I just wanted to start off by saying that this building is one of, if not the, greatest sports buildings of all time. Thank you.
So, I got up today at about 8:15 and started getting ready for my daytrip to Durham. Amanda ended up getting up not too long after I did, which was nice because it allowed me to spend a little time with her. We ate (I had a garlic bagel with ham, egg and cheese with orange juice) and almost as soon as I finished eating Seth Holloman pulled up.
Seth has Duke football season tickets, as does another friend of his. The friend couldn’t go and gave his tickets to Seth, so there was an abundance of tickets. Seth already had one guy in the SUV when he got to the house and we picked up two more in Raleigh. The sad thing is that going to a Duke football game, we two Duke fans ended up bringing three NC State fans. It was indicative of how things were going to go. More on that later. I did call my friends Jason Revill and Joel Freeman to offer them two of the unclaimed tickets, but they’d already made arrangements with Jon Revill, Jason’s brother, who was setting something up for them to all watch it.
Once we got to Duke and parked we tailgated. We got to meet several people from The Devil’s Den, which was cool. There was eating, drinking of beer and playing of cornhole. After a bit I decided to go to the Duke Bookstore, mainly so I could see if I could find something for Pistachio.
The walk through campus was awesome. There were too many people wearing red shirts (that’s State’s color, for anyone missing the reference), but the leaves were changing, people were out and about being active and of course the architecture on Duke’s campus is just really cool. I called Amanda while I walked around and I called my dad to let my parents know I was in town, even though I wasn’t going to be able to get by to see them.
One thing that was nice about walking into the Bookstore was the overwhelming amount of Duke stuff. Yes, obviously there would be a lot of Duke stuff there, but it was refreshing to see. I mean, you walk into Cracker Barrel or Wal-Mart and all you see is Carolina stuff with maybe some Duke stuff thrown in as an afterthought.
Anyway, I looked at baby clothes and saw a few things I liked that actually weren’t priced too bad, but the smallest size they had was 3-6 months. I thought about getting something for Pistachio anyway, but I decided to wait. I did end up getting myself a blue shirt that just says DUKE on it (with a little Nike swoosh under it) and a gray tanktop that has a pawprint with DUKE written in it for Bruce. I didn’t see anything Harvey-sized, but later when I got home, to make things fair after I put it on our Chihuahua, Amanda made me put the gray shirt I wore on the way there on Harvey. It fit him surprisingly well.
I got back to the parking lot, which was about as far as you could park on campus from the bookstore, a few minutes before everyone was ready to go to Wallace Wade.
Well, all in all I had a good time at the game, but Duke was never really in it. The Blue Devils ended up losing 27-17, and it was only that close because they scored a touchdown at the end. From the beginning it seemed like there were as many Wolfpack fans as there were Blue Devil fans. This was explained in that it’s easier to get tickets at Duke than it is at State, so a lot of NC State fans who can’t get into their own games too often got tickets.
For the heck of it, here are a couple more pictures I took at the game.
Even though Duke lost and never really threatened, I had a good time. A lot of people left early so it didn’t take us long to get out of the parking lot. I drove, which, since I hadn’t paid or been accepted to pay for anything the entire day I thought was the least I could do, and we made pretty good time getting back to Wilmington.
Amanda had had a busy day. She had cleaned a lot after I left. The kitchen and bathrooms both looked great, and, inspired by a wall at Matt and Melissa Davis’ house, she hung a bunch of photos on a section of our bedroom wall and moved a print that was there to the bathroom. She also rearranged the built-in shelves so that there was nothing Pistachio can easily get into once the baby becomes mobile enough.
After that she went out shopping with her grandma, Peggy Lemons, and her aunt, Anna Frazelle. Peggy bought her some maternity clothes. She’s not showing yet, but they found a bunch on sale and figured she’ll need them in the not-too-distant future anyway. They pretty much all looked like things that are currently in style anyway. After shopping they got together with Amanda’s brother, Michael Mercer, and Earl at McAllister’s to eat.
Zach Dotsey