We started the day off, as we usually do when Karen comes to visit, with a breakfast at Cracker Barrel.  After that Amanda, Milly and Karen went downtown to… was it Riverfest?  I decided to stick around the house and work on the porch railing.  I had most of it done by the time they got back, but there were two sections that, with the endcaps on them, were a little too long.  I also got the drill bit I was using to make pilot holes stuck in a wood post.

I took a bit of a break to watch some football.  I hadn’t realized the Duke and Virginia Tech game was on the TV, but I turned it to that when I saw that it was on ESPNNews (though it wasn’t listed and it was flipping between that and other games).  Duke hung with the Hokies until the end of the game, which is really good considering that Va Tech is the sixth-ranked team in the country.

In happier news, Carolina lost to Virginia, a heretofore winless team.  Even better, they didn’t even score a touchdown.

The ladies got back and Michael came over shortly thereafter.

I had posted something about working on the porch on Facebook, and Charles Grimm, who lives across the street, commented that it was looking good, which I thought was pretty funny.  I ended up borrowing a circular saw from him to trim the sections of the porch that were too long.  Fortunately he also gave me a handsaw, because the circular saw died on me.

You know, I think that was the first time I’ve ever used a handheld circular saw.  I did fine with it, of course.

So I got everything cut to size and was doing well, but then my drill died.  I had just enough juice to tack everything into place to finish up once the battery has charged all the way back up.

Amanda picked up some Elizabeth’s Pizza for dinner.  Milly was really fussy while she was gone and, really, for most of the rest of the weekend.  We finally got her to go down for a nap in the guestroom, but we had to wake her up a little later for her bath and her feeding.

We all spent the rest of the night watching a bit more TV.  Karen wanted us to watch The Middle, a show with Patricia Heaton and the janitor from Scrubs.  It was cute.  I don’t know that we’ll go out of our way to watch it since we watch so much else already, but maybe we’ll catch it here and there.  We also watched this week’s episode of Flash Forward, which we will definitely continue to watch.

Zach Dotsey