I went to bed before The Bachelorette‘s special follow-up episode was over last night. I was just really tired for some reason. Amanda woke me up when she went to bed and snuggled with me a bit, which was nice. It was a little odd being in bed before her.
Yesterday was my aunt Robbie Horner’s birthday. I’d remembered the day before, but with everything else going on I forgot to give her a call. I talked to her a little today. She’s working on some family history and asked for a little info about the immediate family as well as Amanda’s immediate family. I called my mother-in-law, Karen Mercer, to get some info from her and she told me Aunt Robbie could give her a call sometime if she wanted to compare notes. Karen’s got Horners in her family tree as well you see, and despite it being a very common English surname she’s convinced we’re connected somewhere down the line. It’s a little gross to contemplate for me, personally. I mean, my wife and I would be very far removed, but still.
Work was really busy today. I was wanting to pull my hair out at one point, but I kept it in there.
Amanda brought some cereal home for dinner, which we ate while we finished watching the best basketball game ever. Before we left for Kentucky, the 1992 Elite Eight game that pitted Duke against UK came on ESPN Classic, so I recorded it. I started watching it a couple days ago and got through the first half, then watched a couple minutes of it yesterday when Amanda took a break in between segments of The Bachelorette to go get ready for bed, then watched the rest of it today.
That game was very special for me. Being born in Lexington, Kentucky and growing up in a Kentucky family, I always rooted for the Wildcats. I was raised in Durham though, and my dad and aunt, the people who watched the sports in the house, both rooted for Duke over other ACC teams, which set the stage. To top if off, a lot of my friends were Duke fans. So when it came down the the final 2.1 seconds back on that day in 1992, and Duke was down one point, I found myself hoping the Blue Devils could pull it off. That was when I realized I was more Blue Devil than Wildcat.
Of course, everyone is now familiar with the inbound pass made by Grant Hill to Christian Laettner, who dribbled, turned, and scored as the time ran out on the clock. I watched the game back then, but that was over fifteen years ago now (wow!) and I thought I’d get a good appreciation out of watching it. Man, was Christian Laettner awesome. Not to take away from anyone else on that squad (Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley, Thomas Hill, Antonio Lang), but geez, that guy was a monster. There were a couple of times he put the ball in the basket while being triple-teamed like it was nothing. And watching him shoot free throws, you could feel the ice in his veins. I know that’s sort of a played-out phrase, but really, you watch that guy shoot a free throw and it was like an assassin shooting a fat old greedy dirty politician.
Anyway, after that we watched a few episodes of The Soup. I played two games of Catan with Chris Burfield and Michael. I won the first pretty handily and Burf won the second. That one was a lot closer- he had ten, I had nine and Michael had eight. Poor Michael Mercer was just starting to do well at the end. In his defense, had the ten been rolled more often like it should have been, it would have been a much different game. Then again, if one of my woods hadn’t been blocked during one stretch of the game, I’d have probably won.
Zach Dotsey