Zach Dotsey

I started the morning going to pick up a check from the client I met with yesterday then Kevin Millard came over and we talked about a website idea of his, as well as going over his existing site a little.  Amanda left the house a few minutes before Kevin got here to do some running around and Milly was taking a nap.

I spent the vast majority of my day working on a design and I think it’s a pretty nice one.  The layout is simple, but I used a good bit of subtle gradient and some patterns in it.  I was working right up until dinner.

Milly was in a particularly good mood today.  She was very talkative.

The Warkentiens came over tonight for a pasta dinner.  After we ate and got Milly and Eli to bed we watched Fringe, and when that was just about over my brother, Adam Dotsey, came over.  We introduced him to Puerto Rico, which he picked up pretty quick.  At the end when everyone was announcing their scores I was optimistic about my chances for winning as I had a surprising lead over everyone else until Amy said her score.  So I came in second place.

Zach Dotsey

When I woke up today I thought it felt like a Thursday, but I knew it was a Wednesday.  A little while later I realized that it actually was a Thursday.

I had all kinds of positive and creative energy this morning, but it waned pretty quickly with Milly being a bit fussy earlier than usual, bottles to wash (after reorganizing the dishwasher to get more stuff in it) and a bunch of little jobs at work that kept me from focusing on the bigger jobs as early as I wanted to.

Despite all that I was able to search out the energetic feeling I started out with and held onto it for a while and it allowed me to plow through the work.  Later in the day I set up a last minute meeting that ended up going really well.

My buddy Nick Warkentien called me and invited me to go to a Haiti benefit concert with him.  Rio Bravo was playing and a number of people that we know were going.  I’d seen people talking about it on Twitter, and if it were just about any other night I would have gone, but tonight was Thursday night.

Thursday night TV is usually really good.  On NBC you’ve got Community, a vastly improved Parks & Recreation, The Office and 30 Rock.  That’s enough to keep you busy from 8-10, but then you add Fringe on Fox from 9-10 and not only do you have one great night of television, but you’ve also got the DVR recording as much as it can at one time in that last hour.  That’s not usually a big deal, but then you have to add in basketball.  You’ve got Duke playing their second game with a good Georgia Tech squad and Carolina visiting Virginia Tech and trying to turn their abysmal season around.  Since you can’t record but two things at a time and you know the Duke game will go past 9:00, you’ve got to do something.

Well, Amanda and I watched the Duke-Georgia Tech game downstairs until 9:00 then watched the last few minutes of the game upstairs on the little TV.  I’m so used to watching basketball on a big HD screen that I told Amanda I couldn’t even tell which players were black and which were white.  Then we went back downstairs and watched The Office and 30 Rock.  Seeing online that the Carolina-Virginia Tech game was a close one, I had to watch the rest of that.

So, how did the games go?  I couldn’t have asked for much better results.

#10 Duke beat #19 Georgia Tech, who had won the game played in Atlanta earlier in the season, with a score of 86-67.  The refs called a lot of fouls, and some people complained that two of the Yellow Jackets’ main players got in foul trouble too early, but honestly they were obvious fouls, not tick-tacky ones.  Aside from that the game went great.  Kyle Singler hurt his hand, which must have fixed something in it because he went 8 of 10 on three pointers and scored 30 points.  Everyone else played pretty well too.  I was pleased with how Ryan Kelly did in the time he got to play.  Andre Dawkins wasn’t in the game at all, and there was some small debate as to whether it had to do with his effort in practices or if he had a slight injury.  Anyway, it was fun to watch.

Virginia Tech, unranked, beat Carolina 74-70.  The Heels hit a last second three to make it look a little closer.  Really though, aside from the Hokies being up 20-10 early on it was played pretty close the rest of the time.  From what I read, and what I saw later in the game, it wasn’t a pretty one.  Either way though, Carolina has now lost six of their last eight games and sits at 2-5 in the conference (Miami and NC State are tied for last at 2-6, Carolina just hasn’t played as many games yet) while Duke is at the top at 6-2.  It doesn’t get any easier for the Heels, as their rest of their schedule is as follows:

• at Maryland
• Duke
• NC State
• at Georgia Tech
• at Boston College
• Florida State
• at Wake Forest
• Miami
• at Duke

The blue ones are the ones I think they’ve got a good shot at losing and the red ones are the ones I think they’ll win.  Boston College I don’t really know enough about, though I’d be tempted to put it in the blue because it’s an away game.  Man, how sweet would it be for them to go 4-12 in the ACC?  (The answer is “extremely”.)

All that said, it would infuriate me to no end, yet not completely surprise me, if Roy Williams were to decide to switch things up at long last for the Duke game at Chapel Hill and they won.  Then again, he’s been unwilling to make adjustments to far and the message board fans are really up in arms.  It’s delicious.

Zach Dotsey
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This Monday was unlike the majority of Mondays.  In my new office, Milly had room to crawl around and entertain herself while I could work but still keep an eye on her.  Success!

My mother-in-law, Karen Mercer, came by after a dental appointment this evening and brought some Elizabeth’s Pizza with her for dinner.  Amanda rushed home to do some picking up, which I would have done during the day had I the time for it.  The house was in a bit of disarray since we’d spent almost all of yesterday focused on switching out the two rooms.

Karen stuck around for a little while then took off.  Amanda and I watched a couple episodes of Fringe and caught up on the show.  The last episode we watched left an unanswered question, which was:  Why was the Nazi guy still so young?  I was left wondering if that was something they’d come back to later or if it was just something they were going to leave out there for people to ponder forever, which is kind of a cool thing.

After that I struggled to stay awake, which I think irritated Amanda a little.  We’ve got a good bit of stuff on the DVR and TV season is kicking back up.  The premiere of the final season of Lost is tomorrow!  I don’t know if we’ll be able to watch it tomorrow night though because it’ll be two hours (plus the one hours recap show that I don’t think we’ll watch) and we’ve got small group.

Zach Dotsey

Lately Amanda has been thinking of ways to make it easier for me to both work and watch Milly at the same time.  Her first idea was to move a desk to right outside of the nursery, which wasn’t a bad idea.  Today she mentioned another idea though, and that was to switch the guest room and the office.  She mentioned this as we were walking in the house after church.  When I went to take a nap after breakfast (more of a brunch, really) and she said she was going to start picking up things in the office, I should have known my day was over.

Yes, we spent the entire rest of the day moving things in and out of both rooms.  It was like one of those puzzle games where you have to move pieces around in order to get everything to fit right.

On top of all the moving, we also pulled up the carpet in the former office.  We’ve talked about doing that for quite a while because Bruce has made a habit of going in there when he doesn’t feel like going outside to do his business, and as much as we don’t notice him doing it, it’s added up a bit.  Hopefully we can keep Bruce out of the new office.  He only likes to go on carpets and rugs.

Amanda had an idea to paint the concrete floor below the carpet, but to our surprise it was already painted for some reason.  It’s not perfect as there are a lot of glue spots where the carpet pad was put down, but it is nicer than the stained carpet we had before.  Still though, I think we’d eventually like to extend the bamboo flooring from the living room and hallway on into there.  We might even have almost enough left over from when we did the floors before.

Eventually we got things switched and cleaned up, although there’s a good bit of stuff on my desk still to be put away and a few things here and there that we need to find places for.  It’s nice though.  I set my desk up to look out over the room and we’ve got a good bit of open space.  It will allow Milly to move around and play with pretty much whatever she wants without being able to get into things she shouldn’t.  We also set up our mammoth old TV in there and there’s plenty of room for Rock Band and the like.

Speaking of Milly, she seemed to do much better today.  She was back to her old self for the most part and actually kept herself entertained for most of the time Amanda and I were working.  We’ve decided to try to start spreading out her feedings as of today too, so hopefully that will go well.

Once we got everything off the floor in the new office Amanda vacuumed.  The noise surprised and I think scared Milly a little.  It was so cute though, she kind of leaned into my chest and let me wrap her up really tight.  It was sad, but it was also so damn sweet.

In other Milly news, she moved up to the next level in Grow Zone at church today.  She’s just moving around too much not to.  We stopped by her old room to let them say goodbye to her.

The service itself was pretty cool today.  It’s a focus on the book of Jonah, and I always really dig the in-depth look at Old Testament books.  One big point that Mike Ashcraft, the preacher, made today was that anytime someone mentions Jonah, all you think of is Jonah and the whale, but that’s really such a short part of an already short book.  The story as Mike said, should be Jonah and the God.

Also at PC3 today, Micah, who is in the band Rio Bravo with Christian, Hannah’s boyfriend (who was on drums today) was with the band today and lead a song or two.  I thought he did an awesome job.

Towards the end of the work Amanda and I put in today, I decided to make sure the desktop computer was set up properly and that it was connected to the internet by checking out today’s basketball schedules and I saw that Carolina was playing.  I decided to turn the game on after Amanda and I put Milly to bed and was surprised to see that the Heels were down by a few at home with a few minutes left in the first half.  I was intrigued, but Amanda didn’t feel like watching it and wanted to catch up on some shows on the DVR so we watched Fringe.  Once that was over I put the game back on to see how it was going.

Let me tell you about Virginia.  They have a new coach this year.  The Cavaliers were picked to finish last in the ACC, but they were actually on top for a little while.  (Duke’s actually there now.  Boo-yah!)  Anyway, when we started watching the game again, the second half was about halfway through and the Heels were down by 20!  It made me laugh and made me feel a bit better about Duke’s loss yesterday when the final score was 75-60.  It wouldn’t even have been that close but for a few offensive lapses by UVa at the end.

After that went off, (mostly) Amanda and I worked on getting making an ABC book for Milly on Shutterfly.  We got a $20 credit for the website when we got Milly’s Santa picture and had put off using it until yesterday, but we got in gear because it expired at the end of the day today.  We had everything done, but it wouldn’t put the order through because of errors, most of them being typos because, in a book of ABCs, single letters were marked as typos, so we ended up having to go through every single page and tell it to accept the letters.  It came right down to the literal last minute with us making corrections and putting in the coupon code.  The book won’t be perfect, but it should be pretty good.

I talked to my dad and Uncle Roy today.  They got about six inches of snow in Rougemont and Roxboro Road, a pretty major highway connecting Durham and Roxboro, wasn’t cleared yet.  They were making pancakes.

Incidentally, I made French toast this morning and it was quite good.  Amanda accidentally dropped the lid of the butter container in the stove and a lot of it melted onto the floor of the stove pretty quickly.  She was very mad at herself for it.

Zach Dotsey

It was almost 70 degrees, but once you stepped out onto the beach you could tell it was a few degrees cooler on the sand.  Surfers could be seen up and down the strand, some walking back down the beach to counteract the drift as they headed back out to the frigid water, some sitting on their boards taking a break.  Of course still more were out past the breakers, waiting for a wave to catch, but it wasn’t as crowded as you’d think, thanks in large part to the water temperature.

Barry and I headed down shore a little.  I guess it was the temperature difference causing a fog, but everything in the distance was hazy.  There was a dredging ship off the south end of the island that looked like a castle rising out of the mist.

Today was the first day I have worn a hood while surfing, and it was the first time I wore my own gloves (which I picked up on the way to Anna and Barry’s).  All that along with my 4-3 wetsuit kept me pretty warm.  In fact, I was expecting to get cold at some point, but with the hood, even when I ducked a few waves I never felt like it was anywhere near unbearable out in the water.  The last time I went out surfing was probably a couple months ago and I was definitely out of shape.  The water was choppy and I had to fight to get out so I didn’t do a whole lot, but I caught a few waves.  The main thing was that I got out there, which will hopefully scratch my surfing itch for a little while.

Once I got out for good I sat and waited for Barry for a while before deciding to just head on in.  There weren’t many surfers out anymore and I figured (rightly) that I must have missed him on his way in.  As I was going to wash off my board I ran into Michael,  guy I’ve done Grow Zone with before, and talked to him for a minute or two.

Before all that Amanda, Milly and I went to church then picked up some bagel sandwiches from Atlanta Bread.  Back home we watched a bit of TV (The Soup and 30 Rock) before Barry texted me about the waves.  After we got back we put Milly down for a nap then watched Saturday Night Live while Amanda heated up some leftover white chili to eat.

We started watching Fringe, but I fell asleep.  I was actually planning on taking a nap before Barry texted me.  I caught most of the episode though, and it was a weird one.  It wasn’t weird in the way that Fringe deals with supernatural things, but in that it was listed as a new episode but obviously was out of continuity.  We guessed it was just an episode they taped but never got around to airing.

Once that was done and Milly was put to bed Amanda and I watched Duke take on Wake Forest.  It was a very physical game with foul trouble all around.  The point differential stayed around four for the most part with the Blue Devils taking an eight point lead off a Jon Scheyer three pointer just before the half.  Wake fought back, but Duke ended up going off in the second half once again and the final score was 90-70.

There was a controversial call about halfway through the second half.  Mason Plumlee was going up for a fast break dunk and was fouled pretty hard by Wake’s Ish Smith and ended up hurt for a few minutes.  While I think the foul was out of control, I don’t think it was an intentional foul, which is what it was ruled, even after review.  Duke was already starting a run at that point, but as my brother-in-law pointed out multiple times via text throughout the rest of the game, it was at a debatably crucial point.  Duke was already starting to gain momentum and that helped, but it didn’t help to the tune of 20 points.

Jon Scheyer was kept to single digits (nine), but Kyle Singler had 21, Nolan Smith had 20 and Miles and Mason Plumlee combined for 30 (19 coming from Miles!).  Duke also only hit four of 13 threes.  What’s promising about this and the last game is that Duke is no longer a team that “lives by the three and dies by the three.”  Once they do start hitting them again though, man, they’ll be deadly because of another great thing shown in this game: Duke can score in the post.  The third big point that I am really excited about it just how tough this Duke team is.  The Demon Deacons were very physical.  Mason got hurt and Kyle got fouled once and landed on his face.  6′4″. 190 pound Andre Dawkins went up to block and foul the very physical 7′0″ 230 pound Chas McFarland.  It’s a tough team that does not back down.

Zach Dotsey

At least, surfing can’t be my priority until the baby comes, and then of course it will probably be a little while until I can get back out after she’s born.  There’s just too much to do around the house.

The air conditioning.  The stupid freaking air conditioning.  I talked to Don today and he told me to open the unit up (after powering it down of course) and see if the water is backed up in it.  I figured it wasn’t, since we’d sucked the water out of it last week or the week before or sometime, and when I looked inside it was all very dry.  Of course, that probably had more to do with the heat up there evaporating it all out than anything else.

So anyway, I went up into the attic again, which requires mystifying physical feats in and of itself, looked in there, cleaned it out as best I could and poured some bleach into the tray.  I turned the AC on for a couple hours then went back to check it out and saw that the water was indeed still backed up, and the worst part is that it’s blowing it into the part that’s not above an external tray.  There wasn’t enough in there tonight to have it drip anywhere that would cause more wet ceiling, but I did have to shut off the air again tonight, which hot, pregnant, can-barely-sleep-and-has-to-pee-every-hour-and-a-half Amanda loves.

Tomorrow we’ll try sucking out the pipes with a wet vac again.  This time I’ll be in the attic to make sure we’re getting the right pipe and hopefully we’ll unclog it.  If not, I guess we’ll have to call an AC maintenance guy and shell out a crapload of money.  Or something.

Let’s see, what else do I have to do?  Well, the yard needs mowing, and once I’ve mowed it I’ve got some grass seed to put down because our front yard in particular is an ugly, ugly thing to behold since the weeds grow better than what little grass grows.  But before I do that I need to rake the yard.  And I need to borrow a seeder, or rent one I suppose.

There’s still a hole in the kitchen ceiling from where the bathtub was leaking a while back.

There are holes that Harvey has dug throughout the backyard.

I think the toilets are fixed, and I’m actually really pleased with the doorknob on the back door.  I mean, it’s so smooth.  Before you’d have to turn the knob and push pretty hard to get it to close.  Now it just glides on shut.  It gives me a serene feeling to think about that.  Maybe I should focus on that for a minute.

In addition to everything mentioned above, there are other things around the house that we’ve been doing for the past little bit.  Painting the nursery, putting together cribs, strollers and various other baby things with giant cardboard boxes that need to be taken to the recycling.

Oh, I need to unload the dishwasher. And we are woefully behind on laundry.  Woefully.  And I should clean up in the office a little bit.  We want to buy an organizer or some shelves for the nursery.  More stuff to put together and carboard boxes to throw away.

Fortunately work hasn’t been too hectic the past couple days, for me anyway.  Of course I’m going to want it to get busy again right around the time Milly is due.  I told Scott I plan to work then, but he said he doesn’t think (and other people agree) that I’ll be much use for the first couple weeks or so.  But especially with Amanda taking several months off work, I need to be at least a little busy.  I’ve been working on setting up a few systems to help me out during that time, but we’ll see how all that goes.

Oh, how was my day today, you ask?  Fine.  I went surfing with Michael and his friend Sarah and had a good time out there.  The waves were mushy, but I was able to catch a good number of decent waves.  Michael didn’t seem to have as much of a good time as I did.  After that I came home and worked on the AC, watched the final two episodes of Fringe for the season (finally) then checked on the AC again.

Oh, on top of the rest I forgot to mention the car stuff.  The driver-side window in my car is off its track.  It’ll stay up if you pull it up with a hand on either side of the window, but when you drive it comes right back down, which is fine as long as it’s not raining because the AC in my car isn’t working either.

Man, can I bitch tonight or what?

Zach Dotsey

So here’s something I meant to mention earlier.  Greg Paulus, the three year starting point guard for my beloved Duke Blue Devils, is trying his hand at football.  He was actually the top rated quarterback coming out of high school but decided he wanted to play basketball under Coach Mike Krzyzewski.  He had a workout with the Green Bay Packers and apparently has some interest from some other NFL teams but he’s also got interest from several schools, most notably Michigan.

If he transfers and plays a sport other than football he has another year of eligibility.  Duke doesn’t have any room at the QB spot right now and several places have shown interest.  His other option is probably to go play basketball overseas.  Whatever he does, I wish him all the best.  He’s always seemed like a great guy, the type you’d want your daughter to date and he plays his guts out whenever he’s playing.

Amanda and I went to a free dinner at Texas Roadhouse tonight.  Amanda’s name was submitted to something from the baby expo she went to with Nick and Amy Warkentien while I was in Costa Rica and so we got to do this for the price of listening to a presentation about fire safety.

Nick and Amy met us at the restaurant.  It was the first time they’d gone anywhere without Eli, who they dropped off with Kirsten Paschal to babysit.  Amy had asked us yesterday but she didn’t realize we were going to the dinner tonight too.

The presentation brought up a number of good points and we agreed to let them come by our place to give an estimate on setting up some better fire safety equipment.  I’m guessing the stuff is expensive though, and while we’re doing alright on money right now we’re still trying to stash a bunch away for when Amanda’s on maternity leave.

Back at the house Amanda and I watched Fringe then The Office.  Amanda went to bed after that so I watched an episode of My Name is Earl and a new murder mystery show called Harper’s Island.  Our DVR is hovering around 70% full, mainly because we’ve been really busy lately.  I’d watch some at night, but I don’t want to watch the stuff both Amanda and I watch (which is most of it).  On top of that the weather’s getting nicer which means I’ll be surfing more soon.  I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing if we ended up skipping out on a few shows.  Who knows how much time for TV we’ll have next year anyway?

Zach Dotsey