Amanda made waffles this morning and decided to spice them up by throwing in some chocolate chips, which was a nice touch, of course.  Milly enjoyed them too, though we’re still not giving her syrup with hers.

After Milly went down for her nap I started work on setting up an old desktop computer as our media center.  It still runs just fine, but I hardly ever use it.  My plan is to run cable through it, add some DVR software and output it to the TV in the living room.  The only issue I ran into is that I don’t have a good output to the TV on that computer, so I went out to Best Buy and Radio Shack to see about getting a PCI card with an HDMI slot, but to no avail.

On the way back I stopped by Nick and Amy’s to let their dog, Max, out for a bit.  They’re in Myrtle Beach helping out with a married couples retreat.

While I was gone, Amanda’s mom arrived.  Michael came over and we started a game of Power Grid, which he’d figured out how to properly play.  I could tell we weren’t playing it right the first time we played.  In my defense as far as interpreting the rules the first time goes, I was trying to figure out the rules while under pressure to come up with answers.  Anyway, it was more enjoyable playing it this way, but we didn’t get to finish.  We left it all set up though, and we’re going to finish it tomorrow.

Milly and I had a daddy-daughter date set at Chick-Fil-A at 6:30, so while we headed off to that, the rest (Amanda, Karen and Michael) went to dinner at Flaming Amy’s Bowl.  The daddy-daughter date night was a sweet little idea, I thought.  Chick-Fil-A set aside one section of the restaurant for it, and they put down tablecloths, roses, some balloons and a little bag of goodies.  You got to order your food then they’d bring it to your table, where you could put it on paper plates they had set out.  They even had violin music playing.  I mean, it’s not like it was a big deal, but like I said, it was sweet.

Milly and I both had some chicken nuggets.  I got her a fruit cup too, but she ended up stealing some of my fries.  She also took all the chicken nuggets off my plate and put them on hers.  They had a person dressed in a cow outfit walking around too.  Milly was shy with it when it came near us, but she would moo at it when it went away.

We were joined by Chris and Addison Sikes.  It was actually through a Facebook post by Christy (the wife/mom) that we heard about the event.  I hadn’t seen either of them in a bit, and Addie, at three years old, has gotten so much more grown up!  It was good to catch up with Chris for a bit.

While Milly and I were out to dinner, Duke was busy whooping NC State’s butt.  We got home as the second half was starting, and the score was 53-24.  Of course, I had DVR’ed the game, so I started watching from the beginning.  There’s not much to say  except that Duke hit the Wolfpack in the mouth pretty early and kept it up through the whole first half.  The second half wasn’t nearly as good, but Duke still won 76-52.  My guess is that they dropped their intensity after the first half performance.

I didn’t get to watch the full game though.  Amanda and I left around 8:00 to go to to The Little Dipper to have some dessert fondue for Reece Johnson’s birthday.  Reece went to State, and since he turned 30 yesterday not only did I change out of my Duke shirt before we left the house, I also didn’t say anything to him about the game (I’d already seen the final score) until he mentioned it when Amanda and I were leaving.

We had a good time at The Little Dipper.  There were six or seven couples and we all split three orders of the dessert.  You really can’t go wrong with that.  We talked a lot to one of the couples sitting next to us.  They have a little girl who is just a few weeks older than Milly.

Amanda and I got home a little after 10:00 and watched the second half of the game before heading off to bed.

Zach Dotsey