Happy first birthday to my niece, Addison Sawyer, and happy fifth month birthday to my daughter, Milly Dotsey!

Last night before I went to bed I felt feverish, and, right before I went to bed, I started shivering.  I took some NyQuil and considered taking some Pepto Bismol, but read an applicable reason for not taking it at the time.  (I won’t mention why, as it’s kinda grody.)  Anyway, I was feeling pretty bad.  I got in bed, pulled the covers tight around me, pulled a pillow over my head, curled up and fell asleep.

I woke up and did a mental check to see if I felt nauseous at all or if I felt like there was still evil toxicity in my stomach.  Both checks came back negative, and it just made me feel so good!  My head felt clearer and I felt like yesterday had been washed away in the night.  It was a brand new day.

Amanda fixed pancakes and sausage on the electric griddle, which I ate happily since I had my appetite back.  Then the deliverers from Lowes showed up with our stove!  Great, right?  Well, no.  See, Earl had asked what color stove we wanted, and I told him black, but they brought us a white one.  It wasn’t Lowes’ fault though, because Earl got us a white one.  Amanda asked if it was the same model as was delivered Monday, and I said that it was.  I’d assumed it was the right one though because the top of it was black.  I mean, I had figured that all the flat-top stoves have black tops, but I didn’t really think much of the fact that they delivered us a white one the other day.

Long story short, they told us to go to Lowes and see about picking out another one.  Amanda was told that the model we’d gotten doesn’t exist in black though.

A little after that we all went to the beach with a short detour to talk to the Frazelles.  Amanda, Aunt Robbie, Milly and I went to The Oceanic.  We were going to grab some lunch, but AR wanted to go out on the beach and get some pictures of Milly too.  Once we did that we ate then stopped at a couple shops to look for birthday presents for Addison.  Since AR was heading to Charlotte later we were sending it along with her.  We ended up going to two local children’s boutiques and Old Navy.  AR got her present to Addie from the first one (along with something for Milly) and Amanda picked out some clothes from Old Navy.

Aunt Robbie left shortly after we got back home, which was a little after 4:00.  She really hit it off with Harvey on this trip and obviously enjoyed getting to meet Milly.  I hadn’t realized that she hadn’t seen pictures of her, and she kept going on about what a beautiful baby Milly is.

After she left Amanda and I went on back out to Lowes and, hopefully, got everything straightened out.  It turns out that there is a black version of the stove, but they don’t have it in stock so we probably won’t get it until next Monday.  Not this coming Monday, but the one after.  We’ll have gone two weeks without a stove at that point.

Despite what a debacle the Stove Saga has been, there is good that has come out of it.  First of all, we would have had a white stove when Amanda wanted a black one.  And she’s right that a white one wouldn’t have looked right, since our cabinets are off-white.  The other thing is that when the stove was originally taken back to the store and refunded (which is just the way they had to do it), the store hadn’t refunded and repurchased the extended warranty Earl got us, meaning that if we have a problem down the road and tried to get work done based on the warranty, they wouldn’t have honored it.  So we got that taken care of too.

Once we finished all that up we headed back over to the Frazelle house to celebrate Barry’s birthday.  Anna fixed stuffed shells and salad with her famous chocolate chocolate cake for dessert.  Barry’s parents showed up shortly before dinner was ready and Kirsten took off to do a city-wide scavenger hunt put on by Port City Community Church.  Michael was invited, but he wasn’t told about it until this afternoon and already had plans to eat at Atlanta Bread and then do some Christmas shopping with Jenn at Mayfaire.

We hung out there for a while then headed on home.  Amanda was pretty exhausted and went to bed pretty soon after we got in.

Duke got creamed in football against seventh-ranked Georgia Tech.  They started out 10-0 but didn’t score for the rest of the game.  Unfortunately, the Yellow Jackets did.  Seven times.  Then Carolina beat Miami.  Suck.

I plan to go surfing tomorrow.  There were some decent-looking waves today, but I didn’t get a chance to go out.  I really want to get out there tomorrow since it’s been, what, two months?

Zach Dotsey