Well the year is coming to an end now. We started out this year temporarily living at Amanda’s parents’ house with all of out stuff either in storage or strewn throughout the Mercer house. I didn’t have a job and Amanda was traveling an hour to and from work at a bead store every day. Now we’re living in Wilmington and we both have jobs that we like and soon we’ll be hunkering down seriously looking at houses.

Speaking of which, that’s what we did for most of the day. After having breakfast at Anna and Barry’s with Peggy and Earl, Earl and I watched most of the NC State game where they shut out South Florida 14-0. We started watching the game where Duke trounced my old buddies UNC-Greensboro, but I’d promised Amanda we could go house looking. She was in the process of making a cheesecake and couldn’t find a mixer, so while we were out looking we stopped by our house and picked that and some wine glasses up. We looked pretty much all over northern Wilmington and then some, mostly in the Gordon Road area. Earl went along with us.

When we got back to the beach house Earl grilled some chicken. I was up on the widow’s walk and noticed that the sky looked like it was on fire with the sunset, so I hopped on a bike and rode down to the end of the road (which was also the end of Wrightsville Beach and wasn’t at all far. While I was taking a few pictures I saw someone else doing the same. I talked to him for a minute. He was from Hawaii, visiting his brother who lived there. He had a 20D and said he took surfing pictures.

New Years 2005-2006, Ben & Jessica Lambeth, Zach & Amanda Dotsey :: Zach DotseyBen and Jessica came over a little after 9:00 with her parents and her sister, Julia and brother-in-law, another Ben. Nice people, all. We played some Apples to Apples until a little bit before the ball dropped, then we all had either some wine or champagne, counted down and took some pictures. Afterwards Jessica pulled out some sparklers. There were a few fireworks going off, but there was a lot of fog out. Jessica, Ben, Julie, Ben, Amanda and I went out on the beach after that, but you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you. It was really pretty cool. You could only vaguely make out the ocean as a black expanse with white breakers appearing now and then. Oddly, you could look up and still see some stars.

I called home before dinner and talked to Mom. They didn’t have any big plans. They were invited to a party at Tony’s out in Raleigh, but they didn’t feel like driving out there. We got to talking a bit and talked a little about this site. She said she would keep a little journal at different time of her life about the things going on with us kids. She said she runs into it every now and then and would keep an eye out for it.

I called Baba and Pap after that and talked to them for a couple minutes. I updated them a little about things going on with us and he wished us well for the upcoming year.

Adam was working at The Oceanic (within walking distance to where we were) and asked if it’d be okay if he and Renee came over if they couldn’t find something to do. They didn’t end up coming, and with the time it was when he called, they’d have probably been over after midnight anyway.

So that’s it. Another year gone, another one coming.