Bruce decided to get up and go downstairs to pee at about 7:30 this morning. I wasn’t tired when I got back upstairs, so I stayed up. Amanda was up not long after, and that set the tone for the day. We were actually out the door on the way to Cracker Barrel before the time I’m usually starting work. (That would be 9:00, for the record. We left about ten til.)

We did a little running around then went home to get Bruce to take him to Wrightsville Beach to go for a walk. On the way out we stopped by a Hallmark (Amanda wanted to check on some Vera Bradley stuff) while I took Bruce for a tour of Petco. He pooped a minute after we went inside. I cleaned that up, finished walking around the place, then went back outside, where a bunch of dogs and cats were in cages hoping to get adopted. Amanda met us back there and took a shining to a dog called Jack. He was a one year-old German Shepherd/possibly Golden Retriever mix and his owners had just moved into a third story apartment and had four kids, so they just couldn’t take care of him like they wanted to. His owner was there too, which somehow made it more poignant.

On the way to the beach Amanda called her dad to convince him to get another dog. He told her he was fine with it and to convince her mother, which didn’t happen. Amanda even told her we’d already gotten the dog and that her dad had said to do so, but she ended up telling Karen that she was joking.

We parked, as we always do, at Anna and Barry Frazelle’s and they ended up walking with us. They took their King Spaniel, Scout. Scout tends not to get along with other dogs too much. Bruce, however, likes playing with other dogs, and I think out of the desperation of not getting to play with other dogs, he started jumping and barking (playfully) at Scout, who growled at our Chihuahua a couple of times but then ran to his momma to hide. Barry called Anna an enabler and said she was the Peggy to Scout’s Michael. (I’m not going to bother explaining that one, but it was funny.)

We went on home for a bit, in time to catch Carolina spank Boston College by 15. At least State continued winning today though, so tomorrow’s ACC final will be NC State versus Carolina. They each have one win over the other.

We were meeting Anna and Barry at Luigi’s, an Italian place they’d heard good things about, in celebration of my birthday from last week. Luigi’s was nice. The waiter was good, Luigi was friendly, and they put the State game on for us to watch.The food was good too, and the wine they suggested, a Chianti, was very smooth. It went down well. Well enough that I got Amanda to drive the car back to the Frazelles’, where we ate some of Anna’s chocolate cake (the best in the world!) with ice cream (and opened a dift card for Express) and watched Stranger Than Fiction. Again, I dozed off a little, but I didn’t miss much and I liked the movie. It was original and reminded me a little of an idea I had for a movie before. Well, it wasn’t much like it, but in what it supposed to happen to Will Farrell’s character, it reminded me of it.

Zach Dotsey