Late last night I walked into the living room and smelled something terrible.  I sniffed all around to try to find out where it was coming from, but I never could figure it out.  It smelled like fresh dog poo.  After looking for a while I thought maybe Bruce or Harvey ate it (disgusting, I know, but that’s what dogs do) and gave up on it.

Amanda found it this morning in front of the bathroom upstairs.  I didn’t see it last night because I went to bed with the lights off.  She found it in a bad way, too, by stepping in it.  And it wasn’t regular dog poo, it was the kind Bruce gets now and then that is all runny and a little gooey.  It’s hell to clean up.

I was looking forward to Duke’s game against Ohio State tonight.  Ohio State is ranked #2 in the nation behind Kentucky since Carolina lost to unranked UNLV last week.  Duke is ranked #3 or #4 depending on which poll you prefer.  It was set up to be a pretty epic early season matchup in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge.  Ohio State scored the first 11 points (nine coming in one minute) but then Duke answered with a run of their own.  Then Ohio State had another run.  Then the half was over and the score was 47-28.

At that point I wasn’t going to bother getting upset.  I guess it helped going into the game knowing Duke had a strong possibility of losing, but I thought it would at least be a good game instead of the lopsided affair it turned out to be.  I was at least hoping the game would stay within 15 points, but Duke ended up losing 85-63.  Aside from Austin Rivers and Mason Plumlee, Duke’s usual crew pretty much stunk it up and Coach K played the bench for a good long stretch at the end.  They did get to within 17 though.

So anyway, I take Amanda’s stepping in squishy dog poop early in the morning as a bad omen.  If she does that again on a game day maybe I just won’t bother watching.

The rest of the day was nice though.  I stayed pretty busy in the morning and got some nice new leads for myself.  Amanda, Milly and I met her grandparents, Anna and Kirsten for lunch then I went to Barnes & Noble to work and to have a meeting.  Amanda and Milly went there after helping with some Christmas shopping so I joined them to watch Milly play with trains when my meeting was done.

We were pointing out all the Christmas lights in our neighborhood to Milly on the way home.  Amanda remarked that Bonnie and Dave hadn’t put their lights up and offhandedly mentioned that Milly should tell Bonnie to put her lights up.  When we got out of the car Milly told me she wanted to tell Bonnie to put her lights up, so we went over there and interrupted their dinner to do just that, which Bonnie and Dave got a kick out of.

When Amanda was getting Milly ready for bed (I was downstairs finishing my cereal bowl of dinner) she told me that Milly started to poop right before Amanda was going to change her diaper.  When Amanda asked if she was done or if she was still working on it, Milly said she was still working on it.  She continued to repeat that phrase for a while.  Amanda and I both figured she was just stalling, but it was funny to hear her say, “I’m still working on it,” every time we mentioned her diaper.

Zach Dotsey