I started off the day going out to Cracker Barrel for breakfast with Aunt Robbie.  We had a really good talk about our views on politics and religion.  After we finished eating she dropped me off at the house and headed out.  She wanted to stop by Topsail Beach to see how much it had changed on her way back to my parents’ house in Rougemont.

I also had her stop by the bank so I could drop off our mortgage payment.  I was looking at our finances, and I’m telling you, getting used to how much money we’re putting away for investments is a bit tough.  I’ve got three or four website ideas that I think are pretty good, and if I ever got around to making them perhaps that could help.

Anyway, I got to work after I got back and stayed pretty busy all day.  I was watering the plants when Amanda got home.  As of yesterday I’ve decided to try  watering the grass a little at least to see if it’ll help.  Our grass is pretty patchy, mainly, I think, because our soil is mostly sand.

We had small group tonight.  Rob and Kristen came for the first time in about a month, due to various thises and thats.  Elliot and Melissa didn’t come tonight, but they had good reason.  Elliot’s grandma, we were told a while back, wasn’t doing well.  She got better, but they’d just gotten word tonight that she was not doing well again and they didn’t know how much longer she had.  My prayers go out to them and Elliot’s family.

We finally watched the season finale of My Name is Earl.  We’d caught the end of it a few weeks ago when we went to Anna and Barry’s for a small celebration for Amanda’s birthday and to watch the season finale of The Office with them.  It was a super-sized episode so it ran over and it spoiled it a bit for us.  Not that it was a major thing, finding out that Earl was giving up his freedom and going to jail to help out Joy, but the rest of the episode ended up alright even with the spoiler revealed.

NBC’s Thursday night is the lowest-ranked of the traditional networks, and that really sucks.  They have a great comedy lineup with My Name is Earl, The Office, Scrubs and 30 Rock, (followed by ER, which I never watch).  Seriously, they’ve got the best comedies currently on TV all lined up right there but apparently nobody cares to watch.  I think part of the problem is that a lot of people who like those shows are a bit more savvy than the TV ratings trackers these days.  For example, I read a little while back that DVR’ed shows don’t count for ratings unless they’re watched within 24 hours of the recording.  That’s stupid.  There are a lot of times we watch shows many days after they come on.  Plus people can watch episodes for free online and buy them from iTunes, but ratings don’t track these things.  In fact, when people started noticing what a great show The Office was it was selling a crapload of copies on iTunes.

Anyway, I just hope NBC doesn’t lose faith in those shows.

After Amanda went to bed I played some Guitar Hero II.  I’m working my way through getting a
five-star rating on all the Medium songs before I really dig into the Hard setting.  I did go back and play a few songs on Easy.  On the first one I played I got a gold rating, which means I didn’t miss a note.  On the other two I played I missed two and four notes, but they were either because I hit the note too early (Easy is so slow compared even to Medium!) or I didn’t hit the strum key hard enough.  I think I might go back and try to see how many gold ratings I can get.

Michael Mercer came back from Richlands today.  He picked up Forza Motorsport 2 today and has been playing it ever since he got back.  He’s really been digging it.  I have a hard time really getting into racing games, partly because I’m not all that good at them, but the level of customization you’re allowed in this one is pretty impressive.

Zach Dotsey
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