Hurricane Ike hit Texas this morning and gas prices are up. They’d been around $3.69 here in Wilmington, but I’ve heard that they’ve got up to as much as almost $5.00 in some places.
It used to be that every Saturday morning we’d have what Amanda would refer to as Brucey Cuddle Time. It’s when we would wake up and laze about in bed and Bruce would sidle up between me and Amanda in expectation of some serious belly rubbage. We haven’t had that much lately, I guess because he and Harvey generally both get up and start running around before we do, but this morning I’d already put Harvey outside to pee and he’d wanted to stay out while Bruce came back in, so when Amanda woke up we had some Brucey Cuddle Time.
After we did get up and moving around it was time for yard work. We’d needed to pick up sticks and small yard debris since “Hurricane” Hanna and the grass needed mowing something fierce. There were more sticks in the backyard so I started off in the front, which was a change from the usual and felt a little weird, while Amanda gathered the sticks together and put them next to the fire pit I’d gotten for her birthday. She’s been wanting to do s’mores, but we didn’t end up doing them tonight.
After I finished mowing I plopped my sweaty ass down to watch Duke take on Navy. Duke football isn’t on TV much and everyone’s very excited about the new season with new head coach David Cutcliffe. The game was pretty good and Duke won 41-31. It wouldn’t have been as close as that but Duke made a couple costly mistakes. Still, it was a fun game to watch.
While I was watching the football game, Amanda went to Old Navy to get a birthday present for her cousin, Kirsten Frazelle (her birthday is next week but to my knowledge she doesn’t check out this website) and her brother, Michael Mercer, came over to ride with us to the beach.
Ahh, the beach. Michael and I went with the expectation of surfing, but there was nothing. We ended up going down past Crystal Pier (The Oceanic) because the waves looked a bit better there and we did have a little more success- we both caught one wave (which happened to be the same one). We almost caught some others but it was really just not a good day for surfing. One wave I tried to get up on even punched me in my manly area when it took me down. Talk about a lack of respect.
For something to do we ended up paddling around the pier. There’s a warning not to get within 500 feet of it, but we went out past and around it. There was something kind of cool about that to me. I’d never seen the pier from straight on, and while I’ve certainly paddled out past the pier before, there was something imposing about being right in front of it. It just seemed forboding.
We left Wrightsville Beach and headed home, but Michael kept talking about how hungry he was so we ended up going to Papa Bella’s for dinner. He wasn’t too satisfied with his pizza, but I liked mine just fine. Amanda got a calzone.
Before he left, Michael challenged me to a game of College Hoops 2K7. I played as the Duke Blue Devils and he played as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and I actually won. I was ahead pretty much the whole game but it was a nailbiter at the end. Of course he pointed out that the Duke players were properly named whereas he had to guess who was who. Oh well, I’ll take it.
Zach Dotsey
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