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

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

I got a lot of happy birthday wishes today.  The first person I talked to (aside from Amanda when she was leaving) was my dad, who also celebrated his birthday, his 54th, today.  He’s going up to Rochester to see my mom this weekend.  But between IM’s, Facebook, Twitter, phone calls and message boards, I had a lot of people wish me well today, and I appreciate that.

Work was actually pretty busy, but for some reason I had a hard time concentrating today.

Milly was a bit bipolar today.  She was really happy and fun some, but then she’d turn around and only be happy if she was being held, or just not happy at all.  On top of that she wasn’t into napping much this evening.  I was a little tired and took her upstairs at about 6:00 to see if she’d take a nap with me, but she was enjoying crawling around on the bed too much.  At least she was entertained.

Amanda made quiche with sausage and biscuits for dinner with cinnamon rolls for dessert.  The Warkentiens joined us and brought no bake cookies.  After dinner we played Puerto Rico.  I actually had a bit of a plan going into it, and it worked out well.  I won, and by a pretty good margin.  Amy got second, Amanda third and Nick was last.  I don’t know exactly why we do it, but we tend to speak in various accents when we play that game, particularly Amy and I.  Usually it’s a British accent of some sort, but we both spent a good bit of time in something that was mostly Russian, maybe a little eastern European with maybe a dash of Hispanic sprinkled in here and there.

After that we watched The Office, which was the episode (well, two episodes put together) where Pam and Jim have their baby.  I thought Amanda was going to bed after Nick and Amy and Eli took off, but we ended up watching Community too.

That was pretty much my day.  It was a low key birthday, but it was a decent day.

Zach Dotsey

Milly was generally happy today.  A little clingy, but pretty happy.

Work went pretty well, except for one snag involving an exception to my first sentence there.  I’d just gotten off a pretty long phone call and had just gotten Milly up from a nap.  She was wet and in need of a diaper change.  I needed to call a couple people back, and there was one of them that I knew wouldn’t be bothered by hearing a little bit of Milly in the background.  At the same time, Kevin Millard was coming by to bounce some website ideas off my head.  I’d told him I’d probably be on the phone and to just come on it.

So that was the scene.  I was on the phone wiping Milly when Kevin walked in.  Bruce, as he will sometimes, but not usually, do, started barking like mad at Kevin.  I asked the client on the phone to hold on, put it on mute and went to try to calm Bruce down.  He ran away.  At the same time, as I was going to get Bruce Milly, I guess because I left her, started crying as if something had bitten her.  I tried to calm her down while talking to the client, and Kevin told me he’d have finished the diaper for me but he didn’t know how our diapers work or which was dirty and which was clean.  He was kind enough to put her in the pack & play as I went after Bruce again, since he came down the hall to remind me that Kevin was there.  I finally got him on the steps and put him outside.  At this point though, Milly was still really upset, even with me holding her, so I apologized to the client and told her we’d have to talk later.

Whew!  I was Mr. Popular for a time there, about 40 minutes or so spanning that first phone call, what with missed calls, visits and people wanting my attention.

All that aside, Milly was really cute today.  Amanda’s remarked lately how much better she can crawl around and get to her feet now.  She also drank most of six ounces of formula every feeding but her last.

After Milly went to sleep Amanda and I watched How I Met Your Mother, after which she watched some of The Bachelor.  She was in bed for that, but during the show they announced the contestants for the next Dancing with the Stars, one of which, she told me, is Erin Andrews.  That might get me to watch that show at least a little.  Well, at least as much as when they had Stacy Keibler on there.

Oh, happy birthday to Kristen Barriner, by the way!  I meant to call or email her about that.  Guess it’s not too late yet to say it on Facebook at least.

Zach Dotsey
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Amanda was watching Jeopardy tonight and had me come watch a bit where they had a category title “Uranus”.  It was hilarious.

“I’ll have, uh, Uranus for four hundred, please,” said one guy to Alex Trebek.

Alex Trebek: “One of the three main gasses that make up Uranus’ upper atmosphere.”  For the record, methane was an acceptable answer.

Amanda’s favorite: “In 1781 William Herschel discovered Uranus and initially named it after this king of England.”

Hey, what do you know… someone taped it and put it on YouTube!

Despite Meliamae’s attempts to thwart it, I’ve accomplished a goal today in that I’ve finished all the larger projects that have been on my plate for a few weeks now.  The final one, which I spent the majority of my time on today, might have some minor things to tweak still, but for all intents and purposes, it’s done.  So tomorrow I get to follow up with sales leads and do a million little jobs that have been in need of doing.

You’d think that by this point I’d know better than to predict being caught up with work.  That’s bit me in the butt several times over the past few months.

The bit about Milly?   She didn’t feel like entertaining herself very much today.  She’s gotten to where she likes to keep trying to come back behind my desk to see what cords and things she can find to play with, so when she gets over to me I “reset” her back to the other side of the room, usually near a toy that occupies her attention for a minute or two, then next thing I know she’s grunting herself back over to the desk.   It looks sweet when she pulls herself up by my legs, of course, but then when I pick her up as she inevitably wants, she’s all about the keyboard or other cords.

Anyway, she was only happy today, for the most part, when I was holding her.  It’s sweet and all, but it’s impossible to get any work done that way.  I guess it all worked out well in the end because we got to play and have some fun together, but I also got a lot done.

Zach Dotsey

I woke up around 7:00 this morning.  Milly wasn’t fussing, but she was awake and I didn’t know what time it was, so I got on up.  Milly and I talked to Uncle Roy for a bit, and when I heard my parents I took Milly to see them.  Since Mom got in late last night she didn’t get to see Milly.  She didn’t get to see anyone, come to think of it.  I think I ended up going to sleep about 15 minutes before she and my dad got back to the house.

As I noticed last night, there was snow on the ground, probably a couple inches.  Amanda and I took Milly out to check it out, but she wasn’t really into it.  I got a few pictures and a little bit of video, but nothing monumental.

We mostly just hung around for a good part of the day.  Milly had her first taste of eggs, which she didn’t seem to mind too much.  I tried to install a printer on Uncle Roy’s laptop and drew and colored a picture of one of Jackson’s toys in Photoshop.  I’d shown him a little bit about how to use it yesterday, which he seemed to enjoy.  I wish they’d come out with a new MarioPaint, because the basics I learned playing with that were the basis for a lot of what I taught myself with Photoshop.

Duke hosted Maryland today.  Not only was it Coach K’s 1oooth game, and not only was it his birthday, but it was also a game to determine the #1 spot in the ACC.  The Terps were second but if they won they’d take Duke’s #1 spot.

The game started and Duke rebounded a Maryland attempt then Jon Scheyer made a three.  Then the power went out.  It came back on, but the satellite was taking forever to sync back up.  Then the power went out again.  Not only did it interrupt my game, but both laptops that were in use (mine, with Amanda on it, and Uncle Roy on his) died.  Dad and Josh were doing some bathroom work (they ended up pretty much completely stripping out the bathroom at the top of the stairs) and had to cut the power for some reason while they were draining the water.  Or something like that.

Once the power came back on the satellite took forever to reboot again, so I watched some of the game online until the TV was ready.

It was a great game.  Duke won by 21 and Brian Zoubek had his best game ever with 16 points and 17 rebounds!  Dude was a beast today.

In other basketball news, Carolina beat NC State in a game to determine who would reside in the cellar of the ACC.  Carolina, sadly, was able to stop their losing streak.  I watched UK beat Tennessee just a little bit ago.  It was tight until the end of the game when I guess the Wildcats decided they were tired of trading buckets.

We played some MarioKart for a bit then Amanda, Milly and I left just before 5:00.  The trip was pretty uneventful aside from the fact that I drove (even though I drove up as well, and we usually trade off duties) and Milly cried most of the last 15 miles or so of the trip.  She seemed to just be tired of being in the car.  She was also distracted while eating and didn’t go to bed too easily.

Amanda and I watched The Office and 30 Rock before she went to bed, then I watched an episode of Smallville.  The next one features the Justice Society.  I’d have gone ahead and watched it, but it’s a two hour one I think, and I remembered that Kentucky and Tennessee were playing.

The Revills, by the way, got two new dogs today.  They were just going to get one but they decided they liked two of them.  Lucy and Maxine are their names.  As you may recall, they recently lost two dogs.

Zach Dotsey