playing Solitaire on the iPhone for a while.

I don’t know.  The day wasn’t so bad, and it was fun as always to hang out with Nick and Amy.  I was just in a funk.  The surf was supposed to be nice this evening, but I didn’t even feel like going out for that.

My day was definitely better than the one Amanda’s aunt, Anna Frazelle, had.  Last night their garage door wasn’t working properly so when they called someone to look at it today they found that the light sockets in their basement garage were filled with water.  Turns out they had some pretty big time water damage, possibly from an over-filled bathtub.  I’m told it warped the floors some but it may or may not have ruined some carpet.

Amanda was talking about how cute Amy looked with her pregnant belly getting bigger and bigger.  I think Amanda will look really cute when she gets a big pregnant belly too.

After Nick and Amy left Amanda watched How I Met Your Mother then went to bed.  I watched an episode of True Blood from a few weeks ago.  I was kind of iffy on the vampire show, but I think it’s picking up.  I’m still about three episodes behind.

Zach Dotsey

So I’m sitting here working with the TV on MSNBC in the background, trying to soak up a little bit of knowledge to help me decide who to vote for in the upcoming presidential election.  John McCain, afterall, is going to be having a rally at the Scwartz Center at Cape Fear Community College in about an hour or two, only a few miles from where I sit here typing.  In fact, on my TV right now he’s talking in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

I’ve considered myself an Obama lean for a while, but I think there are two issues that are making me lean that way even more right now.  One is that John McCain wants to put an income tax on health insurance.  I don’t know what the reasoning is for that, but I’ve been meaning to look into it.

The other issue is one that Sarah Palin just brought up in her introduction to John McCain, and it’s that one of the things they want to do to help with the current energy crisis is to drill more off the American shore.  The crowd loved the idea, going into a chant of “Drill, baby, drill!”  I’m totally against that though.  I think if we drill oil to bring down the cost of gas (which actually came own quite a bit over the weekend- we paid $3.29 a gallon) it will put off the urgency to look for alternate energy sources, which I think is something that needs to be taken care of in all immediacy.

In other political news right now, it appears that one of the things that will happen with the $700 billion bailout plan is to help delinquent mortgage payers stay in their home.  I’m mixed on that.  I’m sure there are some people with legitimate problems with it- people with families and health problems or whatever who made a smart decision in buying a home but then lost their job, things like that.  What really irritates me about this though is that I’ve been in my house for two and a half years now and paid my full mortgage on time every month.  Sometimes it was tough, but you know what?  I did it.  Things might have been tight now and then but I budgeted and I was responsible with my money and I paid my mortgage.  So now we’re rewarding people who have been financially irresponsible?  I’m so glad to see my tax money at work.

Back to the energy issue, McCain did just say he wanted to also invest in electric automobiles and named just about every type of alternative energy resource available to man, so I guess I might have to look into that some more too.

Zach Dotsey