Zach Dotsey

Conference tournament upsets continue.  As of today, Duke is the only top ACC team still in the tournament, and Virginia gave them all they wanted for the first half of the game.  Maryland, the second seed in the tournament, lost to Georgia Tech.  The Yellow Jackets can be decent, but it was a bit of a surprise.  Then Miami and NC State beat Virginia Tech and Florida State, respectively, which was a pretty huge shock.  Both of those teams have been sitting pretty snugly at the bottom of the ACC for some time, but here they are playing in the quarterfinal games tomorrow.  Duke should have a pretty good go of the rest of the tournament.  They’ll face Miami tomorrow then the winner of Georgia Tech and NC State.  The smart money’s on Georgia Tech, but I’d like Duke to get a revenge match for the beating the Wolfpack gave them earlier this season.  Either way, like I said, Duke should win the ACC and lock up a #1 seed for the NCAA Tournament.

So, it’s gotten to the point where we pretty much have to put the dogs’ and cat’s water bowl up on the table any time Milly is out and about.  She heads straight over for it and really enjoys putting her hands in it.  I think I mentioned that yesterday, but it literally happens whenever she’s awake now.  Sucks for the animals- they’ve complained about it some.

We went over to Nick and Amy’s tonight for dinner and games.  Amanda and Nick were a little burned out on Puerto Rico so we introduced them to Wits & Wagers (Amy and I each won a game) then played Yahtzee, which I won over Amanda by six points.  I think it was Amanda who mentioned what time it was when we were going to start the second game as an argument for not playing Puerto Rico, but Yahtzee probably took twice as long.  We had a good time with them, as is the norm.

Zach Dotsey

Today was a special day, officially marking the start of March Madness for 2010.  Well, some conferences had already started their tournaments, but in particular the ACC Tournament started today at noon.  I was excited to watch what I could, but I had a pretty full slate including a meeting today.

I will say that there have been a lot of upsets so far.  I think the lower seed advanced in all the ACC games except one, that being Carolina.  I’ll give them this though- they actually played pretty well in the first half and had up to a twelve or so point lead over Georgia Tech, who had already swept the Heels in the regular season.  Georgia Tech came out pretty strong in the second half though, and I figured once it got close that they’d pull through and win, which they did.

Syracuse, Villanova and Pittsburgh, all Big East teams, were all upset today too.  I just hope all the upsets stop by noon tomorrow, when Duke plays Virginia (who upset Boston College).

On the subject of Duke, they got a verbal commitment from Michael Gbinije (ben-ee-jee?) today.  He’s part of the 2011 class and is currently rated as one of the top 15 player in the country.  Congrats to both him and Duke University!

Billy Supplee and Cyra Sherburn came over for dinner and The Office tonight.  I was in the middle of changing Milly when they got here, but she had gotten up and wandered off before I  put a diaper back on her, so we let her greet them at the door like that.  This may sound funny, but it’s so cute when she’s crawling around on the floor with her tiny bare butt.

Speaking of Milly crawling around, I’m looking forward to a time when we can get her a kiddie pool.  Every time she goes to the kitchen she heads for the water bowl.  She likes to put her hand in it and splash it around a little.  That girl loves the water, so I think it’s good that she’ll be growing up going to the beach a lot.  That’s the plan anyway.

A few weeks ago, Seth and Dana Holloman turned me and Amanda on to an iPhone/iPod app called Words with Friends.  It’s basically online Scrabble.  Amanda and I had a really close game going, but she won in the end.  That was my first loss.  So far I’ve beaten a random player and Dana and lost to Amanda.  I think I’ll beat Seth and Ben Lambeth, who also has the game.  Amanda and I started a new game tonight and we’re also both playing Billy.  No idea how those game will go yet.

Zach Dotsey

Not too eventful a day today.  Milly was fussing really early off and on this morning, but she finally quieted down and went back to sleep about ten minutes before 8, so I let her sleep in just a little and got her up at about ten after.  She was pretty good during the time she was up, but she got fussy right at 9:30 so back down she went for a bit.

I was pretty busy this morning, plus I had to run out for a bit in the early afternoon.  I got a good bit done, but I’ve got things to do still.  I’ve also got a meeting lined up for tomorrow.

This evening Amanda and I watched what the DVR said was a two-hour long Law & Order: SVU, but actually turned out to be two separate episodes.  It was just odd that it was listed that way, because normally even if two new episodes of a show come on back-to-back it’s still listed as two different shows.  Whatevs.

I got to thinking today and realized that one year ago today I was in Costa Rica, surfing.  I looked up my entry for that day and saw that a year ago was actually the day that we rescued a family who had gone swimming in the ocean and got caught up in a rip current.  Good times.  I often think about Costa Rica and would love to go back.

I was just watching Louisville and Cincinnati playing a game in the Big East tournament.  Louisville lead the whole game until the very end when the Bearcats came back and stole the game from them.  The ACC tourney starts tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to it.

Zach Dotsey

As good as Milly was yesterday, she decided to make up for it today.  Then again, I thought she was making up yesterday for the day before that, so who knows?  She was up a little early, didn’t finish her bottle and was fussy enough, despite that I tried several things to make her happy, that I was able to put her down for her nap just a little before 9:30.  She usually goes down closer to 10.

Work seems to slowly be getting back to how it was before a week or two ago.  That’s good in that I get to make money, but it would also be nice not to feel stressed out for having plans at 6:00.

Plans at 6:00 were going to Port City Community Church for a meeting about Grow Zone, the children’s ministry that Amanda and I both volunteer at.  There are some big changes coming up that they wanted to announce, first and foremost among them was that everyone who helps out in the rooms is going to be moved to doing it every week.  I can see why that’s a good idea, as it gives the kids more stability and the chance to build better relationships with them and their parents, but it gives me a lot to think about.  I also volunteer on the production team once a month, plus hardly a month goes by when Amanda and I don’t either have someone in town for the weekend or we’re out of town ourselves.  We’ll just have to pray about it and see where we’re lead.

Kirsten came over early to watch Milly while we went to the meeting and Barry came to pick her up at about 7:30, just a few minutes before Joel, Mia and Felix came over for small group, bearing a birthday cake.  I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think I’ve had more birthday cake for any other birthday in my life.  Anyway, they were the only other couple who could make it tonight, so we ate cake, chatted and breezed through our discussion.  We’ve only got one chapter left in our study on Romans.

Zach Dotsey

Given how moody Milly was for most of the day yesterday, I was really expecting a tough day today.  I was pleasantly surprised though, because not only was Milly good, but she was also a lot of fun.  She was still asleep, curled up with her butt in the air and her face pressed against a blanket, when I went to get her up.  She woke up happy, drank a full six ounces of formula, ate almost a full container of baby food and then stayed happy for a while.  I had piled some clean clothes on the loveseat, which she is now able to quickly and easily pull herself up to stand against, and for some reason she thought the clothes were very funny.

So not only was Milly happy, she was playful and very interactive, but then when I started working she even kept herself entertained.  She did start to get clingy around 10:00, but that’s about the time she usually goes down for a nap anyway.  She didn’t protest that very much and stayed down until her mama (who got home a few minutes early today) got her up.

All that allowed me a lot of time for work today, although I hit a snag on something that shouldn’t have really taken too long.  Because of that I ended up working until almost 8:00 tonight, but I did get a lot done after my normal working hours.

At 8:00 I helped Amanda get Milly ready for bed.  She decided to add something to the bedtime routine, which is to read to Milly every night.  We’ve been bad about consistently reading to her, so I’m glad Amanda brought up doing it.

A year ago I was on Costa Rica.

Zach Dotsey
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I woke up still feeling happy from Duke’s epic beatdown of Carolina last night.  Milly, though, was upset a lot today.  Amanda thinks she might be teething again, and there may be something to that, but I think she’s upset that she didn’t get to stay up and watch such a fun, awesome game.

Seth and Dana Holloman sat with us at church today.  They usually go to the 11:00 service, but Seth was golfing later so they came earlier.  After the service we went out to eat at Boca Bay with them, their son, Gavin, and Seth’s parents.  Seth’s dad even paid for the breakfast for all of us, which was really awesome of us.  I shouldn’t be surprised because when Seth, Randall and I went to Countdown to Craziness, the Duke season opening event, Seth’s dad drove us all and wouldn’t take gas money.

Gavin was really sweet with Milly again.  He held her hand and gave her a kiss before we all left.  He tried to walk with her, holding her hand, but Dana had to explain to him that she can’t walk yet.

After we got home both Milly and I took a nap, although I was on the couch and she was in her crib, and that took up a good chunk of the day.  Milly was off and on fussy after she got up though.  She’d be entertained and happy one minute and we had no idea how to make her happy the next.  See teething comment above.

At some point I took off to feed Michael’s cats and clean out their litter.  I talked to Jason on the way there, mostly about how awesome last night’s game was.

Amanda and I ended up feeding Milly and putting her to bed about half an hour early tonight.  After that Amanda watched part of the Academy Awards before heading off to bed.  I stayed up, messing around on the computer, and half-watched the rest of it.  The Hurt Locker won Best Picture.  Right now I’m watching American Pickers, which is a show about guys who go around and find collections of all kinds of old stuff and buy it.  It’s pretty fascinating to me.

Zach Dotsey

What a great night, and there are so many things that were great about this game.

I’ve been amped about the Carolina at Duke game since yesterday.  Going into it, I knew that Duke should win the game handily, and that it could be a blowout, but I figured we wouldn’t be that lucky.  I thought Carolina would hang around for a bit.  In reality, Carolina scored the first single point then Duke killed them from there.

• Michael Mercer, my brother-in-law and UNC fan, told me he was giving me two Duke wins over Carolina for my birthday.  It was a nice touch for him to make the margin of victory on this one the same as the age I just turned: 32.
• The worst loss Roy Williams has ever had was 33.  So close!
• I said beforehand that if Duke beat the largest margin of victory in the series (37, by Carolina many, many years ago) that I’d shave my face.  I thought it was going to happen, but it did not.
• Duke scored more in the first half (53) than Carolina scored the entire game.  That means Duke could have not scored at all in the second half and still get the win.  Think about how crazy that is.
• In the first half, Brian Zoubek had more rebounds by himself than the entire Tar Heel team.
• This was Carolina’s worst loss since 2002 (to Maryland) and the fewest points scored in a game since 2003 (to Duke).
• This was the worst loss by a defending NCAA champion since 1990.
• Duke set a school record for home wins in a season with 17.  All but one of those was by double digits, and the one that wasn’t was an out of conference game.
• Duke tied Maryland for the ACC regular season title but is the #1 seed in the ACC Tournament next week.
• Carolina has secured a #10 seed for the ACC Tournament, their lowest ever.
• Duke is being discussed as being the probable fourth #1 seed for the NCAA Tournament.  It helps that Kansas State lost today.
• It was Senior Night for Jon Scheyer, Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas.  Coach K was emotional during the Senior Day celebrations, which they showed before the game.
• The Presbyterian fan who was kicked out of a Carolina game by Roy Williams for mild heckling was in attendance.

So it was a good night, as you can see.

We started the day going to Cracker Barrel for breakfast.  Actually, the day started earlier than that.  Bruce kept getting up and going downstairs to bother Karen and Milly woke up and cried a bunch around 1:00.  Maybe she’s teething again, because she was very fussy today.  She didn’t like being put down for naps, and when she did nap it wasn’t for long.  She wasn’t a fan of going to sleep tonight either, although she seemed to go out (or at least quiet down) pretty soon after I shut her door.

Anyway, Cracker Barrel.  We went to Wal-Mart after that to pick up a few things and Karen took off when we got home.  Amanda actually napped on the couch, which is very much a rarity.  I went out to pick up some chicken for our enchilada dinner tonight (we forgot to get it at Wally World) and to drop off the recycling.  I took a huge amount of paper recycling that had built up over a few years.  There were some slips of paper at the bottom of it that had been used for Balderdash, and I can’t remember the last time we played that.

Around 5:00 Amanda started getting things ready for tonight.  Blake and Stephanie Konny came over around 6:30 for dinner.  Since there was time, we went ahead and introduced them to Puerto Rico.  It didn’t go well for me and Amanda.  Blake won, followed by Stephanie then Amanda then me.  That’s okay though, because the game came on before we finished and I’ll admit I was a little distracted.  (Not that that’s why I lost.)  I did DVR the game, and I plan on watching it again.  It really was fun.

Zach Dotsey