I talked to my cousin Roger Dotsey today.  According to his Facebook page he was in Charlotte to root on his Louisville Cardinals against the Tar Heels and, just like me, wasn’t pleased with the outcome.  I’d messaged him when I saw him mention Charlotte, but he didn’t have internet or my number.  I realized this evening while I was picking up a Chick-Fil-A dinner that I actually had his number, so I gave him a call and we talked for a minute or two.

Work was somewhat busy today.  It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, but I’ve already got a thing or two lined up for Scott when he gets back.  We texted a little back and forth today, mostly over work things, but he let me know that he and the family were at the Magic Kingdom.

I picked up Stronhold 2 today.  I saw it for cheap yesterday at Target and read a little about it.  The game’s three years old, which is why it was so cheap, and I’d thought about picking it up a long time ago, so I did it today.  It seems quite a bit more well-rounded than the original and while I haven’t played it much so far I have enjoyed it thus far.

Amanda watched Ellen and Days of Our Lives while I played, then I watched Smallville while she messed around on Facebook and half watched.  She’s ready for Smallville to be done, but I think this season is better than it has been the last few.  After all that we watched Big Bang and How I Met Your Mother.  HIMYM was pretty entertaining in some of the things it did tonight.  It started out with a NCAA Tournament reference, and they had Duke losing to Washington State in the final game.  The brackets were all screwy, so the show must have been filmed before the brackets actually came out.  The show tonight was about Barney narrowing his sexual conquests down to 64 and trying to figure out which of them was warning women about him.  They referenced a few older episodes and even had some women show up from some of them.

What I thought was brilliant was that near the end of the show they started playing One Shining Moment, the outdated and totally gay song that gets played at the end of the NCAA Tournament with looks back over different games in the tournament.  I recognized it in the first few notes but it took Amanda until they started with the words, which isn’t bad.  Michael, who we showed it to when he came by to pick up some clothes from the wash, didn’t get it at all.  Then, at the very end of the show, they had Barney typing on a computer with a large cursor and a blue background while a certain computery music played.  They ripped off Doogie Howser for that one.  Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is best known, of course, for playing Doogie Howser way long ago.

I read that Taylor King is transferring away from Duke.  That’s not good news.  Some people are fine with it because his production this year wasn’t great, but I think it’s a bad sign for the program- ammo, at least, for anti-Duke people who want to point at top prospects who feel the need to leave for whatever reasons.  Taylor King was a much-heralded freshman, the fourth all-time highest scorer in California high school basketball, who was originally going to go to UCLA.  His playing time got less and less as the year went on.  He was a sharp shooter with the three, but had a huge scoring drought for most of 2008.  However, he was key early on in one of the Maui games (I think, although I can’t remember which) when he set the record for points off the bench from a Duke player.  I think he had a lot of potential and I hate to see him go.  He always seemed pumped up and energetic.

There’s also a rumor that Nolan Smith is considering transferring, but at times like this rumors run rampant.  I don’t think that will happen because he has a close, personal relationship with Assistant Coach Johnny Dawkins.  On a positive note, Duke is getting (or has gotten) into the mix in trying to recruit Derrick Favors, a guy who’s being recruited like crazy.  Probably a one and done big guy, but the team could use that right about now.  It’s better to get people to stay for four years of course, but if you can get an impact player like that every year, I think it doesn’t hurt too bad.

Zach Dotsey