Zach Dotsey

As good as Milly was yesterday, she decided to make up for it today.  Then again, I thought she was making up yesterday for the day before that, so who knows?  She was up a little early, didn’t finish her bottle and was fussy enough, despite that I tried several things to make her happy, that I was able to put her down for her nap just a little before 9:30.  She usually goes down closer to 10.

Work seems to slowly be getting back to how it was before a week or two ago.  That’s good in that I get to make money, but it would also be nice not to feel stressed out for having plans at 6:00.

Plans at 6:00 were going to Port City Community Church for a meeting about Grow Zone, the children’s ministry that Amanda and I both volunteer at.  There are some big changes coming up that they wanted to announce, first and foremost among them was that everyone who helps out in the rooms is going to be moved to doing it every week.  I can see why that’s a good idea, as it gives the kids more stability and the chance to build better relationships with them and their parents, but it gives me a lot to think about.  I also volunteer on the production team once a month, plus hardly a month goes by when Amanda and I don’t either have someone in town for the weekend or we’re out of town ourselves.  We’ll just have to pray about it and see where we’re lead.

Kirsten came over early to watch Milly while we went to the meeting and Barry came to pick her up at about 7:30, just a few minutes before Joel, Mia and Felix came over for small group, bearing a birthday cake.  I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think I’ve had more birthday cake for any other birthday in my life.  Anyway, they were the only other couple who could make it tonight, so we ate cake, chatted and breezed through our discussion.  We’ve only got one chapter left in our study on Romans.

Zach Dotsey

There was an earthquake early this morning off the coast of Chile, an 8.8 with a whole lot of aftershocks which  has killed, last I saw, over 200 people.  On top of that it was reported that a tsunami from it was heading towards Hawaii, but I don’t think anything came of that.

In my own life, Amanda got up with Milly this morning, which was nice.  She fed her then put her i n bed with me after she ate.  My baby was in a good mood.

A little later we, along with the Lambeths, ate a breakfast of pancakes, eggs and sausage then went over to the Frazelles’.  Ben mentioned wanting to see them, plus he and Jessica wanted to take Graelyn out to see the beach.  I don’t know if the girls were off their schedules or what, but Milly and Graelyn took turns being fussy, Milly more so.  Since Milly was being so fussy (and Graelyn wasn’t at that point), Amanda, Milly and I stayed in the house while the Lambeths went to get a few pictures.  It was also cold and there are giant pipes running the length of the beach since they’re pumping sand to one spot to replenish it.

Anyway, we hung out with Anna, Barry and Kirsten (Hannah made an appearance as well) then headed on back to the house after stopping to pick up some steaks for dinner.  We also got some cake in celebration of my impending birthday.

We gave Milly and Graelyn a bath together, which was fun.  We used Milly’s bathtub thing and put Graelyn in the seat part with Milly in the deeper part.  They both love baths and seemed to have fun in there.

Milly, as I think I’ve mentioned lately, has been really distracted while being fed lately.  Everyone else was busy getting dinner ready while I was trying to keep Milly entertained (as I said, the babies were very fussy today) and since Amanda, Ben and Jessica had talked about Veggie Tales earlier, I thought I’d pull up some Veggie Tales videos on YouTube for Milly to see what she thought.  Well, it held her attention, and she drank all her formula while watching them.  I suppose it’s the dawn of the electronic nanny era in our household.  I’m a little ashamed to admit that.

Dinner was great.  Ben fixed the steak and we also had green beans and salad.  Amanda’s salad is always good, but it seemed even better than usual tonight, and Ben’s steak was just outstanding.  After that we ate some very yummy cake and sat around talking insurance and politics for a bit before settling into watching District 9, which Ben got from the Redbox at Lowe’s Food.  I don’t think anyone else liked it as much as I did, but I’ve been wanting to see it since before it was in the theaters and I was not disappointed in the least.  I thought it was really, really good.

Harvey was very smelly tonight.  I don’t know what the deal was, but he smelled like fish.  He did yesterday too, but Amanda was able to wipe him down with some Nature’s Miracle to take care of it, but that didn’t work tonight so I ended up giving him a bath.  He smells much better now.

I think the plan is to forgo church tomorrow morning.  As I understand it’s mostly going to be sort of a call for volunteers, and since Amanda and I together volunteer three out of four weeks a month and Ben and Jessica will be leaving, not to mention that we were up later than usual tonight and it will probably be stressful getting the babies all ready on time, I think we’re just going to get up and go grab some breakfast.

It was Upset Day in college hoops.  First, Kentucky got beat by Tennessee then Kansas got beat by Oklahoma State, so the top two teams in the nation, both with only one previous loss, both lost in the same day.  Georgetown, ranked 11, was beaten by unranked Notre Dame and Texas A&M beat Texas.  That one wasn’t a huge upset as they were ranked 21 and 22, but Texas was #1 earlier in the season and I think started out at #2.  In the ACC, Carolina finally got a win, this one coming at the expense of Wake Forest on their own court, which has to be embarrassing this year.  That irritated me because the Tar Heels were tied with NC State for last place in the ACC, but then NC State finally got another win (over Miami), so the Heels are still at the bottom, but now it’s a three-way tie between the Heels, the Wolfpack and the Hurricanes.  Of the three though, the Heels have the worst overall record, so that’s nice consolation.

Zach Dotsey

It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday today.  I honestly don’t think a guy could ask for a better mother-in-law than the one I’ve got.  Happy birthday, Karen!

One thing I forgot to mention about yesterday is that my laptop died.  Now, the battery’s been unable to hold a charge for a while now, so I’m thinking the problem is just that my power adapter is dead.  I really hope that’s the case because I’ve got this month’s pictures on there, not to mention a few months’ worth of videos.  I was going to buy a new adapter, but Amanda reminded me that the Nowaks had the same laptop as mine, so Mike, who said he found a spare adapter, said he’d bring that to small group on Tuesday.  If that doesn’t work I guess I’ll just need to load the hard drive into an external case and get what I can off of it.

Aside from all that though, Amanda also convinced me that it just might be time for a new laptop, so after church and a brunch at Atlanta Bread we stopped by Best Buy to look at some.  We signed up for a Best Buy credit card to get 18 month no interest, then before I could pick one out Milly started getting fussy so we went home then I came back out myself a little later.  I decided to make sure not to get a Hewlett-Packard since my last two laptops were HP’s and I’ve had issues with them.  After doing some research and talking to Adam (my brother) and a couple people at Best Buy I decided to get a Toshiba Satellite A505.  It’s got a good bit of processing power and 4 gigs of RAM, but what really put me over with it was the fact that it has an actual video card in it.  I spent most of the rest of the day getting rid of a lot of the pre-installed crap and adding back on the things I need for work and such.  It really does run so much better though.  It takes no time at all to load Photoshop, much less use it.  It’s very smooth.

Once I got back from picking up my birthday present (which is how we justified getting it) Amanda went out to Old Navy to pick up some shoes for Milly.  Of course, she got a few other things as well.

Speaking of Milly’s shoes, that reminds me what a time we had getting to church this morning.  Long story short, we couldn’t find shoes for Milly and we ended up forgetting the diaper bag.  It was a fun morning.  Milly did better at Grow Zone today though.  We put her back in the baby room and when I went to go get her she was wrapped around Chris Sikes’ mom sleeping.  She was precious.  I was told that Milly told them that even if she was 12 years old, she wanted to be in that room every Sunday.

This evening Amanda and I watched Duke battle it out against Virginia Tech.  My Blue Devils built an 11 point lead in the second half but finished up with just a five point lead going into halftime.  The offense was pretty stinky again tonight, though Singler and Smith quietly managed to score north of 20 points, but the big story was Brian Zoubek’s 16 rebounds.  The game stayed pretty close but Duke ended up winning 67-55 on a nice late run.

Zach Dotsey

Today was Milly’s first Valentine’s Day as well as her eight month birthday.  She celebrated it by wearing a shirt with hearts and a jean skirt with tights under them.  She was adorable.  She also celebrated by crying a bunch in Grow Zone, though to be fair she was in it for two sessions today since Amanda and I were volunteering there this morning and she didn’t take a nap at around 10:00 like she usually does.  Despite that excuse, we’re going to try moving her back down from the cruisers room to the babies room.  There’s apparently less going on there, so she might be more comfortable.

Life was exciting in the three year old room, as it often is.  One kid, a little boy who is in my room pretty often, was being kind of aggressive with some toy cars.  He wasn’t hitting anyone or anything with them, he was just driving them on the ground a little violently.  I asked him, “[Name], are you a wild man?”

He said, “Nuh-uh.”

So I said, “Well then are you crazy?”

“No,” he said.  “I’m happy!”

Back home, Amanda and I did the usual Sunday thing, which was mostly nothing.  Bonnie called this evening to tell us that Mr. Henry, our next door neighbor, died today.  He was sick, cancer I believe, and had gone to stay with his daughter’s family.

I didn’t know Mr. Henry well.  We talked a few times and I believe he was a paratrooper or something to that effect in World War II.  He came over to chat while I was out mowing and, seeing Bruce, our chihuahua, he asked if he could show him to his wife, who is from Mexico.  I let him take Bruce, who had a sort of bewildered, “Where is this man taking me and what’s going on?” look.  I told Amanda that Mr. Henry had taken Bruce and we were starting to wonder if we were going to get him back, he was visiting so long.

I’ve also helped him move a TV and hook up his new one (which wasn’t all that new, from the look of it) and on another occasion I helped him get things straightened out with his cable feed.

Mr. Henry spoke very quietly.

Amanda and I had pancakes for dinner.  I made them in the shape of hearts, which was about the extent of our Valentine’s Day celebration.  Well, not the entire extent, but we didn’t buy gifts or cards or anything.

Zach Dotsey
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I was up at 6:00 and ready, after showering and everything, at 6:15.  Now, to be fair, the alarm clock by the bed is, I think, four minutes fast, so it actually took me 19 minutes.  I still think that’s pretty good.  Nick swung by the house at 6:25 and we were off to Port City Community Church.  I was running a camera today, and I think it was a pretty good time.  Joey Connolley was directing.

I sat with Amanda at the 11:00 service after I finished my camera volunteering and went to get Milly from Grow Zone.  I was the first or second person in there and was surprised to see Milly crying and being comforted out in the hall.  The person who had her said she thought there might have just been a bit too much going on for her since she just graduated to the Cruisers room, which may be true but she had done fine last week at the 9:00 service.  My guess is that she hadn’t had a nap, and indeed when she was crying in the car it was a very tired-sounding cry.  In fact, when we got home I just took the car seat upstairs and let her stat asleep in it.  She was out.

Another note about Grow Zone- when Amanda and I went to drop her off a lady in the first room, where she has almost always been up to now, saw her coming and cried out excitedly, “Milly!” and did a little skip to come get her.  It was so touching that she enjoys watching my baby so much, and I felt sad to tell her that Milly wasn’t going to be in that room anymore.

I talked to my sister, Erin Dotsey, for a little bit today.  Her birthday is this coming week and she was hoping, despite the short notice, that we’d be able to make it to Rougemont this weekend to celebrate it.  She sounded really excited when I told her we’d be there.

Amanda and I killed some time watching stuff on the DVR to kill time until we got to watch Maryland massacre Carolina.  That was really fun to watch.  Carolina has now lost six of their last seven (and seven of their last nine) games.  And while I was happy to see them disheartened yet again, Maryland is still sitting back just one game behind Duke for the top of the ACC and Carolina is due a win at some point.  Their next game is against Duke at the Dean Dome and while Duke should win going away, you just never know with these two.  I was confidant about Maryland beating the Heels, but I had no real investment in that one.

Nick and Amy came over later to watch the Super Bowl.  I joked that I forgot Nick was there, because he was messing with his laptop sitting by himself on the love seat the whole time while the rest of us sat on the couch and watched the game.  None of us really cared all that much, to be honest.  The Colts threw two key interceptions that cost them the game, letting the Saints win the Super Bowl in their first Super Bowl appearance, if I remember correctly.

The Super Bowl’s a big deal and all, but all day I was looking forward to the UMD-UNC game more.

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