I have to start off with this:
Amanda finished her penultimate Days episode and we saw that the Carolina Tar Heels were down by six to Boston College. Let me give you some perspective here. All I’ve heard all season is how awesome this Tar Heel squad is and how they’ve got such a terrific shot at going undefeated for the entire season. The Boston College Eagles were picked to finish eleventh (out of twelve) in the ACC. Tonight was the ACC season opener for both teams.
Amanda decided that we’d jinx it if we watched it all, but I had turned off a game of Fallout 3 to come watch it, so she hurried through her show while I sat at the kitchen table and snacked on carrots and ranch dip. After Days was over I stayed right where I was, nervously munching on baby carrots. BC was doing well all game and Carolina just wasn’t making shots like they usually do. The Heels got to within four towards the end, but thankfully they couldn’t pull it off, losing 85-78, much to my delight. So now this high and mighty great Tar Heel team is tied for last in the ACC. Oh, and it was at Chapel Hill. Beautiful!
Next up, Duke opened up ACC play against Virginia Tech, who has played Duke really tough the past few years. The game came on a few minutes in, since Carolina-BC ran long (in my joy I didn’t even noticed) and Duke was up 11-0. The game normalled out a little though and the Hokies came on pretty strong to start the second half, turning an eight point deficit at the half to I think a four point one in just over two minutes.
Coach K called a time out at about 17:30 and from then on the Blue Devils tore it up. They ended up allowing only thirteen points, 13 points! for the rest of the half. It was Virginia Tech’s worst offensive performance in nine years.
Stanford beat Arizona, too. I pull for Stanford because their new coach this year is Johnny Dawkins, a star at Duke and later a longtime assistant coach. Other than Kentucky losing a tied game to Louisville on a three point shot with 2.8 seconds left on the clock, it was a wonderful day for basketball!
Amanda and I, what else, but got up and went to Port City Community Church this morning. We ran into Kyle and Lorin Van Zandt on the way in and talked to them for a few minutes before heading in just as the service was starting. It was lead today by Todd Fields, who is from Atlanta and wrote a lot of the songs we sing in church on a weekly basis.
The message Mike Ashcraft gave us today was one revisiting the last couple years at this time: My One Word. It’s a twist on the old New Year’s Resolution where you just pick one single word and focus on it, instead of picking a bunch of things you want to change, failing on one then letting it all go. It was really a very challenging sermon.
Amanda and I happened to sit next to a couple we’d met a few times at Blake and Stephanie Konny’s place before. I hate to admit that I can’t think of their names right now, but the guy has the same birthday as me. We talked to them for a few minutes then talked to Kristen Barriner, whom we haven’t seen in quite a while. She and her long time boyfriend, Rob Peterson, split not too long ago and she’s working on putting things back in order. She seemed to be doing well though. She gave us a congratulatory card about finding out our baby is a girl.
While we were talking to her, Nick Warkentien came up and told me that things weren’t looking good for Mike Paschal’s brother, Chris, who had been in a car accident yesterday.
As we were walking out of the building we heard our names called and saw Jeaneal Guy. We talked to her for a minute or two too then headed off to pick up some bagels at Ken’s. We were going to pick up a dozen but Amanda wanted the cheddar, which they were out of, so we got a couple to go and ate them at home.
We didn’t do much for the day. I caught up on some things on this website while Amanda caught up on her Days of Our Lives DVRed episodes. We played Little Big Planet for a little bit, but Amanda wasn’t feeling it too much today so we only completed two levels. Other than that we just sort of took it easy until the basketball games.
Amanda went to bed and I played a game of Left 4 Dead with Michael. He died at the very end of the game. We were playing with two guys who would just run way up ahead of us and not play as a team, which can be pretty annoying.
Zach Dotsey
