I was in a pretty good mood this morning.  I think there’s a lot of good going on at work, and Travis mentioned that he was in a good mood today, too.  There are some good leads coming in, we’re staying pretty busy and things are coming together well.  I’ve got ideas of things I’d like to accomplish in the not-too-distant future in terms of expanding business.

Billy and Cyra came over tonight for enchiladas.  Milly was really good while they were there, but it was probably just because we gave her chicken and corn to eat.  Billy and I went out to get some dessert (ice cream and cookies) and Amanda got Milly ready for bed.  I put her to bed myself tonight while Amanda stayed downstairs to entertain.

I felt a very large zit coming on yesterday.  It was so big that you could see a large bump along my the normal line of my right jaw.  Amanda helped me tweeze a very large whitehead from it tonight.  Nasty, right?  It’s still a little sore and there’s a lot of fluid still in it, but it does feel better.  Hopefully the rest will be gone tomorrow, or I’ll be able to get more out.  Yick.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been temporarily contained as of today.  Well over 200 million gallons of oil has been lost into the Gulf.

In other news, remains of a ship probably built in the 1700′s was found near the World Trade Center site in New York today.  It was thought to have been sunk to help add land to the city.  I was actually watching something on the history of Manhattan a couple nights ago and now I really want to visit New York.

Zach Dotsey

Despite the busy-ness I did go to lunch at the mall.  We went a few minutes early and picked up my new replacement wedding ring.  Amanda had “LOVE YOUR GIRLS” engraved on the inside of it, a reminder that it was also a Father’s Day present.  It’s titanium and very lightweight.  It also resembles Amanda’s wedding ring a bit.

We ate with Amanda’s grandparents and Michael, and Anna and Kirsten joined us a little later.  Milly was excited to see everyone.

Hannah and Barry, on a side note, are both about to head out of town.  Hannah’s going to Hatteras to go camping with some friends and Barry’s going to Costa Rica.

We went to a Night of Worship at Port City Community Church tonight.  The band really brought it and the crowd was really into it.  It was mostly music and singing, but there was also praying, a short message and communion.  It was really a nice thing for the church to put on.

Michael and Jenn watched Milly while we were at the church.  It started at 7:00 and we thought it would be done by about 8:00, so we let Milly go to Michael’s new apartment, but we ended up not getting out until almost 9:00, so it was a late night for the Bug.

Milly seemed to enjoy her time over there.  Everything apparently went well except for when Milly, who likes to take things and put them into other things, thought it would be cool to put Michael’s mobile phone in his drink.  Michael yelled, “No!” or something and Milly got upset and cried for a bit.  His phone is fine though, so we thought it was pretty funny.

LeBron James is leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers and going to the Miami Heat with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh.  He made a ginormous deal about his decision, and I don’t really care because I don’t watch the NBA, but it was all anyone was talking about for a bit today and ESPN had like a two hour special on it.

On the plus side, since those three players are pretty much maxing out the Heat’s salary cap, some people are speculating that Jon Scheyer might have a good shot at joining the team, since he’d be a rookie free agent (and therefore cheap, but filling a role).  I hope it works out for him.

Zach Dotsey

So, you remember how we had some fraudulent charges on Amanda’s check card?  A couple days ago we found out that one of the people Amanda works with, one that she often eats lunch with, also had some fraud on a card.  I looked through all the places Amanda had eaten with people at work over the last couple months and narrowed it down to a few restaurants.

Well, tonight I just happened to catch a news story that hackers had been able to steal a bunch of credit card numbers from PT’s Grille.  The story said that the FBI had checked in with PT’s and that they are now secure, but that answers that question.  I recorded the segment on the DVR for Amanda.  I went upstairs to see if she was awake, but she was out and I didn’t want to disturb her.

Most of the rest of my day was spent working.  It was a busy day and I’d have been going nuts if not for having Travis to do a good portion of what I used to do.

I did go out to help Polly Clawson set up her new laptop.  I got rid of a bunch of the crap programs that came with it, saved her a few bucks by downloading Open Office, a great and free alternative to Microsoft Office and got her network situated along with a few other little tweaks here and there.  After that I picked up my paycheck then worked, worked, worked.

I did take a break to watch Persons Unknown with Amanda after we put Milly to bed.  It came on Monday, but Amanda’s gone to bed really early every day this week so we hadn’t had a chance to watch it.  She’s feeling better, but still not 100% and she ended up going to bed after we watched the show.

The NBA draft was tonight.  Despite a lot of talk lately about Brian Zoubek, neither he nor Jon Scheyer (nor Lance Thomas, though, bless him, there wasn’t much talk about his pro prospects) was drafted.  How odd that a team can win a national championship and not have a single player get drafted.  Well, hopefully they’ll be able to get on with some team via free agency.

Zach Dotsey

At any rate, Amanda spent a lot of time on it and she said we need to keep each other accountable about keeping it straight.

At this moment I’m finally getting around to transferring all the music I had on the old laptop to the new one.  I can never get the Homegroup to work right with any consistency even though both computers are on Windows 7.  It seems like I have to set it back up every time to get it to work, which isn’t difficult, but it’s more of  a pain than just clicking on a file to copy things over.  So I copied it all to an external hard drive the other day and now I’ve copied them over to the newer laptop and am importing them all into iTunes now.  It really seems like there should be a better way to do all that.

Milly didn’t take any more steps today (half or otherwise), but I did forget to mention a first yesterday.  I held her arms over my shoulders so she could ride on my back and ran around, which she absolutely loved.  We did that for a bit again today.  Also, right before we put her to bed, Milly was trying to play with her mom’s earrings, so Amanda took them out and gave one to her.  After playing with it for a bit Milly tried to put it back!  It was so cute and sweet.  I mean, all she was doing was sticking it back in Amanda’s hair in the general area of her ear, but it was still cute.  I took that one from her and Amanda gave her the other earring and she tried to do it again.  Such a smart little girl.

Work was still busy today, but like yesterday much of it was prep work to try to make things easier in the future.  I spent a good bit of time getting things together for Travis and we have a meeting set up for next week with an existing client.

Amanda and I played Catan online together tonight.  I dominated that game and won with 12 points to Amanda and another player’s 7 and 5 I think.  That’s pretty dominating.  The guy was from Indianapolis and we talked a good bit of hoops.

I realized today that I haven’t really talked much about the news, so I’ll just mention a couple big things going on right now.

A few weeks ago there was an oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico that has ended up being, I believe, the largest oil spill ever.  It’s causing all kinds of ecological and economic problems for Louisiana and Alabama, places along that coast.  BP is in serious trouble over it.

An award was given to the man who developed solar-powered cells that can be used as windows and mimic (somehow) the natural process of photosynthesis.  It’s also supposedly less expensive than most solar cell technologies, so I really hope it catches on.

The Big 10, Big 12 and Pac 10 conferences are considering shaking up their lineups.  It’s too complicated to go into, but if it happens it looks like Kansas and Kansas State are going to be left out of any power conferences.  It’s all about football revenue, which really sucks.  Kansas is one of the blue bloods of college basketball and it would really be a shame to see such a storied program end up at a nothing conference.

Zach Dotsey
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I had a pretty busy work morning and met with Travis this afternoon to go over all the services we offer and some pricing guidelines in addition to getting his set up with some of our systems.  Amanda took Milly out and about with her during that time and actually came back by the Port City Java where I had the meeting, walking up literally just as Travis had left.

Amanda and I stopped by Dick’s.  Milly was about ready for a nap so I just ran in myself and picked up a couple weights and a pull-up bar.  Right after I got home and settled back in for work, Travis called me and we made a sales call.  I talked, he listened.  I think it went alright and hope to be able to meet with the client next week.  I’m anxious to get Travis to where he can do the sales and design, freeing me up to do so much other stuff.

Amanda’s mom, Karen Mercer, came to see us tonight.  Amanda’s dad, Phil, is off building a church in Nova Scotia, so she just came to see Milly, hang out and, apparently, clean our upstairs bathroom.  Tomorrow is their anniversary, and Karen said this will be the first one they’ve spent apart.

We didn’t end up doing P90X today, and we didn’t get a chance to do it yesterday.  I’m a little frustrated at that, but we talked about what we can do about it.  Amanda and I like doing the workout together, but it’s not easy for us to do it at the same time.  I might start getting up early to do it, and she can do it in the afternoons when Milly’s napping.

John Wooden died today at the age of 99.  John Wooden coached UCLA to 10 NCAA championships.  Looking past the controversy that comes with such an unrepeatable feat, it’s an amazing accomplishment and has him cemented as one of the best coaches in any sport of all time.

Zach Dotsey
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Milly started off her first ever Memorial Day with a fully dirty diaper and a bunch of fuss, so she didn’t stay up very long.  After I put her down I showered then headed off to a quick meeting at a Port City Java.  Not long after I got home Amanda, Milly, Karen and I went to meet Michael at Temptations for lunch.  Unfortunately, they were closed so we ended up going across the street to Ruby Tuesday at the mall.

I got Milly some things to snack on from the salad bar, and out of those she most enjoyed the cranberries.  Very surprisingly though, I first gave her a lemon slice just to see what kind of face she’d make, but she really liked it!  Our waitress commented that babies tend to like sour things and brought us a few pickle slices.  Milly sucked on one with the whole thing in her mouth for a while, and when she was done she spit it out with her lips as tight as they could be so that it looked like, I don’t know, an automatic ticket dispenser or something.  It was kind of funny.

After that I walked around the mall with Amanda, Karen and Milly.  When Amanda decided to go spend her Loft gift card (because they were having a big sale today) Milly and I went to the game store across the way from it then we went and sat in a little rest area with couches and chairs.  Milly wasn’t amused there and kept trying to crawl off into the mall, so I remembered a little kids area and took her there.  I tell ya, it’s really easy to talk to women when you have a little baby with you.  She was a hit with this one group of ladies who were there.  Anyway, Milly enjoyed it for a while and was even laughing at what appeared to be two siblings chasing each other around.

After Milly got tired of that we went back to The Loft to find Amanda and Karen getting ready to check out with their purchases.  Amanda got some nice stuff and only paid $11 after her gift card and discounts.  She was looking forward to wearing some of it this week and showing me her new skinny jeans, but Karen accidentally took her bag back to Richlands when she left later in the day, and we won’t see her for two weeks.

We stopped off at… I forget the name of the place- a toy store next to Temptations, to look at some things before heading back home.  It was funny- Karen was the one we had to keep telling it was time to go to.  Milly was getting tired and the mall, even if I’m not actually shopping, somehow just saps my energy.  We got back, put Milly to bed, Amanda and Karen left and I did a little bit of work.  When they got home, Karen and Amanda played in the yard a bit, planting some flowers and such.  I mostly just watched after Milly after she got up.  She really seemed to enjoy hanging out outside on the porch.

I heard Kimber, one of the little girls from across the street, notice Milly, so I took her over there to say hi to her and her sister, Kenzie.  Their dad, Charles, came out and we talked for a few minutes.  Kimber said she wanted to go inside our house and see our puppies, and I told her that was fine with me as long as it was fine with her dad, so they came over for a bit and ended up mostly just playing with Milly’s toys in the living room.  They’re very sweet girls.  Deanna, their mom, came over after a bit and collected them after hanging out for a few minutes.  Kimber gave Milly a firetruck driven by Sesame Street’s Ernie.

Karen took off a little after that (with Amanda’s new clothes).  After Amanda and I put Milly to bed for the night we did our P90X workout, which was back and legs.  I really need to get a pull-up bar.  We used bands to try to do some work, but it’s just not the same.

Karen called when we were done with some internet trouble.  She was connected to their wireless network, but she wasn’t able to pull up the internet.  It took a while to step her through it, but I had her reset the modem.  I don’t know if it worked or not, but I also tried to get her to create a new Internet Explorer icon.  I didn’t think she used IE since she had a couple FireFox shortcuts on her desktop, and she was having some kind of trouble getting her newly-created shortcuts onto the desktop.  I finally just told her I’d have to fix it up for her next time I saw her.  I needed to take a shower, it was getting late, and I had some things I really needed to do after that.

Zach Dotsey
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Joking, of course, but really she did just fine.  We had a fun time seeing a bunch of friends and lots of babies, and Milly really enjoyed having a giant cupcake.

In order to accommodate the 11:00 party, we shifted Milly’s schedule a little.  She woke up at 8:00 as usual (actually she woke me up at 8:00 when I heard her making some noise) but she was back to sleep soon after she finished eating.  For one, she was a little fussy, but more importantly we wanted to make sure she got plenty of sleep since she’d be at a party an hour and a half earlier than she usually gets up from her nap.

Oh, I mowed first thing this morning, by the way.  I always listen to my iPhone when I mow, but today the left ear bud wasn’t working so I tossed it out.  I thought that might possibly happen because the last couple times I wound up the headphones in the back of my iPhone case the front of the ear bud came off when I pulled the headphones back off.  I’ve had that thing for a number of years now, so I guess it was time.  I got the headphones from Amanda’s iPod, which hadn’t even been opened yet (the headphones, not the iPod) and used those.  The down side is that there’s no built-in answering/pause button or microphone on it, but it does have a volume control.

Anyway, after we got back from the party we put Milly to bed and did our daily P90X workout, which was arms and shoulders today.  It wasn’t all that bad, really, though I’d like to get myself some weights for it.  We’ve only got one set of five-pound weights and some stretchable bands.  Amanda used the weights and I used the band, which did fine, but I think I’d be more comfortable with the weights.

There is, for the record, no place on my body that is not sore with the exception of my forearms, calves, hands and feet.  And face, I guess.

We got Milly up at 4:00 and headed over to the Frazelles’ for dinner.  Barry and I went surfing first, though as sore as I still was (and am), I didn’t know if I’d be able to take my board out.  Fortunately the waves were of a decent size and I took out Terry (one of Barry’s boards), which is much smaller and lighter than my own board.  It took me a while to get out because the waves were coming pretty consistently, and I never really caught a good one.  I would like to blame all of that on the fact that my body was so tired, but surfing (and paddling) uses such different muscles that the soreness had absolutely no affect on it.  No, I’m just out of surfing shape is all, and Terry’s a harder board to catch waves on for someone who is used to bigger boards.  Still, I’m glad I went out.

Barry and I went in after about 45 minutes.  Anna made some really great burgers and tots with her chocolate chocolate cake for dessert.  Two of those three items are not in the P90X diet, and one is in only sparingly.  Barry said that since I’d surfed it was all okay though.

We hung out there for a bit and let Milly play a little after her last feeding of the night.  Hannah was there because her flight to Guatemala was postponed due to a volcanic eruption near Guatemala City, which is where they were supposed to land.  It was funny to see Kirsten and Hannah help Amanda put Milly’s pajamas on because Kirsten is now such a pro at taking care of her and Hannah hasn’t really had to deal with changing her that much, if at all, really.  I think she might have once before.  Anyway, it just amused me that the younger sister knew more about changing a baby’s clothes than her older sibling.

Milly’s gotten really good at signing “please”, which is to run your open hand in a circle on your chest.  She’s still not totally comfortable with “more” and will usually sign “please” for “more” now, which is understandable since both are used in similar situations.  It’s so ridiculously freakin’ cute though.

After we got home and put the Millster to bed Amanda watched on episode of Friday Night Lights before going to bed herself.  Her stomach was bothering her.  Anna had said that hers was too, and her guess was that it was the tater tots.

Actor Dennis Hopper died today, falling in his battle to prostate cancer.  It really is odd how celebrities seem to die in bunches.

Zach Dotsey

Prior to that, Amanda and I did our P90X for the day.  We discovered that we’re supposed to do one disc a day, and the 16 miute Ab Shredder workout we did yesterday was an addon for the hardcore types to be done after the first session.  Whoops!  So we’re a day behind now I guess.

Tonight’s workout was Plyometrics, which was a bunch of squatting and lunching and jumping.  It kicked our tails.  Amanda’s bad knee popped and she wasn’t able to do a whole lot after that, but she still did some.  I think I did a bit of each exercise, but I wasn’t able to do all of all of them.  And I’m so tight now, all over.  Well, my legs aren’t all that bad, but anything involving any movement in my arms feels like I’m trying to lift weights and my core is feeling pretty tight.  For that matter, I just noticed that my thighs are a bit tight now too.  I’d considered getting up early to go surf with Barry, but I don’t think that’s going to happen right now.

I was told that it gets much easier as your body gets used to it.  Can’t wait for that.

Nick and Amy got to see us finish up our workout.  They’d gone out on a date and we watched Eli for them.  Thankfully he has gotten over the whole “shriek the entire time my parents are gone” thing.  This was actually the first time we watched him where we didn’t have that issue.

Milly was a bit fussy though.  For that matter, she has been almost all day long.  She’s been in “hold me or I’ll be unhappy” mode lately.

We went to lunch at Flaming Amy’s today.  Burritos aren’t on the P90X diet list, but we met the Frazelles there because Hannah is going to do some mission work in Guatemala for the next three weeks, and we wanted to see her off.

You know what is on the list though?  Fresh squeezed orange juice, and I made some of that this evening.  I’ve been letting it chill in the fridge and look forward to getting some tomorrow.  Orange juice is the best.  Seriously.

Gary Coleman, best known for playing Arnold on Diff’rent Strokes, died today of a brain hemorrhage.  It’s kind of sad, the way his life worked out.  He had a lot of promise as a child star but his adopted parents squandered his money then he lost what he did get out of them in bad investments and the like.  He was the butt of jokes about careers gone wrong and even worked as a security guard at one point.  It was apparently, and understandably, very frustrating to him.  Hope he’s happier where he is now.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda and I stopped to pick up some Taco Bell on the way to small group, which was good tonight.  We started off on a question reflecting on the week’s study- talking about what things stood out to us or whatever other general thoughts we had.  We spent a while on that and ended up answering most of the other questions from the study guide.

After we got home Amanda and I watched the penultimate episode of Lost.  I can’t believe it will all be over on Sunday night.  They’ve still got a lot to wrap up, but the finale has been pushed to 2.5 hours.  Hopefully the first hour of that is not a recap.  I know a number of people who are going to a Lost finale party, but I wouldn’t want to watch it with a room full of people.  Seems like it would be harder to take in that way.  To each his own though.

For prayer requests, we had a lot of prayers for newborn babies and expectant mothers.  We also had one for a baby who just passed.  My friend Joe Rumley, from Greensboro, his two year old son died, apparently from drowning in a bathtub in Arizona on Sunday.  I don’t know any details at all- I saw it on Facebook, which had a few vague newspaper articles on his wall along with a multitude of sympathetic posts.  I actually found out that something was up from a mass text message.  Here’s the article, from azcentral.com.

A 2-year-old boy died Sunday after he was found unresponsive inside a bathtub in his Prescott Valley home.

At 9:46 p.m., the Prescott Valley Police Department and the Central Yavapai Fire District responded to the drowning call.

When they arrived, they found the child’s mother and a male roommate performing CPR on the 2-year-old. The two had apparently found the child in the bathtub.

The 2-year-old was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead.

Police are still investigating the child’s death.

Terrible.

Zach Dotsey

I also played some peek-a-boo with her this afternoon.  I’d cover my face with my hands and wouldn’t move them until she tried to pull them off, and after I said, “Peek-a-boo!” she’d try to eat my nose.  Seriously, every time.  I don’t know where that came from, but it was so adorable.

Amanda spent some time today going through some more clothes to get rid of.  I’d forgotten that our closet had a carpeted floor.

After I finished up some work this evening the three of us went for a walk around the neighborhood.  Milly seemed kind of bored with it.

Amanda will be getting off work a little early tomorrow so she’d going to head over to the DMV to get her driver’s license renewed.  That should be a lot of fun, especially since it seems like I’ve heard of several people lately having to wait about three hours.  When Amanda and I first moved to Wilmington and had to get our address changed, we went to the one on Carolina Beach Road, which was really close to the house we were renting in Sunset Park.  It was great- there was literally no wait and all the DMV employees chatted with us and were really nice.  When I got mine renewed a couple years ago it took a little while but it definitely wasn’t three hours.

Several days ago an un-spellable and unpronounceable volcano erupted in Iceland.  It was so big and there was so much trash in the air that air services all across Europe were shut down.  The airlines lost scads of money and people got stuck wherever they were.  Planes are finally cleared again, but people are still predicted to be backlogged for weeks.  It also messed up a lot of industries dependent on international trade and shipping, but it did boost alternate forms of trade, such as shipping and rail.  So there’s that I guess.

Zach Dotsey
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