Zach Dotsey

First off, happy birthday to my little brother, Adam Dotsey. I celebrated his birthday by traveling most the day halfway or more up North America. I didn’t sleep the best last night, well, this morning anyway. Barry, as he has done every morning we’ve been in Nosara, Costa Rica, got up and went out to look at the surf. He came back a little bit later and said the surf was like it was last night. Hannah said she’d go out if Barry went out. Michael said he’d go out if they went out and I said what he said.

We ended up not going out at all. James and Warren had gone out and they said you had to paddle like fifteen minutes straight to even get out past the thirty set waves.

Instead, Barry and I went ahead and returned the rental boards to Coconut Harry’s. I also picked up an Imperial tank top. Imperial is the beer of Costa Rica and while I did have a few of them throughout the past week I mainly wanted it because I like their logo, which you can find all over Costa Rica.

So we all ate breakfast one last time. Jim sat with us for a few and James and Christie were at the table next to ours then Warren and Torri joined us at another table a little while later.

When Barry was settling up (and paying for a good portion of my food, which he shouldn’t have) we were talking to one of the owners of La Casa Romantica, Sylvia, and she told us a story about toy monsters and how they help her kids remember to clean up after themselves. I’m definitely going to use that with my kid(s).

We packed up and left La Casa Romantica a little bit later. No telling if or when I’ll ever see that place again, which makes me a little sad.

The trip back to the airport was largely uneventful with the exception of a time when Warren slammed on the breaks then Barry slammed on his. Of course this was just a few miles from the airport.

We also saw a horse running free in our direction down the dirt road towards us. That was followed by two kids on horses, presumably trying to catch the free ones. They had some catching up to do though.

We also saw several cows literally standing in the road. I tried to get a picture of one but the little camera was giving an error and wouldn’t focus at all. It also had some issues turning off and on.

The trip, particularly on the dirt part, seemed to go faster this time, as usually seems to be the case when returning from a place as opposed to going there. It also seemed a bit greener this time through.

The airport in Liberia was hot. While waiting in line to check in I didn’t bother taking off my backpack for a while but when did the back of my shirt felt like it had been dipped in water.

Barry, Hannah, Warren and Torri grabbed a bite to eat then we went through security. I didn’t have to remove my laptop this time, which was nice because both of my bags were very tightly packed. Michael and I both ate hot dogs from a place by the gates then we waited with hundreds of other people in an open air waiting area that reminded me of a cattle barn. They had the largest ceiling fans I’ve ever seen there.

Our plane was late, which I didn’t realize until the pilot mentioned coming in late on the airplane later on. Before we could board everyone went through a manual baggage check. Our group didn’t bother getting in line until mist everybody else already had. There wasn’t much point in it, really.

For the return trip I was in the row in front of Michael, Barry and Hannah seated between a middle aged man next to the Susie and a middle aged woman by the window. They were both supposed to catch connecting flights and tried to hurry off the plane once it landed.

Not much to report on the return flight except there was more turbulence than I’m used to. Nothing terrible though. I spent most of the four hours of the trip listening to MuteMath and The National while reading The Shack, which is started on yesterday.

We went through customs whereat I accidentally lied and said I didn’t have any food in my bags. I actually still have a few protein bars.

I called Amanda after Customs when everyone else was taking potty breaks. She was watching a movie with Amy and Nick Warkentien.

Before I could even ask she told me that one of  Duke and Carolina had won and the other had lost, meaning one was out of the running for the ACC championship. I told her that since the Internet had been down I didn’t even know if they’d both won yesterday. She said the Duke vs. Maryland had been a low scoring affair then went on to tell me after some coaxing that Duke had won and Carolina had lost, which was sweet, sweet music to me. Amanda said that the Heels had been down by three at the end if the game and that Tyler Hansbrough had missed a three pointer for the tie. Of course, point guard Ty Lawson was out with an injured toe.

So tomorrow it’s Duke vs. Florida State for the ACC championship. Duke has beat them twice so far this year, so hopefully they can go for a full sweep. I think that would give Duke a strong chance at getting a one seed in the NCAA tournament.

Anyhoo, I left Adam a voicemail and we headed out from the Charlotte airport for the long trek back to Wilmington, stopping to gran some food at a McDonald’s. It’s about 40 degrees here; a stark contrast from the weather in Costa Rica.

The GPS told Barry to take I-85/40 and I think we should be about passing Greensboro soon. Longer route, but oh well.

I can’t wait to get home and see Amanda and how much bigger her tummy has gotten. I expect Bruce and Harvey will be very excited to see me too.

Zach Dotsey

The second trimester starts today, or is that technically at the end of this week?  Having just recently seen the baby doctor we know that the heartbeat is fine.  Looking in What to Expect When You’re Expecting we find that sweet little Pistachio is about two and a half inches, about the size of a large plum.  Most of the baby’s systems are now formed, which is amazing to me, and the digestive system is starting to contraction movements to develop so the baby can eat once it’s in the world.  It’s also making white blood cells and the pituitary gland is making hormones.  That part could be trouble in fifteen years or so.

Amanda and I went to Port City Community Church this morning, wherein we revisited the ideas of faith and the church’s mission, which is to reach people and help them walk with God.  The messages over the past month or so have been particularly good.

After that we helped out with Grow Zone.  We didn’t have any problems, although there’s one kid who started crying and didn’t want to be consoled.  Other than that it was fun but pretty uneventful.  Particularly cute today was prayer time.  After the kids are read a story it’s snack time, so the kids are always asked if they want to say a blessing before eating.  Usually a couple of them do, but today it seemed like half the kids wanted to do it.  It’s so cute, because they’ll either put their hands together right in front of their faces and squeeze their eyes shut or put their faces on the ground then either mumble almost inaudibly or go completely silent for a minute.  After a number of kids had already prayed, one girl was really ready to go eat her Goldfish, so as the last kid was going (it was a face to the ground with silence for so long we had to peek to make sure the kid was still praying type of prayer), the one girl announced “Amen” about halfway through the kid’s prayer and started to get up to go eat before we told her to hold on.  We all got a kick out of it.

After church we went out and bought our fake Christmas tree.  You can’t see it, but I’m hanging my head in shame and self-loathing.  We got it from K-Mart because Amanda looked online and saw they had some for some good prices.  I refused to even take it out of the box yet though.  Not before Thanksgiving.

We got home and watched the Duke Blue Devils play the Montana Grizzlies.  The final score was 78-58.  I think Duke could have played better, but it was their fourth game in eight days so they had to be a little worn.  As a fan, it’s been great to have so much Duke basketball to watch, but they deserve the break they get until this coming Friday.  I think just about every player got some time though, and the freshmen got a lot more burn than usual.  Coach K employed a lot of different line ups too, and that’s one thing I really like about the current team: there are so many good players that you can mix and match in there at any given time that it’ll be hard for an opponent to really plan thoroughly for this Duke squad.  I’m not fooling myself into thinking they’re going to go undefeated, but they’re a tough team with some attitude.

After the game we watched a little TV.  There was something on Discovery Health about free birthing, wherein women choose to deliver their babies with no doctors or midwives at all.  I suppose there’s an argument to be made for it, but I think overall it’s a pretty irresponsible thing to do.  They followed several women who had made this decision, but none of them had any real troubles or complications.  I think they should have included someone who did have some trouble just to show that it’s not always a good thing to do.  I mean, there’s a reason why mother and infant mortality during birth is lower now than when we didn’t have modern hospitals, right?

We decided it was time to watch Sweeny Todd finally, but the HBO On Demand wasn’t working.  We tried other On Demand channels and they weren’t working either.  Amanda called Time Warner Cable while I flipped through the TV stations and aside from the network stations, none of our HD channels were working either.  They remotely reset our cable box, but that didn’t solve it.  I really hope I don’t miss any games because of this.

Nick and Amy Warkentien invited us over a little later to have dinner and a movie with them.  We went over there and had pasta then watched National Treasure 2, which was about what I expected it to be.

Zach Dotsey

I picked Amanda up from work at 9:30 this morning and we went to the baby doctor today.  We didn’t have to wait long to go over our medical history and all, but we waited over an hour to see the doctor.  We had to wait an exceedingly long time last time we had an appointment too.  We waited that long for about five minutes with the doctor.  No new baby pictures this time, but we did get to hear the heartbeat, which was pretty cool.

A month ago today, Scott set a goal for me at work.  It was a tiered goal, so if I met a certain goal I’d get a certain reward, if I met another I’d get another, and so on.  A couple days ago I wasn’t sure if I’d even meet the first one, but I met the second, which I was pretty stoked about.

Amanda made white chili tonight.  We invited Nick and Amy Warkentien over but Amy was working at the Hilton tonight.  Nick came anyway and hung out with us for a bit and watched the Duke Blue Devils beat the Michigan Wolverines in the final game of the Coaches versus Cancer Tournament.  Michigan kept in it for a while, but they didn’t really threaten after coming within two points about halfway through the first half.  The final score was 71-56 and Kyle Singler was named the tournament MVP.  If I remember correctly, he won that honor last year at the Maui Invitational Tournament, too.

I hope Duke can win as well when these two teams meet up again in a few weeks as they did tonight.  Both teams will be moe prepared for each other, so it’ll be interesting.

Amy came by after she got off work.  We all just sat around talking until they headed on home.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda and I went to Seth and Dana Holloman’s to watch the Duke Blue Devils play the Southern Illinois Salukis.  Bad first half, awesome second.  Brian Zoubek continued to improve and Kyle Singler was the star of the game.  Henderson finally came alive in second, played like he should all season.  Nolan Smith’s dunk over two Salukis seemed to kick start the Blue Devil drive.  Gerald Henderson had this one particularly thunderous one handed jam.  Kyle Singler was fouled from behind on a breakaway dunk and slammed into the basketball pole and slid down it.  It looked pretty rough, but he was fine.  The final score was 83-58, Duke.

UCLA ended up losing to Michigan.  I was partly rooting for the Wolverines because I’m just not a big Bruins fan, but as unimpressively as they’ve been playing it would have been nice for Duke to meet them in the Coaches versus Cancer final.  It was the big early season matchup that everyone was looking forward to, but UCLA just couldn’t hold up their end of it.  Duke playing Michigan is even less exciting because they were already on Duke’s schedule anyway.  I guess there will be all kinds of commentary about “the last time these two teams met”.

Gavin, Seth and Dana’s kid, was really cute.  Amanda and I had only met him once before when Seth stopped by the house to pick up some sunglasses he’d left, and the kid was shy at the time, out of his element.  He was pretty entertaining to us tonight though.

Amanda and I watched The Office before she went to bed.  We won’t have any more Office nights with Nick and Amy Warkentien because they now have their small group on Thursday nights.

After Amanda went to bed I caught up on all the Smallville episodes on the DVR.  The next episode is the midseason finale, and the preview for it showed a glimpse of Doomsday.  In the comic books, Doomsday is the creature who (temporarily) killed Superman.

On a side note, lawyers, I have noticed, take forever to get around to giving all the information needed to put the finishing touches on a website.  We finished one up today that was started one year and eight months ago.

Zach Dotsey

Today was Barry’s actual birthday, so happy 50th birthday, Barry Frazelle!  You certainly don’t act 50 and I hope you never do.

Church was great today.  Brett Eddy delivered the message and did an awesome job, even after joking about following up probably the best message Mike Ashcraft has ever given.  Amanda and I saw Nick Warkentien after the service.  He and Amy had gotten in late last night and today was his first day actually working for and at Port City Community Church.

Amanda and I ate at Atlanta Bread after church then went on home.  As has been the norm lately on Sundays, she caught up on some of the DVR’ed shows that I don’t watch and I played BioShock.  She did manage to drag me away for a little bit to do some Christmas shopping though.  We’re pretty much done with my side of the family now, which is nice.

Mr. Henry, our elderly neighbor, came by the house.  He was having trouble with his TV/DVD player in that he couldn’t get the DVD (or tape, as he called it) to eject.  I thought it would be a simple matter, but strangely it wasn’t.  I managed to get the DVD out somehow, but then the regular cable stations wouldn’t come back on for him.

Amanda and I had started watching last night’s Saturday Night Live when Mr. Henry came over and we were planning on watching Duke play Rhode Island at 5:30.  Fortunately, Amanda happened to decide, while I was gone, that she’d go ahead and set the TV on ESPNU, at which time she discovered the game was about to come on right then.  For some reason the Duke basketball schedule in my iPhone is an hour off, and I always forget that.  Anyway, she paused it, which was a nice surprise for me when I got back to the house.  It was about fifteen minutes in.  (Real minutes, not game minutes.)

That was a hell of a game, let me tell you!  Duke started off cold and got down, struggling to keep up.  At Cameron Indoor Stadium!  Again ninth in the Atlantic 10 University of Rhode Island Rams!  Ironic that they are the Rams, and they also wear sissy blue, although it’s not as sissy as Carolina’s sissy blue.  Anyway, Duke had to go on an eleven point run to finish the half just to still be down by one.

Not a big deal, I thought.  Duke will come out strong in the second half.  And they did- they played very well.  But Jimmy Baron, the coach’s son, was hitting everything.  Dude went eight of nine from the three point land.  And it’s not like Duke was playing slack or not guarding him.  He took off balance shots, shots with the defender’s hand all in his face, practically half court shots- everything was going in for the guy.  Apparently he idolized JJ Redick and it showed.

Like I said though, Duke was playing a fine game, but Rhode Island was playing a crazy out of their minds game.  It came down to the wire, but Kyle Singler hit some clutch free throws and Duke won 82-79 (although it should have been 82-78 because there was a shot that was counted as a three even though Baron’s foot was on the women’s three point line).  It was an exciting game, to say the least.  I was getting text messages like crazy and Seth Holloman, who had gone to the game with his dad, called me on the way back from Durham to talk about it.

Zach Dotsey

Last night I found out how to make ring tones for the iPhone, so when someone calls me now I get to hear a snippet of M79 by Vampire Weekend.

I bought my wetsuit today, but it was a long process getting to that point.

Amanda and I got up, took our time getting ready then went out to do some running around.  Mainly we were buying gifts for Barry Frazelle, who turns fifty tomorrow.  We were going to get him a gift card to Outback and the new Killers CD, but it turns out that the CD doesn’t come out for another two weeks.  We ended up buying him The Shack, a book we bought for ourselves and promptly let Amanda’s brother Michael Mercer borrow.  We’ve heard a lot of good things about it though.

As we were pulling into the driveway I got a call from my oldest friend, Jason Revill.  He told me that he’d been excited that a Duke football game was finally coming on a local station, but that there had been tornadoes in Wilson and the station had been showing coverage of it nonstop since at least 9:00 and they were pre-empting the game with this pointless coverage.  Not to debase the value of the two lives that were lost, but how much can you talk about a couple tornadoes?  Apparently a lot.  Jason said there was a message on the screen that said you could catch the game on a couple Time Warner Cable channels, but Jason has satellite TV, so that didn’t do him any good.

I don’t see the point in not showing a local college football game in favor of something that happens, if not all the time, not irregularly, especially in that area.  I was planning on watching the game anyway, so I walked in and sure enough, it was on for me, which I think further added to Jason’s frustration.  Really a bad move, in my opinion.

Amanda’s parents, Phil and Karen Mercer, came over.  Amanda and Karen went out to look at fabric for furniture for the sunroom Karen and Phil just added onto their house while Phil and I had a beer or two and watched Clemson whoop up on my poor Blue Devils.  The final score was 31-7.  Amanda showed back up at the house sans Karen just as the game finished.  I’d been getting a little antsy to get going because I wanted to pick up my wetsuit and go give it a try since Barry said the waves should be good today and Lars was heading out there as well.

Amanda came back without Karen because Karen was taking forever deciding on the fabric she wanted.  It didn’t make sense for me and Phil to drive separate plus Amanda had the credit card, which I needed in order to get the wetsuit.  We went by Outback (it wasn’t open when we went out earlier) then picked Karen up.  We had to stop by Barnes & Noble too, because Karen was going to get Barry a gift card from there, but she also wanted to get him a card so we dropped Karen off at Hallmark at Mayfaire and Amanda and Phil got the gift card.

We finally got out to Wrightsville Beach at I guess about 4:30.  Michael was already there and he and I went out to the beach to check out the surf, but Lars was on his way back in.  He hadn’t been out too long but said he’d spent most of his time trying to get out and drifting down the beach.  I could tell he was pretty beat.

We went back to the Frazelle house.  Lars cleaned up, hung around for a few then left.  Michael and I joined his grandfather, Earl Lemons, in watching a Carolina-Maryland football game.  Barry’s parents arrived and his dad joined us in watching that game and the Carolina-Penn basketball game.  The Tar Heels lost the football game (yay!) but won the basketball game (boo!).

Anna had fixed a great dinner and we tried to eat out back, but the wind was kind of cold so half the people there (aside from the previously mentioned people, Anna and Barry’s girls, Hannah and Kirsten, were there, as well as Hannah’s boyfriend, Christian Black) ate inside.  We had dessert then Barry opened presents while Dora the Explorer was on TV.  Michael and I had been talking about that show and it just happened to be on, so we decided to subject everyone else to it.

We left after a little bit, Amanda, Phil, Karen and I.  Karen and Phil left back for Richlands pretty soon after we got back to our place then Amanda and I watched a little TV before she headed upstairs for bed.

Seth Holloman and his dad are going to the Duke-Rhode Island basketball game tomorrow and Seth invited me to ride along.  Sadly, I don’t know if I can swing the price of a ticket right now.  We’re a bit strapped this week.

Zach Dotsey
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So it would appear that Andra and Josh Sawyer did not choose Lila for the name of my first niece.  Addison Jaclyn Sawyer was removed from her mother’s womb at about 3:05 PM measuring 21 inches and I think my dad said when he called, eight pounds three ounces.  I didn’t get much other news than that other than the fact that she was healthy, Jackson had been holding her very carefully and their mother was resting.  So welcome to the world, little girl!  I’m sorry I wasn’t there to see you, but I’ll meet you soon.

I just got back inside from hunting for Cobb.  He tends to meow (cry) a lot when he wants something.  Usually it’s food, though now and then it’s his way of telling us that his litter box is a little too full or that the water bowl is empty.  Tonight he seemed to have a bug up his anus about going outside.  So I opened the door and tossed him out.

Even though he was an outside cat, living under our rental house in Sunset Park when we found him, since we’ve moved to our current house he’s always been a bit hesitant about going outside.  Usually he’ll just sit in the doorway until I either bump him with it a bunch or I putt him back inside.  Sometimes he’ll actually venture out, but the slightest noise causes him to run back inside.

I was getting annoyed with his loud and constant crying, so like I said, I tossed him out.  I figured he’d get over being outside pretty quickly, so I left him for a few minutes then came back to let him in.  Only thing was, I couldn’t find him.  I went inside and got a flashlight and eventually found him behind some bushes at the unlit corner of the house.  That’s a good thing, because I was starting to worry that he’d jumped the fence.  Anyway, as soon as I found him he ran back inside.

Other than those two events (the latter really being a non-event), there wasn’t much going on today.  The DVR was about 75% full so Amanda and I watched a few things on that.  She was in bed before 9:30 and I took the opportunity to catch up completely on Smallville.

I think this season is shaping up to be better than the last few.  There isn’t as much mystic mumbo jumbo and they’ve gotten more into the formula of having a different meteor freak every episode like they did back in the early days.  Clark Kent has embraced the role of running around and saving people and they’re building up to having an appearance by Doomsday, which was the creature who famously temporarily killed Superman in the comic books.  That’s next episode, which also features the marriage of Chloe Sullivan and Jimmy Olsen.

Kentucky was defeated, in their season opener at Rupp Arena, by the Virginia Military Institute tonight.  The score was 111-103.  Yeowch.  That’s a pretty embarrassing loss, VMI.  Last year UK lost their second game of the year to Gardner-Webb, which was pretty bad, but losing at home in the first game of the season (which powerhouse teams usually schedule to be pretty easy) is not good.  I’m thinking that even though it’s only his second year there, there are probably a lot of Wildcat fans who are not at all happy with Coach Billy Gillespie.  I also wonder if Patrick Patterson wishes he could go back in time and change is school of choice to Duke.  Last year all Duke really lacked was an inside presence, and I guarantee the Blue Devils would have gone further in the NCAA tournament if he’d gone to the town where I grew up instead of the town where I was born.

Oh, my wetsuit came in today.  Waves should be good tomorrow so I guess I’ll pick it up and get to go ahead and give it a whirl.

Zach Dotsey