Zach Dotsey

For some reason, Duke seems to have trouble playing in away games.  They tend to shoot poorly and the other teams shoot better than their average.  The difference between Duke playing at home in Cameron Indoor Stadium versus them playing at an opponent’s court is just mind boggling.  That was true tonight as well,for one half.

The Blue Devils traveled down to Miami and scored 25 points in the first half to Miami’s 37.   Then something changed.  Coach K must have pushed some buttons or something because Duke came out on a tear and scored 57 points in the second half while Miami matched their first half score.  The final was 81-74.  Brian Zoubek had another nice game and Kyle Singler lead the Blue Devils in points.  Nolan Smith and Jon Scheyer were very quiet in the first half but came alive in the second.  One other nice thing is that everyone got to play tonight.  The Plumlee brothers see the court regularly, but Andre Dawkins came in and made a three and Ryan Kelly got some minutes.  While he didn’t score, he had some nice assists to Zoubek down low.

Milly was in a good mood today.  She was pretty easy to watch and interacted with Amanda and me a lot.  She was also very talkative and it was easy to make her laugh.  I pointed out to Amanda today that I think he face is starting to thin out and she’s starting to look older.  Older for a baby anyway.

One thing she needs to work on is finishing her bottle.  Now that she’s so mobile she gets distracted easily when we’re feeding her and she likes to forget the bottle and go do different things.  We’ve been spoiled by the fact that Milly has been able to bottle-feed herself for months now, but we’re having to hold her to try to get her to drink at least half of her bottle.  The leftovers get mixed with oatmeal or rice cereal and baby food, and she does eat most of that so it doesn’t all go to waste.

Zach Dotsey

Neither Amanda nor I slept all that well last night.  We’d wake up just about any time Milly made a noise.  I’m sure she does it all the time, but it’s different being in the same room with her.  On top of that, it seemed like the dogs kept wanting to come and go in and out of the room.

Amanda and I went with Karen to the home of Peggy and Earl Lemons (Amanda’s grandparents) for the country breakfast they serve every Saturday.  We got to see their new car.  Their Taurus was giving them some trouble so they bought an Impala.  We put Milly down for a nap in Peggy and Earl’s room right before we ate and afterwards I went to check on her.  I decided to lie down with her and she turned and snuggled up on me.  It was so sweet.  The time in between was spent eating and debating etiquette.

We got back to the Mercer house around noon and gave Milly her lunch.  Amanda and Karen went back out to do some shopping.  After I put Milly down for a nap (she didn’t have a particularly long one at her great-grandparents’ house) Michael, Jenn and I played Puerto Rico.  I beat Michael by a point.  He would have beat me but he misunderstood the implications of one of his picks.  That was my first win at that game.

We played a little MarioKart and Amanda played some when she got home too, feeding Milly in between.  Peggy and Earl came over a little later to have dinner and celebrate Michael’s birthday, which is Monday.  We also watched NC State suck it up against Maryland, which I figured would happen since the Pack beat Duke a few days ago.  Texas, who started the week undefeated but lost to Kansas State earlier, lost to UConn.

Anyway, we had a great dinner of steak, potatoes, salad, apple sauce, green beans and more.  In attendance were Amanda and I, plus Milly after we’d mostly finished eating, Karen and Phil, Peggy and Earl and Jenn.  Plus Michael, of course, as it was his birthday we were celebrating.

9:00 came around and we turned on the Duke-Clemson game.  Now, Clemson humiliated Duke last year at Littlejohn Coliseum and held Duke to 47 points, which was the lowest score Duke had in a long, long time.  Clemson’s been mostly playing pretty well lately, and Duke’s been sucking it up on the road though they beat Clemson soundly a few weeks ago.  A loss would put a lot of doubt on the Blue Devils, but a win would show that Duke can win in an opponent’s arena, and against tough competition at that.

The game was tied at a horrendously low 23 at the half.  Duke ended up winning 60-47 though.  (Remember that number, 47?)  Nolan Smith had a great game and Lance Thomas actually outscored Kyle Singler and Jon Scheyer.  The second half was all Duke.

Michael is sitting across from me now, playing with his new iPod Touch.  He had a problem updating iTunes, which he needed to do to register his Touch and ended up just formatting his computer to get it to work.  Well, it works now and he’s looking at games to download 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

I spent a good bit of time this morning cleaning up the office.  That was the intent, anyway.  I got a lot done, shredded up a bunch of old bills, reorganizing the filing cabinet, clearing off the desk and another table, but at a glance it doesn’t look like much has been done.

Amanda’s itching to play Puerto Rico.  The last time she was wanting to play a game like that we ended up making our own Settlers of Catan.  No way we’re doing that with Puerto Rico though, plus Amanda’s not laid up post-surgery now either.  She looked for it while she ran out to do some errands today but couldn’t find it, so she’s ordered it from Amazon.com.

I started watching the Duke-Georgia Tech game, but we have been talking to the Frazelles about going to see Avatar for quite a while and had made plans to go today, so I watched half of the first half and DVR’ed it.  Cyra came over to watch Milly and we headed off to see the movie.

Barry bought our tickets, which was really nice of him.  Amanda brought some candy but no drink, so I did spend $5.75 on a medium Cherry Coke.  Of course, the thing was about a liter and we got free refills.  Free refills ended up being one refill on the way out of the theater, just so I could feel okay about spending almost $6.00 on a drink.  I can’t remember the last time we bought a drink or candy at a theater.

So, Avatar was cool, and it was in 3D.  I’ll admit that towards the end of the movie, when I was caught up in watching it and wasn’t thinking at all about what I was doing, I swatted at a 3D bug.  That was little embarrassing, like I’d never been to a 3D movie before.

Anyway, out of the six people in our group who saw it (all of the Frazelles plus me and Amanda) everyone really liked it except for Anna, who said it was too long and boring.  So if you’re talking movies to her and she goes on about how much she disliked Avatar, just keep in mind that 83% of the people she saw it with liked it.

Back home, Cyra said Milly had been good with her.  Milly was asleep when we left and didn’t react negatively to Cyra getting her up, which is good.  It sounded like they had a nice time together.

I did a good job of not checking up on the basketball game while we were out.  I did see that Duke was up a little at the half, but I didn’t check anything after the movie started.  In fact, I was wearing a Duke shirt and made sure to cover it up with my coat to make sure nobody said anything in passing.  I turned the game on as soon as Cyra left.

Duke lost 71-67.  I’ll go ahead and say that.  Georgia Tech played some really aggressive defense and the game was allowed to be played much tougher than you usually see in the ACC.  To add to it though, Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler both only scored nine points, but Jon Scheyer scored 25.  Duke shot an absolutely abysmal 6-28 from beyond the arc.  I’ll credit some of that to the Yellow Jackets’ defense, but I remember seeing some wide-open shots that just wouldn’t go in.

What’s really boggling though is that Miles and Mason Plumlee combined for 9-10 shooting, but nobody really looked to keep passing the ball to the post.  I really wish they’d start doing that more, particularly when the outside shots aren’t falling.  Mason looked particularly good.  Dude’s getting better every game.

I wasn’t too upset about the loss.  I didn’t have  good feeling going into it and Georgia Tech is ranked in the top 20, so it didn’t sting as bad as it could have.  I think Duke will learn from it.

I ended up walking upstairs and back down several times tonight.  Amanda suggested watching a DVD in bed tonight, so I went to get the old Xbox, which had been in the guestroom, then I went to get something to watch, then I came back down to look for the remote, which ended up being upstairs anyway, and then I discovered that the batteries were dead so I had to come back down to replace the triple A’s.

Amanda’s prerequisites for picking something to watch were that it wasn’t something we haven’t watched yet and something that didn’t take too much attention to watch, since we’d probably both fall asleep anyway.  I ended up picking the first season of Arrested Development.

I finally decided to start watching Arrested Development a few episodes before it got canceled and always wanted to go back and watch it, so Amanda had picked up the full series for me for Christmas.  So, while we hadn’t seen it, it was a good choice anyway.

Zach Dotsey
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Yeah, still not caught up all the way at work.  One day….

Amanda stayed at work a little late because they were getting pizza for lunch.  She stopped by Target on the way home to pick up a few things, including a bathing suit for Milly.  Obviously she’s not wearing it when it’s 17 degrees outside with the windchill, but she got the 12 month size.  Amanda couldn’t help but think that Milly would be a whole year old when she’ll be wearing it.  As Amanda reflected, it sounds different saying “one year” as opposed to “twelve months”.

Milly Dotseys First Pigtails

She also picked up some hair bands, figuring Milly’s hair is finally long enough to put up in pigtails.  And it was!  Amanda gave her on pigtail on the top of her head first then did two.  They looked like antennae and were so cute!

I finally took a permanent break from work (for the night) around 8:30 when Seth Holloman gave me a call.  His TV was crooked because the wall mount, I think, was coming loose from the wall.  He was going to leave it until tomorrow, but then it slid a little more and he got worried that the TV would fall, so he needed help getting it off and putting it back on.  I got over there then back home just in time for tip off for the Duke-Iowa State game.

Every year Coach K tries to schedule a game in the hometown of any of his seniors and tonight’s game was played at the United Center in Chicago for Jon Scheyer.  Scheyer’s been amazing this season and is in early talks not only for ACC Player of the Year honors, but he’s being talked about for National Player of the Year as well.  He didn’t disappoint his hometown crowd either, scoring 31 points.  Nolan Smith has 20, Kyle Singler scored 15 and Lance Thomas put in a good defensive game, helping hold the Cyclones’ star, Craig Brackins, to 12 points.  The final score was 86-65 despite a couple run Iowa State went on.

In other basketball news, Gilbert Arenas has been indefinitely suspended from the NBA without pay for having a gun in the locker room at a game.  It’s amazing to me that people who have so much can be so stupid.

Zach Dotsey

Yeah, I was in bed around 10:30 last night.  That’s just about unheard of for me.  You know if I forwent watching a Duke game that I was tired.  I ended up watching it first thing this morning though.  I got out of bed to take a look at a problem Amanda had with her iPod not syncing the John Mayer CD Billy Supplee had let her borrow and just ended up staying up.  I think what happened with the sync is that the iPod was already plugged in and connected to iTunes before the CD had finished loading into the library.  That’s my best guess anyway.

Duke beat the Beach pretty comfortably last night, 84-63.  They didn’t look as good in the second half as in the first, but Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith had really hood games.  Brian Zoubek did too, for that matter.  Zoubs has really gotten better this season so far.  To Long Beach’s credit, they didn’t fold down the stretch.  They’ve played a really tough schedule this year and are picked to win their conference.

I finished watching the game just in time for work.

Work’s insanity continued today.  I counted 40 emails from about 5:15 yesterday evening to about 11:30 this morning, the vast majority of which needed either some action or a response.  I’ve got one major job I’ve been trying to work on and I barely got to scratch it.  I really hope tomorrow’s not nearly as tough.  Hopefully everybody will be out getting ready for New Year’s Eve.

Wow, New Year’s Eve is tomorrow.  Amanda and I have absolutely nothing planned.  We didn’t bother looking for a babysitter and we don’t have anywhere in particular to go even if we did have one.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Amanda fell asleep before midnight too.  My New Year’s Eves have been much more tame since 2003.

After Amanda came home she had taken Milly upstairs to play in the nursery.  After a bit she decided she was going to clean the house and start on dinner, so the options were to bring Mills downstairs or for me to move work upstairs.  Since she was happy up there I opted for the latter, but my laptop died on the way up.  It’s ridiculous how much charge this thing doesn’t hold.  I mean, seriously, I can’t unplug it and walk upstairs without it dying.

After I finished working for the day at about 6:00 I headed out.  I was going to feed Gipper then go by Michael’s apartment to borrow Rayman’s Raving Rabbids. We were going to borrow MarioKart, but Jenn just got back in town today and wanted to play it.  On the way over there I decided to stop by GameStop just to see if they happened to get any copies of MarioKart in.  Amanda had called Best Buy and Target and they were both out.  GameStop did happen to have a copy, a used one at that, so it was cheaper.  I picked that up along with two controllers, although I actually didn’t get the controllers but something to make the more sensitive, so Billy and I went back out after dinner.

Oh, yeah, Billy and Cyra came over for dinner and Wii.  Billy played Wii Fit for just a bit then we all played MarioKart for a while before they headed on out.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda asked me this morning as she was leaving for work if I remembered trying to change her diaper last night.  Apparently, in my sleep, I checked to see if she had wet her diaper and Amanda asked what I was doing.  I told her something like I was taking care of Milly or changing Milly’s diaper, something like that.  She said that Milly was in the other room.  Apparently I was patting her back too, or something.

I’m not as upset as one would think I’d be, given that I just witnessed Duke’s first loss of the season, the first time they lost in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge and the first time the Big Ten has won the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.  I blame Jason Revill for it.  He told me earlier today that he thought Duke would lose because Carolina won when they were not expected to.

I’m really not too down though, and it’s probably got a lot to do with me feeling like Duke wasn’t going to win it with most of the second half left to play.  Duke trailed the entire game but came really close at the end, which caused Amanda to stay up late and watch it.  I think the main problems were that Duke actually looked terrible on defense and there wasn’t a lot of sharing with the ball.  Smith and Scheyer didn’t look that great tonight, but Singler was a beast (in the first half, but made some boneheaded plays at the end) and Andre Dawkins I think hit 4-4 three pointers.  Just wish they’d started going to him before the last five minutes of the game.  Mason Plumlee played his first real game as a Blue Devil tonight after a very fast recovery from a broken wrist.

Ah well.  It’s not like I was expecting an undefeated season or anything, and Bo Ryan is 123 wins to 10 losses in the last nine years at home.  So congrats, Wisconsin Badgers.  Hopefully Duke will learn from this loss and get better.

Have I mentioned lately how fun it is to get Milly up in the morning?  A big grin spreads across her face and she gets all excited, banging her feet against the crib mattress.  And of course now she’ll raise her arms up for you to pick her up.  So cute.  She also likes dancing.  I was dancing with her a little today and she seemed to have fun with it.

What wasn’t so cute was the poop she had this morning.  It went all up her back and messed her jammies pretty good.

We’ve got some wind and rain going on outside right now.  No tornadoes that I’ve heard of yet.

Zach Dotsey