Today was a big day for Duke sports. The basketball team had their first exhibition game where they beat Virginia Union 114-50. I mean, it was an exhibition game so something like that was expected, but there were a few big things of note. It appears, first off, that three-year starting point guard and team co-captain Greg Paulus will give up his starter role to sophomore Nolan Smith. Reports so far say that he’s accepted this role graciously.
The other big thing is that it looks like freshman center Miles Plumlee will be the starting center. Miles Plumlee, whose younger brother, Marshall, had actually committed to Duke before him and will be joining the team next year (and there’s another one, Mason, after him- we might have an era of Plumlees at Duke), wasn’t talked about all that much in the off-season, but the kid appears to have a good head on him and is picking up the Duke system quickly, so he may turn out to be the most important get of the season. Along with even a little improvement from Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek, Duke’s front court weakness shouldn’t be quite so glaring.
On top of that, Duke’s football team was playing at Vanderbilt today. Vandy has done pretty well this year and I think was sitting atop the SEC rankings not too long ago and number 14 in the USA Today poll a few weeks ago. Duke beat them 10-7, holding them off with an interception at the one yard line with under a minute left in the game.
It was raining and the wind was blowing pretty hard last night, which results in my front and back lawns being entirely covered with pine straw. They were only mostly covered in pine straw before.
The JDRF walk was this morning. The company Amanda works for is a big sponsor for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and every year about this time they have a fundraiser and a walk around the park at Greenfield Lake to raise awareness. It was supposed to be raining this morning as well, so we didn’t set an alarm, so we missed it. The weather seemed to be pretty nice though, so hopefully everyone who showed up had a nice time. We’ve been to it each other year that Amanda’s had this job.
We got up after a while and Amanda wanted to make waffles, but for some reason our waffle maker wouldn’t power up, so she went and bought some Eggos instead. After that we watched a couple episodes of House, did a bit of nothing then showered.
I was planning on going surfing around 4:00, which is when Barry Frazelle had told me the other day he thought it would be pretty good. Amanda and I left the house around 3:00 and went to Lowe’s to look for a part to fix the leak in the upstairs shower, but we found out that the part isn’t sold my itself- we’d have to buy a faucet to go along with it. Now, you can get some cheap faucets, but we didn’t want a new faucet because the one upstairs is part of a set that we paid some good money for a couple years back. We went to Home Depot to see if they sold the part by itself and they didn’t either, but the guy there was at least helpful enough to show us some gaskets we could buy that might make the part work.
After that we had some cheddar ale soup at Main Street Brewery. I spent a bit of time checking for updates on Duke’s exhibition game with Virginia Union. Then Amanda and I headed on out to Wrightsville Beach after that. Anna and Barry Frazelle were at a wedding, but I put on my spring suit and went on out to surf. Amanda sat on the beach and watched. The waves were big, but the water was rough. I tried to go out at one spot where it didn’t look so bad but I kept getting nailed. I went back up the shore a bit and had to wait a few minutes for the waves to settle back down (I’d swear they were stalking me) and finally got almost all the way out to where a bunch of other surfers were, but then a set came in and kicked my ass back to the shore. I got out, and it’s a good thing I did because after we walked back to the Frazelle house I realized how much energy it had taken out of me. I was out there probably half an hour, paddling almost the entire time in cold water with a spring suit on. By the time I got in the car I felt slightly nauseous, but it passed pretty quickly.
Back home Amanda and I caught up on Supernatural and watched an episode of The Soup. I worked a bit on fixing the tub upstairs while Amanda got ready to go to bed. I may have fixed it. I finally got the part on with the gasket not looking like it’s out of place, but to test it and make sure I have to reattach the faucet and run the shower, and I didn’t feel like doing all that and taking it apart again if it didn’t work, so we’re going to try to tackle it tomorrow.
Zach Dotsey
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