Zach Dotsey

I got a lot of happy birthday wishes today.  The first person I talked to (aside from Amanda when she was leaving) was my dad, who also celebrated his birthday, his 54th, today.  He’s going up to Rochester to see my mom this weekend.  But between IM’s, Facebook, Twitter, phone calls and message boards, I had a lot of people wish me well today, and I appreciate that.

Work was actually pretty busy, but for some reason I had a hard time concentrating today.

Milly was a bit bipolar today.  She was really happy and fun some, but then she’d turn around and only be happy if she was being held, or just not happy at all.  On top of that she wasn’t into napping much this evening.  I was a little tired and took her upstairs at about 6:00 to see if she’d take a nap with me, but she was enjoying crawling around on the bed too much.  At least she was entertained.

Amanda made quiche with sausage and biscuits for dinner with cinnamon rolls for dessert.  The Warkentiens joined us and brought no bake cookies.  After dinner we played Puerto Rico.  I actually had a bit of a plan going into it, and it worked out well.  I won, and by a pretty good margin.  Amy got second, Amanda third and Nick was last.  I don’t know exactly why we do it, but we tend to speak in various accents when we play that game, particularly Amy and I.  Usually it’s a British accent of some sort, but we both spent a good bit of time in something that was mostly Russian, maybe a little eastern European with maybe a dash of Hispanic sprinkled in here and there.

After that we watched The Office, which was the episode (well, two episodes put together) where Pam and Jim have their baby.  I thought Amanda was going to bed after Nick and Amy and Eli took off, but we ended up watching Community too.

That was pretty much my day.  It was a low key birthday, but it was a decent day.

Zach Dotsey

I woke up around 7:00 this morning.  Milly wasn’t fussing, but she was awake and I didn’t know what time it was, so I got on up.  Milly and I talked to Uncle Roy for a bit, and when I heard my parents I took Milly to see them.  Since Mom got in late last night she didn’t get to see Milly.  She didn’t get to see anyone, come to think of it.  I think I ended up going to sleep about 15 minutes before she and my dad got back to the house.

As I noticed last night, there was snow on the ground, probably a couple inches.  Amanda and I took Milly out to check it out, but she wasn’t really into it.  I got a few pictures and a little bit of video, but nothing monumental.

We mostly just hung around for a good part of the day.  Milly had her first taste of eggs, which she didn’t seem to mind too much.  I tried to install a printer on Uncle Roy’s laptop and drew and colored a picture of one of Jackson’s toys in Photoshop.  I’d shown him a little bit about how to use it yesterday, which he seemed to enjoy.  I wish they’d come out with a new MarioPaint, because the basics I learned playing with that were the basis for a lot of what I taught myself with Photoshop.

Duke hosted Maryland today.  Not only was it Coach K’s 1oooth game, and not only was it his birthday, but it was also a game to determine the #1 spot in the ACC.  The Terps were second but if they won they’d take Duke’s #1 spot.

The game started and Duke rebounded a Maryland attempt then Jon Scheyer made a three.  Then the power went out.  It came back on, but the satellite was taking forever to sync back up.  Then the power went out again.  Not only did it interrupt my game, but both laptops that were in use (mine, with Amanda on it, and Uncle Roy on his) died.  Dad and Josh were doing some bathroom work (they ended up pretty much completely stripping out the bathroom at the top of the stairs) and had to cut the power for some reason while they were draining the water.  Or something like that.

Once the power came back on the satellite took forever to reboot again, so I watched some of the game online until the TV was ready.

It was a great game.  Duke won by 21 and Brian Zoubek had his best game ever with 16 points and 17 rebounds!  Dude was a beast today.

In other basketball news, Carolina beat NC State in a game to determine who would reside in the cellar of the ACC.  Carolina, sadly, was able to stop their losing streak.  I watched UK beat Tennessee just a little bit ago.  It was tight until the end of the game when I guess the Wildcats decided they were tired of trading buckets.

We played some MarioKart for a bit then Amanda, Milly and I left just before 5:00.  The trip was pretty uneventful aside from the fact that I drove (even though I drove up as well, and we usually trade off duties) and Milly cried most of the last 15 miles or so of the trip.  She seemed to just be tired of being in the car.  She was also distracted while eating and didn’t go to bed too easily.

Amanda and I watched The Office and 30 Rock before she went to bed, then I watched an episode of Smallville.  The next one features the Justice Society.  I’d have gone ahead and watched it, but it’s a two hour one I think, and I remembered that Kentucky and Tennessee were playing.

The Revills, by the way, got two new dogs today.  They were just going to get one but they decided they liked two of them.  Lucy and Maxine are their names.  As you may recall, they recently lost two dogs.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda, Milly and I left this morning around 9:00 on what would turn out to be the longest trip to Rougemont, normally about a two and a half hour trip, ever.

First we stopped off in Clayton at about 11:30 to see my boss, Scott.  We used the GPS to get there.  Anyway, Scott hadn’t met Milly yet and Amanda hadn’t even met his younger daughter, Ava, who is now… two or three?  Scott, Ava and his wife, Ann Marie, were all there.  Addie, the older daughter, was in school.

After that we met up with Erin at Southpoint for lunch.  We were there for a bit before she got there, then we went to look for a birthday present for her.  Since the dogs were in the car, I ended up taking Milly and heading on out while Amanda and Erin shopped.  We did get Milly her first ever Duke hat.

On the way to the Rouge I called my old buddy, Jason Revill, to update him on my goings-on, since he was going to try to meet up with us.  He was helping prepare some stuff with his parents at Aldersgate Church, so Milly and I ended up stopping by there to see them.  Nearly eight months old, and she finally gets to meet my best friend and his parents, who were like a second set of parents to me.  We tried to get together before, but it just never worked out.  It felt special to be able to introduce Milly to them.

We went on to Rougemont after that, arriving at about 4:00.  Seven hours, longest trip from Wilmington to Rougemont ever.  My dad, Andra and her baby, Addison, were there.  Addison was so sweet.  She was excited to see Milly (they’re exactly seven months apart) and kept hugging her.  Milly isn’t very advanced on her interactions with people her size yet, so I think it annoyed her more than anything else.  But it was so sweet to see.  I thought many times today that I can’t wait for them to be big enough to really play together.

Josh and Jackson arrived with Erin and Amanda right after them.  Amanda and Erin had seen Elmo and Dulce, one of my parents’ dogs and Erin’s, by the road and had picked them up.  Amanda got some poop or something on her clothes from it, so she went to change and wash her clothes.  I spent some time working this evening.

Uncle Roy got home from work as Jackson and left to find some Cold-Eeze, mainly for Amanda because she felt some sick coming on, but I had a little bit of a sore throat yesterday and thought it would be good for me too.  We went to three or four nearby places but couldn’t find any.  I had a good time riding around with Jackson.  I told him why we preferred to call my mom Mum Mum instead of Nana (a name in honor of my own grandma versus a name similar to what we’re calling Milly’s other grandma, which could make it confusing) and he told me that with my peacoat on I looked like a villain spy.  He asked if I was a spy so we talked about what situations I’d be able to tell him if I was a spy or not.

As I said, we didn’t find the Cold-Eeze, and I didn’t realize Amanda wanted them as bad as she did, so I went back out after I dropped Jackson back off at the house and this time I went towards Durham instead of towards Roxboro.  I also picked up some extra baby food because Milly was wolfing it down.  On the way back I noticed that it was lightly snowing.  Amanda’s brother, Michael, texted a little later and said it was coming down pretty heavily in Wilmington and actually sticking.

Amanda and I put Milly to bed after I got back then Erin, Josh and Andra went out and Dad went to pick up my mom, whose flight had been delayed.

Amanda got Addison to go to bed then she went to bed herself shortly after.  I snoozed on the couch while Jackson played Wii.  When he was done he wanted to watch cartoons, and while I was flipping through the channels trying to find Cartoon Network for him we came across Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which he decided he wanted to watch.

I just went to let Bruce and Harvey out to pee and the ground is already covered in snow, so tomorrow we’ll have to get some pictures of Milly out there in it.  Amanda packed warm clothes for her just in case this situation occurred.

Zach Dotsey

We used the GPS that my parents gave us for Christmas for the first time today.  We weren’t going far, in fact we were just going to a baby shower for Elliot and Melissa that was being held in a neighborhood not far from us, but it’s easy to get turned around in the neighborhoods between Gordon and Market with all the little winding roads and cul de sacs and whatnot.  In fact, the place we were going is so new it wasn’t on Google Maps, Mapquest or the GPS itself, and the maps on that were updated very recently.

The baby shower was nice and we got to catch up with a number of friends and meet some new people.  One of them, a lady from Raleigh, watched after Milly for us for a while.  We relieved her at one point but she asked if she could hold her again a little later.  Milly spent most of her time with her trying to eat her necklace.  Milly was passed around quite a bit and didn’t ever seem to mind.  She’s very sociable.

There was one girl, I think she was four years old and named Tyler, who was very intrigued by Milly.  We let her hold her a couple times, one of those being on a couch.  They seemed to be back far enough on the couch to not worry too much about them, but Milly leaned forward and Tyler didn’t have hold her tight enough and Milly fell headfirst off the couch.  Luckily I was right there and I caught her by pressing her against the couch with my leg.  She cried a good bit, but it was from being scared.

After we got home and put Milly down for a nap (she hadn’t had one except on the short ride to the baby shower) we watched Duke take on Boston College.  I was a little worried because BC is a middle of the pack ACC team that Duke beat by 20 points earlier in the season, but they’d just had a great game at home against Georgia Tech and Carolina is coming up on Wednesday, so I thought it might be a trap game for them.  Well, they got pretty far ahead but only ended up winning by three.  Despite that, I was happy for the win.  Next up, the Tar Heels.

There was a lot of good basketball on today.  Lots of close games.

I talked to several family members today.  I caught up with Aunt Robbie this morning and Uncle Roy this evening then Mom and Dad.  Dad had gone up to Rochester this weekend because Mom’s back was bothering her and she didn’t think she’d be comfortable riding on a plane.  They went out and about, saw It’s Complicated and it just sounded like they had a nice time together.

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

For about a week now I’ve been excited about one thing, and that was my trip to Durham to catch my beloved Blue Devils in action against the Seminoles of Florida State with Seth Holloman.  I think this was the first ACC game I’ve ever attended at Duke.  The seats were amazing.  We were literally on the floor (Row A) in the back corner past the Florida State bench.  If we’d been a little more in the corner the seats wouldn’t have been as good, but as it was we had a great view.  I know basketball players are big and tall, but seeing them in action, playing at my own eye level made them look even bigger.

It was a defensive battle and not the prettiest game, but Duke won 70-56.

While I was having a blast in Durham, Amanda was putting up with a teething Milly.  I got a text sometime in the second half that read, “You owe me.”  (I’ll be paying her back Saturday night anyway when she goes out with the girls from small group.)  I talked to Amanda when Seth and I were on the way back to Wilmington and she said Milly had been up off and on for an hour, crying loud and pretty much inconsolable.  Amanda was just frustrated.

Milly was super cute earlier today though.  When I went to get her up for her lunch she was asleep in an upright crawling position, up on all four, but with her head on the mattress and turned sideways.  It was about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.  I ran downstairs to get a camera, but she woke up before I got back.

I had a meeting today with some people I had another recent meeting with.  They decided they wanted a good bit of Flash done on the site, so I called in a Flash contractor and we all sat down together.  I think the meeting went well overall, but I’m not sure if their ambition mightn’t be a bit more than they’re actually wanting to take on.  They’ve got a really cool idea, but they’re basically wanting a short digital film.  I should have a quote before too long, so we’ll see.

Seth picked me up at 5:00, which marks the first time in who knows how long that I actually stopped working at 5:00.  We had an uneventful ride to Durham and stopped to eat at Devine’s before going to the game.  Devine’s is a bar/restaurant place not far from the Duke campus and just across the street from Brightleaf Square, right down the road from the Papa John’s where I worked for a summer and the funeral home where Pup Pup’s wake was held.  I’ve never been to Devine’s, which may seem odd since it’s been there a long time and I grew up in Durham, but growing up in northern Durham I really didn’t hang out downtown all that much.

Anyway, I really enjoyed eating there.  Seth knows the owner of the place- Gene Devine, a former Duke football player, so we talked to him and a buddy of his while we had a couple beers and ate some food.

I’d called my dad yesterday to see if he wanted to meet us there and he said that 99% of the time he’d have said yes, but he had to be in Burlington for something for church tonight.  I later found out that Uncle Roy had called and gone there to meet up, but he called at about 5:30 and we didn’t even get there until about 7:30.  I had checked the message after the game because I didn’t have the number in my caller ID and, since I was in a car at the time and wouldn’t be much help to a client at the time I let it go to voicemail.  I wish I’d checked it just so I could have told him when we were going to be there.

Anyway, even though Amanda had a rough night, I had a great time tonight.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda woke up this morning to see Milly staring at her from crib.  She wasn’t sure if Milly could actually see that far, but she was looking in our direction from between the slats of the crib.  And she woke up at 8:00, instead of earlier than usual, which is a first for this trip.  It might be a first for being away from home.

Uncle Roy came in last night and hadn’t gotten a chance to see Milly, but he did get to this morning.

Mom made a breakfast of eggs, biscuits and bacon.  It was yummers.

Elmo, one of my parents’ dogs, was found injured this morning.  Amanda called Banfield, who said that they could look at her but if her leg was broken or anything like that they’d end up passing her off to the emergency vet, so Dad, Josh and I carried her out to the car and Mom took her to the vet.  The shame of it is that my mom had gotten a later flight to Rochester for today to be around the family more, and she ended up leaving us for a chunk of time and not being able to see anybody off.

Erin called when we were almost back home and told me that Elmo’s knee had been blown out, and that it was likely just from running around.  I think surgery was mentioned, but the best option seems to be to just let it heal.

Amanda, Milly and I left after Milly’s lunchtime feeding.  After loading up the car just about to capacity we took off back to Wilmington.  Aside from Erin, who was taking Mom back to the airport later, we were the last to leave.  I wish we got to see my parents more.  I’ve got to say, everybody did a good job of splitting time with the babies.  I can’t wait for Addie and Milly to get to the age where they can really play and interact.

The drive home seemed to go by pretty fast.  Amanda and I chatted a lot, but honestly I couldn’t really tell you what we talked about now.  It was just… pleasant.  Milly continued her record of traveling well.

After we got home and unloaded the car I went back out to pick up MarioKart for the Wii, but it was sold out at Best Buy, where I have a gift card (thanks, Dain!).  I decided to go ahead and look at GameStop across the street.  They didn’t have it either, but I considered buying a few used games because they had them on a buy two get one free special.  I didn’t end up getting anything though- I’ve got enough games to play.

After I got home and we got Milly to bed Amanda and I played a good bit of Wii Fit.  Hopefully we’ll keep up with it and it will do us both some good.  After Amanda went to bed I played a bit of Wario Land Shake it!, which is a fun little side-scroller.

Tomorrow marks the return to work.  I’ve already got plenty to do, from the number of emails that I’ve read over the past couple days.  I thought about going ahead and getting started on some of it, but I decided I owe myself a little time.

Zach Dotsey