The 8:30 service at Port City Community Church was really good today. The music, lead by Duane and Missy, was energetic and the message from Mike Ashcraft was very open.
Rob Peterson and Kristen Barriner were there, and they were actually a few minutes early this morning. They were motivated to come to the early service because Kristen had left some orange juice in our refrigerator on Wednesday when they came by for small group. We weren’t able to meet up during the week to give it back, so Kristen joked (I think) that I should bring it to church, so I told her I would and I did.
After the service Amanda and I went to eat at Cracker Barrel. It took forever for them to seat us, but the food was good as always. We stopped by Wal-Mart afterwards to pick up some food and such. We went by the seasonal section near the garden center so Amanda could look at stockings, and there I noticed that they had a PlayStation3 set up with a demo of the game Rock Band. Two very small kids who couldn’t play the game were trying to play it and taking their sweet time at it too. Then another kid came up to it and, since I’m twenty-nine years old, I didn’t say anything to him about how I was next. That kid couldn’t play it either.
Rock Band is a game like Guitar Hero, except you can play up to four people: two guitars, a drum and a singer. The demo here at Wal-Mart had a guitar and the drums set up, and as much as I enjoy Guitar Hero I wanted to give the drums a try. I didn’t get to do that until we were on the way out. We went out that way specifically so I could play with it. Of course just as I was about to start another kid walked up and I felt bad about not letting him play, so I let him go before me too. He was polite at least, and made way for me after he sucked his way through a sing. I chose Weezer’s Say it Ain’t So and did an okay job of it.
We went home and I finally got Amanda to cut my hair. I’ve been talking about cutting my hair since a little before Andra’s wedding, and that was in July. I’m too cheap to pay someone to do it, and I’ve seen that it’s hard to find someone to cut curly hair properly anyway, so I like Amanda to do it. Of course, I threatened that if she didn’t cut it soon I was going to buzz it. So we went outside and she cut my hair, although it still needs to be trimmed up a bit.
We thought about taking the dogs to the beach, but Amanda lost motivation and I didn’t have much in the first place anyway. I putzed about on the computer, and I think Amanda did a bit too, looking for people on MySpace and my Facebook account.
After a while we decided to watch Invisible Children, a guerrilla documentary about war-displaced children in Africa. Matt Davis was returning it to Mike Paschal the other day when we all went out, and Paschal told me since I hadn’t seen it yet to take it and pass it on when I was done. Anyway, it was very touching. I think the part that was most profound to me was this one long shot where the camera is panning around this room packed tight with children sleeping practically on top of each other. And then, just when you think the shot is at an end it pans up and over a wall/divider to show just as many children on the other side of it. It seems like such a huge, insurmountable problem that it’s so admirable that any people have hope for the situation.
The New Orleans Privateers (Who? Right.) upset the NC State Wolfpack today. That’s a shame- State’s the team I pull for in the ACC after Duke (although being such underdogs and having lost Skip Prosser, I’m hoping for the best for the Wake Forest Demon Deacons too). It was 65-63 and they won on a last-second three.
On the subject of sports, my fantasy football team, the Frenzied Fornicators, kicked some tail today. Even with Donovan McNabb getting injured at -3 points, my team came up with 187, which I think it close to the league scoring record (which I hold) and my opponent has 122. He’s got one player left to play tomorrow night, but LenDale White averages 10.7, so I should be safe. Everyone on my team except McNabb and Clinton Portis (who only scored enough to balance out McNabb) was in double digits. My big stars: Terrell Owens (56), Chester Taylor (38- thanks for the tip on picking him up, Michael) and Andre Johnson (30). LaDanian Tomlinson had 21. Since I’ve reported this much I’ll finish it out: the Lions defense scored 17 (the same as my other defense, the Chiefs, so it didn’t matter which of them I played this week), 14 from Matt Stover and 11 from Antonio Gates.
Duke plays in the Maui Invitational tomorrow night at 10:00. It should be a decent tournament, featuring Arizona State (with former NC State coach Herb Sendek and former Duke player Eric Boateng), Chaminade, Duke, Illinois, LSU (who beat Duke in JJ Redick and Shelden Williams’s final Duke game in the Sweet 16 two seasons ago), Marquette (who I think was Duke’s first loss last year, although I could be wrong about that), Oklahoma State and Princeton. Some good storylines in all of that.
Amanda and I watched the AMAs tonight. Big winners included Daughtry, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.
Both of the dogs stank tonight, so we bathed them both at the same time. Amanda took care of Harvey and I got Bruce. It’s funny how much quicker such a small dog is cleaned. They both smelled much nicer after their bath. Amanda blowdried Harvey so his fur was kind of fluffed out and he looked funny. It wasn’t flluffy, actually, it was more like, I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. But it looked funny.
Zach Dotsey