Amanda and I spent a portion of the evening playing some more Little Big Planet.  I think we caught her up just about all the way to how far we had played separately yesterday.

Georgetown beat UConn, which is great news to me.  My least favorite team is the Carolina Tar Heels, but my second least favorite team is the Connecticut Huskies.  The Hoyas won 74-63 at Connecticut.  Yay Huskies!  Now Georgeotwn just need to lose at Duke in a few weeks.

I tried to watch some Deadwood tonight, but as usual I fell asleep halfway through.

Amanda said today that she thinks she might be able to feel the baby moving a little.  She read that it can feel a little like a rumbling or growling in the stomach.

Zach Dotsey

My baby sister, Andra Sawyer, called me on her way home from the hospital.  She couldn’t remember if she’d called me back this weekend or not (which she had).  She said Addison looks a lot like Jackson, and I told her that’s definitely not a bad thing.  My nephew is one good looking kid.  She was pulling up to her house, taking Addison home for the first time, as she hung up with me.

I talked to my mom later.  She and my dad are taking Jackson home to Rougemont for a bit, I guess to try to let Andra and Josh get settled with the new baby.  Her original plan was to stop by in Wilmington with him for a bit, but Josh is apparently uneasy with him being that far.  Nevermind the fact that we took him to Lexington, Kentucky for a week one summer when he was much younger.  Mom said she was working on it.

We had a small group coaching huddle at Polly and Dave Clawson’s to discuss some changes in the way small group ministry at Port City Church will go.  Nothing too major.

When we got home Amanda and I watched our Monday comedies, Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, but in backwards order.  Amanda went to bed after they went off and I watched my HBO shows: Entourage, True Blood and Deadwood.  I can’t believe the HBO season is almost over- just one show left for Entourage and True Blood.  Deadwood has been over for a few years and is being shown in order each week, so at least I’ve got that to look forward to.

Zach Dotsey

Yes, people, it’s officially underway.  The Duke Blue Devils opened tonight against Presbyterian Blue Hose.  I heard a lot of “The Blue Hose?  Seriously?” tonight.  Apparently it’s a Scottish warrior.  What the heck, the Blue Devils were French fighter pilots, but still.  More on the game in a minute.

I liked work today.  I did a bit of following up with people and got some things done.  I went to pick up my paycheck and as soon as I walked out the door I remembered that I had given my house key to Amanda to unlock the door yesterday while I got some stuff from the trunk and that I hadn’t put the key back in my pocket.  See, normally I just switch things from the pockets in one pair of pants or shorts to another if I’m changing them.  It’s easy for me to keep up with things that way.  Unfortunately, on rare occasions that makes it easy for me to lock myself out of the house.  Today was one of those.

Fortunately, our neighbor, Bonnie Narron, was planning on coming by her house after a while and she has one of our spare keys.  So I went out, got my check, went to the bank, decided to splurge on a McDonald’s quarter pounder since I was out and had a little cash with me, then went home.  I wasn’t home long before Bonnie got there.  She gave me the key and all I had to do was put some Aspercreme on her back.  She’d hurt it twisting something at the shop.  A crankshaft I think she said?

Anyway, work continued on just fine.  Amanda got home and fixed some macaroni and cheese which we ate while watching 30 Rock.  After that was over my stomach was hurting a little bit so I did what I had to do then headed over to Seth Holloman’s, where I was going to watch the game.  Amanda wasn’t sure if she’d be able to make it through a whole game, but it turns out she probably ended up seeing more of it than I did.

Here’s what happened.  I got over to Seth’s and saw the tipoff.  I watched a few minutes than my stomach started to hurt again.  Bad.  I don’t normally do what I had to do over at people’s houses (especially not when it’s the first time I’ve been there), but I was in pain.  So I missed a couple minutes (which saw the score of the game go from 2-2 to 11-4 or something like that), then, at a commercial break I went right back in but this time it came from, well, multiple places.  I was miserable for a few minutes, but after I got everything out I was feeling much better.  I don’t know if it was the quarter pounder, the mac and cheese, or having both of them together in one day.  I talked to Amanda during halftime and she said it was sweet that I was having sympathy pains.

I played with Seth and Dana’s miniature Pomeranian a bit.  She was real sweet and sat in my lap through a lot of the game.  Dana, Seth’s wife, was working on a paper.  Their son, Gavin, was at his grandparents’ house.

So how was the game?  Well, I don’t know if there’s ever been more disappointment in a 31-point win.  Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler looked good, but that’s mostly it.  Oh, Lance Thomas scored in the double digits, which is also good.  Brian Zoubek fouled out.  Other than that I think everyone else did just okay.  The biggest diappointments, to me anyway, were that Gerald Henderson didn’t display any dominance and Miles Plumlee didn’t contribute as much as practices and exhibitions had lead us to hope he would.

It was cool to see Coach K play with a bunch of difference lineups though.  Towards the end the freshmen did show their stuff a little.  Olek Czyz had a nice baseline dunk, Miles Plumlee swatted the ball away with authority and Elliot Williams had a breakaway 360 jam.  He might have gotten yelled at by Coach K for doing that, but really I think it was good to do something to get everyone excited and fired up.

Amanda called me on the way back home and I was surprised to hear that she actually had watched the entire game except for the last couple minutes (because the DVR was recording two shows) and even paid attention pretty well.  She noticed that one commentator had called Greg Paulus by the wrong name.  Rick, I think.  And she had also called Olex Czyz Marty Czyz, even exclaiming, “Marty McFly!” after the aforementioned dunk.

Amanda and I watched How I Met Your Mother.  She usually sings the non-words of the opening theme except for when she’s really tired or drained, and I was surprised to hear her do that tonight.  After she went to bed I made one more stop at the throne, thought it wasn’t as dire as the last couple, then watched the rest of Deadwood, Entourage and True Blood.

Zach Dotsey

Afterwards we helped out with Grow Zone.  Charles, the little curly headed blonde boy who gently turned my head by my chin last time to make sure I was still paying attention to him, remembered me, though he didn’t remember my name.  (And he did the chin thing again, which I still think is funny.)  Today was actually a little tougher than usual, but only because we had one boy who kept spontaneously crying and his crying set off a little girl who was recently adopted and doesn’t speak English yet.  Her mom said she’s very attuned to the emotions of other kids and, being a special case, to go ahead and page her if she did start crying.  So it was the first time a kid in one of my rooms had to have a parent paged.  Other than that though, it wasn’t really any tougher than any other time.

Amanda and I went home with the intentions to get the dogs and head out to Wrightsville Beach, but like many other Sundays lately we didn’t do anything at all once we got home.  Amanda watched TV for a while and I played BioShock, a game Michael let me borrow for the Xbox 360.  Amanda did eventually go out to get some food for dinner and we watched a little TV together after that.  After Amanda went to bed I tried to stay up to watch Deadwood, but for the third week straight I started nodding off about halfway through.  Maybe I should just make sure to watch the show when I know I’m not tired.  Again, I love Deadwood, and my nodding off has nothing at all to do with the show.

Looks like I’m going to win one of my fantasy football games and lose the other.

Zach Dotsey

The above is Toast, by Parrish Stikeleather and Joey Connelley who both work with the e-media team at Port City Community Church.  I think they’re 19 and 17, respectively.  They’ve entered the Final Cut Film Festival for, what, the past three year?  And every year they win at least some sort of prize.  This film won best picture.

It should be explained that for the Final Cut Film Festival you only have I think 36 hours to make the movie, and to make sure you stick to that on the day you start they tell you a few things that have to be included in the film that you don’t know about ahead of time.  Parrish and Joey are both very talented.

Today was pretty uneventful.  No presidential elections, no new pregnancies, I didn’t even go outside but once to check the mail and bring the dumpster back from the road.  After Amanda got home she checked her Facebook and watched the above movie.

After that we hung out, watched some TV.  Amanda went to bed at about 8:30.  I finished watching Deadwood, in which Bullock’s nephew/adopted son gets trampled by a horse, and then I watched True Blood.  I think I might play some Bioshock after this, or maybe I’ll work on one of my various website projects.  That would probably be the wiser thing to do.

Now that I can’t go surfing after work I really need to find something active to do.  Maybe I’ll walk the dogs (or at least one of them) in the mornings.

Oh, I will be going to the Duke football game against NC State on Saturday.  Seth Holloman has an extra ticket and is driving up to Durham to catch the game with a few other people, so I’m looking forward to that.

Zach Dotsey

Other than that we watched some TV.  Amanda went to bed and I watched a bit more TV.  I watched Entourage then started watching Deadwood but I was having a hard time staying awake.  That’s not a dig at Deadwood- I love that show.  I was just getting tired.

While Amanda and I were watching Ghost Hunters I was playing with a game on my iPhone called Word Wrap where you have six letters all scrambled up and you have to make as many words out of them as possible within a certain amount of time, and to go to the next level you have to get at least one word that uses all the letters.  I had the high score before but Amanda got involved and together we killed it.

Zach Dotsey

After work I worked on my photography website.  It was decided (once again) that I should try to do something with that particular skill, and the first thing I had to think about this time around was how to go about it.  Ultimately I decided to find and modify a WordPress theme and use WordPress to power the site (the same thing that make this one tick) so I spent some time tonight working on that.  It also gives me a chance to hone some CSS skills.

Other than that Amanda and I watched the usual Monday night TV, although we stopped short with Heroes because she said she wouldn’t be able to make it through the whole show.  We watched up until the first commercial, which was mostly just a recap and an explanation of how Hiro faked Ando’s death.

After Amanda went to bed I finished watching the Deadwood that I didn’t finish watching last night then I watched True Blood.  We’re thinking about giving up HBO, but some of the shows I look forward to the most are HBO ones.  I could always try to find them online or rent them once they’re released on DVD of course.

Zach Dotsey

I felt like having pancakes for breakfast this morning so Amanda and I stopped at Lowe’s Food where I ran in to get eggs, orange juice and pancake mix.  We got this kind that comes in a bottle, so you just add water and pour it out.  It worked out pretty well, although I probably should have kept them on the skillet a little longer.

We didn’t do a whole lot after that.  I played some College Hoops 2K7 while Amanda watched TV until I joined her in that pursuit to watch The Pick Up Artist.  I’d called Barry Frazelle earlier to let me know if/when he was going to go out surfing, and he called during that show, so I left as soon as we finished it and got to Wrightsville Beach a few minutes after 5:00.  Barry told me to bring my spring suit, and I’m glad I did.

The water wasn’t that cold, but the air and the wind sure were.  It was much more comfortable being in the water than sitting up on the board.  The waves were pretty good though- about chest high I guess and pretty foreceful.  I ate it on a few but I didn’t feel too bad because I saw Barry wipe out once or twice too.  I caught a few, although I didn’t catch them as well as I’d have liked considering how good a lot of them were.

We were out there maybe half an hour and decided to go in.  The wind was cutting up the waves by then and with the added weight of the wetsuit I felt pretty wiped.  The other thing about surfing with a spring suit is that my crotch felt pretty uncomfortable.  Next time I’ll definitely just wear boxers or something thing underneath.  This time I wore a bathing suit and it bunched up up there.  At times it felt like there was a suction on my, well, ya know, and that was a pretty bad feeling too.  This was only the second time I’d ever surfed with a spring suit, and the other was so long ago that I don’t remember it much.  It was when the Frazelles were living in the cathouse while their current home was being renovated.

I hung out there with Anna and Barry for a bit.  Anna warmed up some leftover three cheese ravioli for me, and that hit the spot.  Really, it was excellent, and the two of them are such great hosts and great people.

I left after I ate and went home to pick Amanda up and head over to hang out with Nick and Amy Warkentien at their place.  Amy had run a mobile camera at church today and I thought some of her shots were particularly good.

We played Settlers of Catan and Amanda and Nick were both in contention to win.  Nick, in fact, would have won but he decided to build an settlement or city or something like that and prolong the game instead of winning by building another road and taking the Longest Road from Amanda.  Or something like that.  On that turn I got a development card and added a city, which brought my own total quietly up to eight points.

Nick was stolen from a few times and didn’t have enough cards to get that one final point he needed, and when I saw that he couldn’t win that round I knew I was going to.  I had to cover my smile with my cards.  I knew I was going to win, you see, because I had two Soldier cards already and had just drawn a third, but I had to wait until it was my turn again to play it.  My turn came up, I played it and I won.  Really, it was an epic Catan victory, but I felt a little bad taking the win from Nick because he had yet to ever win at that game.

Amanda and I went on home and she went to bed right away.   I watched Entourage and started watching Deadwood, but I was tired and knew I wouldn’t make it through.

Both of my fantasy teams did really well this week.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda and I thought about going to Wrightsville Beach this afternoon, but it was windy.  Since it was windy the surf wasn’t good and the sand would be blowing in the dogs’ eyes, so it defeated most of our purposes for going out there.

Instead we sat around the house, which, after all the driving and activity we’ve had so far this weekend, was a pretty welcome thing.  Amanda caught up on her Days of Our Lives, I got caught up on this website and played some games.

Amanda still wasn’t feeling great today so I went out and got her some KFC, which she normally doesn’t like, but she wanted some crispy chicken.  Unfortunately the chicken wasn’t particularly crispy.  I got myself some popcorn chicken though, and that was really good.

We watched some TV for a bit.  I called Kelia Pless tonight, partly to get Chris Mowbray’s number but also to talk to her.  It’s funny- we used to talk on the phone for hours back in high school, and just talking to her for a few minutes reminded me of a lot of her old mannerisms.  She’s got a baby due on New Year’s Day.  It’ll be pretty cool if the baby is born on the expected date.

I didn’t get up with Chris, but I did see an e-mail from someone who is interested in joining our small group.  They just moved here from… aw, I forget which state, but one of them out in the midwest.  When I called him I told him that we had another couple from that region and asked if he was 6’7″ (like Lars).  He said, “No, I’m only 6’5″.”  He and his wife will be joining us at Elliot Clark and Melissa Nicholson’s this week.

Amanda and I continued to watch some TV until she went to bed.  Then, as I often do on Sunday nights, I watched Deadwood and Entourage.

Zach Dotsey

I went over a budget.  Amanda and I make a decent amount of money over what we pay in bills and the like monthly, but we’re thinking of cutting out a few things, like the cable package we have.

We have a lot on the DVR, so we mostly watched TV tonight.  Amanda fixed chicken, stuffing and green beans then we watched Supernatural, My Name is Earl, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and Heroes.  All the good guys are turning into bad guy and the bad guys into good guys, it seems.

After Amanda went to bed I watched Entourage and Deadwood.  I need to catch up on True Blood.  Maybe I’ll do that starting tomorrow.

I wish I had some sort of insights or cool thoughts to share for today, but really, it was that uneventful.

Zach Dotsey