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

Sigh.

Missouri beat Memphis tonight.  That was nice.  I don’t have anything personal against Memphis, but they play in the weak Conference USA and the program seems a little shady.

And then there was the Duke and Villanova game.  Amanda went to bed before it because tipoff was after 10:00, but Lars came over and watched it with me.

I don’t have too much to say about it.  Most people thought it was going to be a good, tough matchup.  The Blue Devils scored the first five points but then Nova went on an 11-0 run.  Duke was down by three points at the half, which wasn’t bad considering that they were shooting under 30% and Gerald Henderson hadn’t even scored a field goal yet.  The second half started and Duke forced a turnover and scored a basket, which was promising.  And that was the closest they got for the rest of the game.  It ended up an embarrassing 77-54.  The Wildcats were playing good defense, but Duke couldn’t even get wide open shots to go in.

What sucks the most is not the loss.  I can live with a Sweet 16 loss.  What sucks is that that was the end of the college basketball careers of Greg Paulus, Dave McClure, Marty Pocius and, in all likelihood, Gerald Henderson.  I just hate that they went out on a game like that.  A close, hard-fought game would have been easier to take, but this was just hard to watch.

I will say that the season itself was a pretty good one, even though it didn’t end well.  Thirty wins, the ACC Championship, advancing to the Sweet 16 and the excitement and success of the late season lineup change all made for a satisfying and overall pretty successful season.

Oh well.  The season is over for the Duke Blue Devils and now my favorite team is Gonzaga (since they’re playing Carolina tomorrow night).  It’s ABC2 (Anyone But Carolina/Connecticut, but particularly the first of those) from here on out.

Zach Dotsey

Can’t get into my email. Tried *********,*********, *********, ****. Noneworked. I knew what yours most likely was, so I’m using that…

Anyways..Mama just left so I’m all alone now. We went out to the beach for a bit today. It was a bit chilly. Sure you’re not having that problem there. We didn’t walk long. I guess Bruce’s foot was bothering him b/c he kept lagging behind. Mama bought me that bathing suit from Target. Not the green one…didn’t look so good, but the blue and purple one. She bought all three pieces so I can go pregger-bikini or pregger-tankini depending on my mood. (Oh and tell Michael we replaced his litter. The kind he had doesn’t clump at all. Made his whole apt. smell like kitty poo. So today Mama bought him the same kind we use and dumped the other out. Hopefully things will smell a lot fresher in there tomorrow.)

So, I’m pretty sure Bruce misses you. He made me tear up a little bit this morning. He went thru his usual morning routine. Went outside to go peepee and ate. Then he followed me upstairs and he went over to the bed for me to put him in it. (He didn’t sleep with me the last couple of nights since Mama was here.) So, I put him in bed and he crawled under the covers next to the lump made up of pillows on your side of the bed. He didn’t even lay down. He crawled right back out and looked to your side and then looked at me. It was like he was asking, “Where’s Daddy?”. I had
a tender heart to heart with him about how you’d be gone all week and then went to shower all teary-eyed.

Crap! Mama went with me to buy dogfood and I forgot about it in the trunk. Guess I’ll have to go get Dave to drag it in the house for me. Grrr! And I just dropped a gold fish down my shirt! (Made you smile huh? Knew you’d like that little tidbit.)

Back on track… church was good. Brian talked today. Guess Mike was out of town. He did a good job though.

I talk to Nick for a few minutes after the service. He said that they may call me about dinner later since I’m all alone. That will be nice. To get out of the house instead of sitting here watching TV all by my lonesome.

Oh TV- that reminds me- Duke/Carolina game. Crap…please don’t hate me. It’s recording now. Duke up by 1 about 6:30 left in the first half. 31-30. Henderson just dunked! Carolina missed there shot. Henderson was fouled. Made both free throws (33-30). Oh no…PICK-POCKET PAULUS WITH A STEAL!- but they didn’t make the shot.

Ohhh…Danny Green called for a travel! OK…that’s enough commentary for now…last update Duke up 3 with under 4:00 to go in the first half (35-32).

OK I just lied…Singler has 15 pts so far!- Ellington was fouled and missed BOTH free throws!…and another turnover by Green! Duke missed. Now 35-34. Nope…make that 37-36 (1:35 to go)

So anyway, Harvey freaked me out pretty bad last night. He was barking- angrily. I was scared to (another shot by Schier!) look out the window by the porch so I went into the guest room and looked out that window. Ladybug was out there. Hopefully that was what he was barking out. Hope he doesn’t do that anymore this week.

Dag on it Thomas..fouled Lawson with 7.2 left in half. But…Lawson missed! Duke up at the half 39-38. Maybe I’ll email you back later with the final score. For now I’ll just say that I love you and I miss you like crazy! Milly’s been moving around a lot today. Think maybe she’s feeling around, trying to find her Daddy. I hope you had a fun first day surfing.
Be careful and have fun!

We all love and miss you!

Amanda, Milly, Bruce, Harvey,Cogg & Gotham (I better go feed him…)

For some time now Amanda’s been able to feel a fluttering, ticklish feeling in her stomach that she’s pretty sure is baby movement.  Recently she said she could feel a weight in her stomach to the point that she feels it shift about when she turns over.  Amanda told me today that last night she felt an actual kick or lunch!  More on that in a sec.

I talked to my mom today.  I’d called her to tell her that we’d named the baby, but as it turns out she was about to call me to talk to me about my sister Erin Dotsey’s birthday, which is in a couple weeks.  While I was talking to her she mentioned that my dad was going to go to Lexington, Kentucky to visit my grandparents in a few weeks because his older brother, Tom Dotsey, was going at the same time.

She also took that time to update me on my grandparents.  Pap (Andy Dotsey) has been in and out of a nursing home.  His legs aren’t doing well and Baba (Jane Dotsey) isn’t best equipped to take care of him.  Aunt Terry moved back to Florida, Uncle Bernie has been there to help out some, but he lives several hours away, and Uncle Steve has helped as he can, but he can only do so much.  So Pap went to a nursing home, didn’t like it, came back and then went back to it.  That sucks.  I hate it for both him and Baba.

Erin called me a little bit after my mom did.  Mom had thought they were changing the date of the birthday celebration, but Erin called to tell me she was keeping it like it originally was.

Aside from those things, today featured the inauguration of Barack Obama and snow fell here in Wilmington.  After work Amanda and I watched a few DVRed shows then she went to the office to watch American Idol while I watched the much more important Duke game.  It was nice of her not to ask me to watch the game in the office, since we had both remarked how terrible games look on large TVs with a standard (non-HD) signal.

Duke was playing NC State, which should have been a pretty easy game.  Duke started off on a 10-1 run, but in that time they struggled to put even the most open of shots through the hoop.  The Wolfpack struggled with that too, but they started heating up before the Blue Devils did and ended up with a four point lead at the half.

Fortunately Gerald Henderson decided to take over the game in the second half and Duke finished on a 27-5 run.  they shot, I think, 21 or 29% in the first half and 76% in the second.  The final score was 73-56.  The game had been close only a few minutes before the end.

This Duke team seems to have a tendency to play up or down to their competition.  If they could just put to halves of a game together offensively they’re definitely going to make a splash in the tournament this year.  And if Gerald Henderson, Kyle Singler and Jon Scheyer can all three have just an average game at the same time, they’ll be scary.

Hats off to David McClure for this game too.  He played great defense and did all those intangible things that make him such a good but quiet player.  He even had a three pointer and a dunk this game!  Greg Paulus continued to show some return to form, hitting a few baskets to keep them in the game in the first, not to mention an uncharacteristic drive to the basket.

So, back to the kicking baby.  After the game Amanda felt a couple kicks while she was lying on the couch.  I put my hand on her stomach and eventually felt two kicks!  It was like someone was jabbing a finger from inside Amanda.  That was it, just a couple quick little jabs.  I told Amanda that Milly was excited because Duke had won.  I was elated to feel that though.  Amanda has been wishing she could share that with me.

I told Adam about the kicks later and he said, “Lil Milly’s milling about.”  I thought that was a cute phrase and told him I’d use it and give him credit for it.  He said I could take credit since I’m the dad, but I pointed out that he’s the uncle.

We put new sheets on the bed tonight.  Amanda’s parents gave us some new 1000 thread count sheets for Christmas and we decided tonight would be a good time to flip the mattress (well, turn it around anyway, since it’s a pillow-top) as well.  Those sheets feel so nice.  We’re spoiled.  I think all but one set of sheets we have for our bed are 1000 thread count.

Zach Dotsey
!

It appears that my Xbox 360 indeed broken.  I turned it on today and it was still messed up the same way it was last night.

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing.  It was Amanda’s dad, who was calling because he was putting Amanda on his cell phone plan.  We talked to him about it a couple days ago and apparently he decided to go ahead and do it.  When we went over finances a few days ago we came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t have to spend $50 a month for her cell phone when she never came anywhere close to using her minutes.  My phone is taken care of by my work, so we couldn’t get on a shared plan ourselves.  Anyway, he needed some of her info to get it switched over, plus she needed to pick a new phone.  She chose a purple RAZR and we’ll be saving about $30 a month.

We didn’t do a whole lot for the morning.  We sat around updating the baby registry, adding in a bunch of the little, everyday items.  After we took a shower we watched a little bit of basketball, namely NC State who won an overtime game against Georgia Tech.

That game was still on when Georgetown rolled into Cameron to take on my Blue Devils.  This wasn’t a problem, since the games were on different channels here in Wilmington, but I did keep the State game on the picture-in-picture.

I felt a certain peace going into this game.  I know that this is a really good Duke team, but a lot of people were thinking this was an unfavorable matchup.  I knew Duke could win, but I knew it would be tough, so I think I was pretty well prepared for whatever the outcome was.  Well, Gerald Henderson had 17 points in the first half alone and Kyle Singler had a career-high number of rebounds in a game.  On top of that, Georgetown’s star freshman, Greg Monroe (whom Duke heavily recruited) got three fouls in the first half.

Monroe’s fourth foul was a controversial one.  A ref was walking by the Hoya bench, turned and threw a T at Monroe.  Georgetown had some momentum going at that point and had cut the lead to four points, but this started something like a 15-3 run by Duke.  I feel confident that Duke would have won anyway (the final score was 76-67), but it was a black mark on the game, in my opinion.

Greg Paulus had a pretty good game too, which was great to see.  He hit several threes, but more importantly he was just fired up and played with a lot of intensity, which affected the other Blue Devils.  He’s been playing with an arm injury for a long time, and when you add that to the fact that he was relegated from started to bench player, I was just happy to see him play with the fire.  I hope it’s a sign of things to come.  Duke will need that intensity and his three pointers.

After that game Amanda and I watched Wake Forest playing at Clemson, the game of the unbeatens.  The only other undefeated team remaining was Pitt, the number one team in the country.  Louisville took care of that later in the night though.  I texted my cousin, Roger Dotsey, who goes to Louisville, to congratulate him.

Anyway, Wake and Clemson played a pretty good game.  Wake lead most of the game but Clemson made a pretty good comeback towards the end to make it interesting, but ultimately the Demon Deacons won out.  I expect, with Pitt having lost later, that Wake will probably move up to number one in the polls.  This week they’re two in one poll and three in the other.  Duke is three in one and two in the other.  It’s possible that they’ll both be number one next week, but since the Deacs are undefeated so far I wouldn’t be offended if they’re ranked first.

I went and got Amanda some mac and cheese at the half.  There was a good sale on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, so I got a few boxes of that.

Amanda and I headed over to Justin and Lisa Hauenstein’s for a party they were bonfire throwing.  We met a few people, most of whom work with Lisa.  One of them happened to be another big Duke fan, so we had plenty to talk about.  The fire outside was nice, but it was still pretty cold out, so some of us spent a bit of time going back and forth between inside and out.

We watched the end of Pitt losing to Louisville then the beginning of Miami playing at Carolina.  Miami was hanging with the Heels up to the half, but as Amanda and I were listening to them on the radio on the way home Carolina started hitting all their shots, particularly Wayne Ellington dropping some crazy treys, so I didn’t bother watching.

Despite the Carolina game it was a great day of basketball.  I really like how my Blue Devils played.  If people weren’t considering them a heavy contender before, they should be now.

Zach Dotsey

Duke played Loyola at 4:00 and continued the nation-wide record of non-conference home wins (65 games) with a 92-51 win.  Nolan Smith injured his knee early in the game, which is some cause for concern, but from what I’ve read afterwards it was just bruised and it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Gerald Henderson continued to do well, and Kyle Singler and Jon Scheyer (who, with Smith out, played point when Greg Paulus was on the bench) both scored in double figures.  So did Brian Zoubek, for that matter.  The second strong didn’t look too great, but at least they got some good in-game time.  I really hope Paulus’ arm will hurry up and heal so he can get his three-point shot back.  The Devils might need it later in the season.

We were invited to a few different New Year’s Eve parties and were going to try to make an appearance at a couple different ones, but we ended up just going over to Blake and Stephanie Konny’s.  I’m glad we did because they had a nice spread, but we were the only ones who ended up being able to make it.

We mostly just sat around and caught up, talked about life for a while.  Blake happened to have bought Settlers of Catan with some Christmas money, so we all taught Stephanie how to play.  We took a break late in the game to watch the ball drop then, with the next roll, I got what I needed to win the game.  It was a pretty close one throughout though, and Stephanie came in second.  Not bad for her first time playing.

So here’s something interesting.  Time Warner Cable and Viacom, the company that owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and other stations, are having a disagreement and come tomorrow we might not have any of those channels.  The only one I’d really miss would be Comedy Central (and VH1 when it’s time for The Pick Up Artist), but with the baby coming I’m sure we’d start to miss Nockelodeon as well.  We’ve been wanting to cut back on our cable package, so maybe this will give us the excuse to do that.

So, that’s it for 2008.  Amanda had surgery, we got pregnant, America elected a black president and the economy is in the crapper.  Here’s to a bright 2009!

Zach Dotsey

I beat BioShock last night.  My brother-in-law, Michael Mercer, let me borrow it a little while ago.  I played it a lot for a while then I slacked off.  I was almost done anyway- it didn’t take much playing tonight.

I exiled myself to the couch last night.  I felt better by and large, but the coughing seems to act up more at night and I didn’t want to bother Amanda if I could avoid it.  I did feel a lot better today.   I give full credit to the vitamin C tablets Elliot Clark gave me.  I’m being facetious, of course, but it is funny that as soon as I take those I start feeling better.

Michael had some free meal tickets at PT’s and invited me out to lunch, so after a meeting with Bonnie and Dave Narron, who will, I think, be going forward with a website pretty soon now, I met him there.

Jason Revill told me that he fell and hurt his ankle today.  He’s not sure how bad it is.

Duke played UNC Asheville tonight.  Coach K started the bench tonight, not, as he later said, to send a message to the starters, but to show the bench players that he has confidence in them.  I don’t know if it’s that or just that his arm is healing, but Greg Paulus definitely shot better tonight.

There’s not too much to talk about, since it was UNC Asheville.  A few nice dunks by Gerald Henderson and freshman Elliot Williams showed that he was playing better, particularly in grabbing a bunch of boards.  The final score was 99-56.  I didn’t hear half the game though, what with Michael talking about how much he can’t stand Kyle Singler’s smirk.  Xavier is up next, and it should be a good test for Duke.

Zach Dotsey