Work was pretty busy for most of the day. Amanda’s aunt Anna Frazelle came by. She had called and asked if she could borrow our steam cleaner. Their King Charles Spaniel, Scout, had puked on the carpet and it had gone unnoticed, or something like that, and it had left a stain. That steam cleaner of ours is pretty good at getting things up. So she stopped by and picked that up. I gave her the wrong cleaning stuff to put in it, so after Amanda got home we stopped by Target to pick some of it up (we were out anyway) and dropped it by the Frazelle house.

After that we stopped by… I think it’s called the Harvest Bread Company or something like that. We’d planned on picking up a load of spinach-something-else bread, which we ate at Anna’s one time and was really good. Anna told us they only bake certain breads on certain days and that today wasn’t one for the bread we were looking for. We ended up getting an asiago pesto bread. We went ahead and picked up dessert too- it looked like a giant, and I mean as big as my head giant, cinnamon roll.

We were getting them for our small group meeting. We brought some ice cream along with us, but the giant cinnamon roll just looked too good. The meeting was a bit anemic in patronage tonight. Elliot Clark was out of town and Rob Peterson had a meeting in Charlotte. I don’t remember if Kristen Barriner had something to do or if she just took the night off since Rob couldn’t make it. The rest of us though, we met at Elliot and Melissa’s house. Melissa had mentioned having the meeting in town somewhere so she could get home a little earlier, as she didn’t like coming home to a dark house without Elliot around. I did one better and suggested (without trying to impose) that we could have it at her house. She and Kyle and Lorin Van Zandt actually live pretty close to each other, so it was more convenient for everybody but me and Amanda, and since it’s usually at our house, one night of driving a few minutes down the road wasn’t going to put any strain on us.

We ate some Stouffer’s lasagna that Kyle had prepared and did the study for the week, which was about authority- how God’s grace is shown and how it trickled down to be reflected in the family. The whole Revolution series has been really good and has led to some great discussions, and tonight was no different from that.

When we got home, Amanda and I noticed a particular smell upon opening the door. Harvey had pooed his cage and the smell had crept into every room in the house. I mean that literally. We got him outside and hosed his cage and the sheet and towel we’d had in there for him. Amanda gave him a bath (which he needed anyway- he was getting smelly) while I vacuumed the orange room, where we keep the crate.

Amanda went to bed and I played a bit of Halo 3. Our party fluctuated between four and eight players, so we ended up doing some team slayer. Fun stuff.  I actually played pretty well tonight.
Oh, Michael’s got a date this weekend. If I got the story correctly, a girl at the Port City Java where he works said he needed to meet her friend, so he did and he got some digits. She’s a red head, he said, and she’s pretty. Not hot, but pretty.

I wonder if girls know that guys have very distinct ideas about the difference in the words that describe attractiveness. It’s not that one is necessarily better than the other- it’s like saying this is red and that is blue. This girl is hot and that girl is pretty.

So good for him- I think he said they’re going to a movie. 30 Days of Night. Great date flick, huh? You know, thinking back on it, a few of my “first movies” were horrors. The first movie Amanda and I saw in the theater was The Ring, and the first movie I took Julie to back in the day was Delores Claiborne. I hardly remember that movie now except that it was a Stephen King movie and it starred Kathy Bates. Man, that was twelve years ago.

I’ve debated on whether or not to go ahead and tell Amanda that her brother has a date this weekend. It’ll get out soon enough, and then everybody will be making a big deal and asking him all kinds of questions. Then the first time he takes her to meet the extended family, Amanda and Michael’s grandma, Peggy Lemons, will ask, “Are you in love with my grandson?” Oh no, she already did that, except she said “granddaughter” and she was asking me during the first Christmas get-together I went to.

Zach Dotsey