Last night I ended up going to EB Games with Michael Mercer, my brother-in-law and newest housemate, when he went to pick up Madden 2007 for the Xbox 360 at midnight. It’s not that I was particularly excited about Madden 2007; I was awake at midnight and didn’t have much else to do. Besides that, I thought the kid might get lost.

There was a decent crowd at the store, although it was nothing like when he went to buy Halo 2 the night it came out. When we went to the store earlier in the day we were told there’d be a special line for people who had pre-ordered copies. That didn’t happen. In fact, some people towards the back of the line split the line in two and Michael ended up being just about the last person to get his copy.

When we got back to the house I watched him play a bit, but I was tired and had to get up early this morning. Why did I have to get up you might be asking? I had to take Moo to get declawed. She’s been scratching the couches and doors, which just ain’t cool. Amanda woke me up at a little after 7:00. I told her to get me up in ten minutes and covered my head back with a pillow. She woke me up again eight minutes later, which two minute discrepency I dutifully (and pointlessly) brought to her attention.

I had a hard time finding the vet. I think it was the Cape Fear Animal Hospital. My problem was that it is on Masonboro Loop Road, and Masonboro Loop Road merges with another road without letting you know. So it looks at one point that Masonboro Loop is only to the left, but to get to the part I had to get to I had to go straight and eventually turn right. It’s very misleading. Like a fool, I had to call the place twice to figure out where the hell I was.

This is the third vet we’ll have used in Wilmington. It’s not that we have any problems with the other ones. In fact, we intend to use Dineen as our regular one indefinitely. Cape Fear Animal Hospital is just $55 less expensive when it comes to declawing a cat and still came recommended by one of the girls Amanda works with.

My work day was pretty busy, since everyone else is working on a real big project. I called and/or e-mailed a number of people Tim Henrich said needed to be followed up with. There is one client from another country who wants to enter into a sort of reseller partnership with our company. He’s a client of one of our services currently and works for a startup of some kind. The company wants to get three more of the service they already have with us, but they don’t have a company credit card and the client has been told not to use his personal credit card for company expenses anymore. So he asked us to go ahead and set up the accounts for him and said he’d pay us when they get the card. When I checked with my boss, Scott Hendrix, and told him we couldn’t do that, he accused me of not caring about our customers. That’s two clients in as many weeks who have done something to raise my ire more than most do, but really that’s not a bad statistic considering how many people I interact with regularly.

The cable guy came this morning and hooked up a second DVR today. This one’s just digital, not HD, because it’s going in Michael’s room. I saw the truck outside and had to go tell Michael to get up out of bed and put some clothes on.

For small group we were going to all go to Outback for dinner, but a number of factors conspired to keep us away from the Australian goodness. First of all, there was a pretty bad storm this afternoon. Amanda said that Third Street was flooded, as well as parts of College. She said a lot of the stoplights on College were out also. When I talked to Kristen Barriner, she said that New Centre was flooded too. On top of that, she sounded pretty bad. Initially she said she still wanted to do dinner, but Rob Peterson, her boyfriend, called a little later and left a message saying he was convincing her to stay in tonight, since she starts classes tomorrow.

I actually missed Rob’s call because, even though I have his phone number saved in several variations under his name on my work phone (which I pretty much use as my mobile phone) it never shows his name on the caller ID. Since he called around 5:30, I just let it go. Ben Lambeth called me a few minutes later to fill me on. Ben said he and his wife Jessica might still come, but Jessica ended up having to stay late for work anyway and there was no way for them to make it to Outback near the scheduled time. So I guess we’ll do Outback either Thursday or next week sometime.

I was really looking forward to Outback, too. I made sure to eat lightly today (although I did pick up sausage egg and cheese croisanwich from Burger King while I was on the way home from dropping off Moo this morning) to make sure I had room for the meal I used to always get: cheese fries (chaze froyz plaze!), Alice Springs chicken and a Chocolate Thunder From Down Under. Back in the day me and Julie Powell and our friends Antonio Balayan and Lynette Hawvermale (now Lynette Balayan) used to go to Outback a lot.

A while back Amanda and I talked to Renee Sikes and a guy she’s working with about life insurance and such. Today we finally signed up for some. I called my parents to tell them that if Amanda and I both die they’ll get a bit of money. Really I just hadn’t talked to them much in a while and wanted to catch up. My dad, Jerry Dotsey, said he’d just been thinking that today and had planned on giving me a call. We had a nice chat, mostly about just general stuff. He told me that a dog my youngest sister, Andra Dotsey, had dropped off at the house a while back had gone missing.

He really liked the dog, even though he named it Hemorrhiod. He said it seemed to be a mix of beagle and Jack Russell. My mom checked the speedometer while it ran next to her truck one time and said it could run 25 miles per hour. Anyway, my mom (Rhonda Dotsey, who I’d been speaking with on her cell phone when my dad called from the house- she was in the barn) had taken Hemorrhoid on a trail ride and he kept running off into the brush. One time he just didn’t come back. She figured he’d come back to the house, since they weren’t far away, but he just never showed back up.

My dad said he likes having two dogs around, and Scruffy is getting really old. (Corona is the other big outside dog.) Scruffy and her sister Sue Ellen were left by the people who rented the house before my parents bought it. Sue Ellen died some time ago. Scruff’s had a good life though I think. She lived downtown here in Wilmington for a while with Erin and has a nice relaxing life now, although dad said sometimes when she’s looking for a cool place to lie down, she’ll go under a car and her hearing isn’t great, so they’ll have to toss rocks at her to let her know that she needs to get out from under the car. Anyway.

While I was talking to Dad, Michael ran out and got me and Amanda a frozen pizza. He’d just gotten himself one, but when he left we were working on signing life insurance papers and we were both really hungry. It was nice of him.

After eating Amanda and Renee watched some Discovery Channel stuff, probably Discovery Health, about a tiny girl. Michael and I played some Fight Night (I got beat twice again, but I think I might just possibly be maybe getting a little bit better) then I went upstairs and played a Caesar IV demo I’d downloaded. I got Caesar III probably eight years ago and played it again as recently as a few months ago. There are a lot of nice updates from then, but I’m not sure if I’ll buy it or not.

Zach Dotsey