Today was the best day of the year. It started out like most any other Saturday, nothing big there. Sometime in the mid-afternoon I got a text message from Michael, my Carolina fan brother-in-law, mentioning that he couldn’t stand Tyler Hansbrough. Oh, I thought, Carolina must be playing and not doing particularly well. So I turned on the game and there they were struggling with Maryland, at home in the Dean Dome no less.
Needless to say, Amanda and I were intrigued, given how much Carolina has struggled in a few ACC games of late, but we didn’t get our hopes up too high. They pulled out a last second game-winning three in overtime against Clemson and were able to beat Georgia Tech at the very end of a game as well. In the final seconds the game was tied 80-80 until a very odd-looking shot from nearly under the backboard by Bambale Osby that took them up 82-80. The ball went down to the other side of the court and was knocked out of bounds. The replay showed that it was clearly out on a Carolina player, but Carolina got it back with just a couple ticks left on the clock.
Amanda and I were extremely nervous. Carolina had the ball, down two, with no time for Maryland to score again if the Heels did make a basket. Last time this happened they pulled out a three for the win. They had a hard time getting the ball inbounds, but they did end up getting it in to Tyler Hansbrough. Tyler was on the perimeter though, not under the basket which is where he is strongest. He took a shot from outside the arc as the clock was winding down and… MISSED!
I jumped up, Amanda and I hugged each other, and ESPN showed Carolina fans crying. It was a beautiful moment.
Duke played next against Clemson at Cameron. Clemson played Duke tough, and the score at the half was 43-38, Duke. At that time though, we had to head out as we were going to see Tommy downtown at City Stage at Level 5.
It was raining and it had been raining pretty much all day. Luckily Amanda and I found a parking space really close to the place. Adam and Renee were already there, waiting at Level 5. Level 5, by the way, is a bar on the fifth floor of a building downtown. It’s made so that you can go out on the roof and look around down at the downtown area.
Allison and Mike showed up showed up shortly, followed by Cyra and John. (Amanda works with Allison and Cyra.) The tickets were in my name, but when I went to pick them up they had the right number of tickets, but they were kind of spread out. I talked to them a bit and got them all together, but it was five on one row and three on the one in front of it. Amanda and I split up. I was sitting with Adam and Renee, but Amanda couldn’t see too well so we switched seats.
Before we went into the theater I snuck a peek at the score of the game (which I was DVRing back home) on the iPhone and the game was tied. Mike helped me be able to concentrate on watching the play better by telling me that he’s checked the score on his phone and Duke was up six or eight or something.
I think we all enjoyed Tommy. I mean, I felt like it was certainly a local production, but it was good. Uncle Ernie was the best I thought. The theater was really cool too. It was originally built and used by Freemasons sometime in the later 1800s. It went through a few owners, mostly the city for a while, then the theater part was renovated by Dennis Hopper, my guess being that he did it when he was here for David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
So anyway, we enjoyed the production of Tommy. Amanda and I headed on home and watched the second half of the Duke-Clemson game. My Blue Devils ended up winning 93-80, which is awesome considering they were supposed to be a tough matchup for Duke.
Oh yeah, we also picked up some scrapbooking stuff from AC Moore. Amanda decided a while back that she wanted to do a scrapbook for each year that we’ve been together. The scrapbooks themselves were on a pretty good sale so we picked up a few years’ worth plus enough paper to do one of them. We had some fun looking through all the old pictures. (Amanda will be doing the printing and layouts and all that stuff- I just looked through pics with her.)
Zach Dotsey
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