Small group was pretty good tonight. I’d sent out an e-mail discussing the possibility of eventually splitting up the group, and so that was one of the main topics of discussion. It just so happened that the core group, those of us who’ve been together for months now, were the only ones there tonight so it worked out pretty well.
The consensus was that we don’t all meet with everyone there consistently enough to really split up, but that having up to six couples show up any given week was going to be difficult for anyone trying to make dinner for the group, not to mention that space in our house could become a concern. So this next week we’re going to get together here at our house again, like usual, but we’re not doing dinner. Starting in February we’re going to try meeting at McAllister’s. We can eat there or eat beforehand, and apparently they have a room we can all sit in to keep things relatively intimate.
We also got to do a bit of discussion about our One Word. We’re planning on making some t-shirts next week.
Duke played Virginia Tech at 7:00. I saw a couple seconds of it before I turned off the TV for small group, but, again, I DVRed it. It was a four point game at the half, but Duke won 81-64. It was a great win because Virginia Tech always plays Duke tough, not to mention that the Hokie crowd was into it pretty good. It also showed how tough Duke can play, in light of the fact that people tend to think of Duke as a soft team. I’d forgotten how much I dislike Deron Washington. The whole night he was trying to instigate things- bumping into people, walking into Duke huddles, just making a general ass of himself. At the end he undercut DeMarcus Nelson as Nelson was dunking the ball. Nelson jawed at him and got a technical for his fifth foul. DeMarcus Nelson is a generally laid back kind of guy, or so he seems, so to get him that worked up means something I think.
One of the announcers said the refs would probably take the first chance they could to get Deron Washington out of the game, and they did. He had four fouls and they called the first foul they could on him after Nelson fouled out. Really the rough play of the game can be attributed to the refs. They let things get out of hand and never exerted any kind of control on the game until that point, which was at the very end of it.
Whatever, Duke had a good win in a hostile environment, and that made me happy.
Zach Dotsey