Harvey woke me up four times in the night. He kept wanting to go downstairs, I guess because there were things left out here and there for him to get into, like cups with peanuts in them. After the first time I put the bench in front of the steps. He got over that, which surprised me since he’s so lanky and awkward, so later on put the laundry basket on top of the bench, and he somehow still got around with without breaking his neck and falling down the stairs. I was so tired all day today. I had to struggle to keep my eyes open in church (and the music and sermon were good- so no knock on Port City Church there!) and I felt really drowsy when I drove to the beach.

Amanda, Ben and I went to church this morning. I wore the shirt Anna gave me yesterday along with the socks. I had actually already put on some older socks, but I thought, hey, I’ve got some new ones, why not wear those? We sat with Mike and Kaitlyn and David Sapp, then we had breakfast with Ben, Jessica and Dave Sapp at Saltworks. My family had gone out to Waffle House.

Ben and Jessica left, my family went to the Verizon store to activate phone for Renee. Mom ended up finding out about a bunch of new features for her phone.

Amanda and I took the recycling, headed to Wrightsville Beach, Johnnie Mercer’s Pier. A bit of a change for us. We had trouble feeding the meter and it was pretty cold. The sun was warm, but the wind was biting. We took Bruce and Harvey.

The family showed up soon after we got out there with Emma and Schazi. Adam and Renne arrived after a bit with Dobja. We all stood around talking, playing with the dogs.

Mom and Andra disagreed over what to do with Emma- Andra wanted to keep her mom wanted to let David Carden have her (at least for a trial period) in order to help her out since Andra has three or so dogs. Andra won out.

As we were leaving Amanda reminded me that Andra had my house key, so we waited for them at The Scotchman to drop it off. I always think of the show Surface when I see that gas station because there was a scene shot there. I think The Scotchman at Wrightsville Beach has got to have the best view of any gas station anywhere.

Michael was waiting for us at home to help me work on getting the basketball goal finished. A bolt had been hammered on the thread side, making it impossible to get anything on or off of it, and the stuff on the bolt hadn’t been assembled properly. Michael and I went to Lowe’s to pick up a new bolt, then I hammered the threaded end of the stuck one until I could get it off and replace it.

The problem with putting this goal together is that the pre-drilled holes in it are just a tad too small. Michael came up with the idea of trying to file them open some more, and we did just that with the handle of a socket wrench. Worked pretty well. We ended up getting everything done except the basket itself. There are still a few issues though. One of the pole sections isn’t fully straight, meaning the basket will always be off at a slight angle unless we can somehow twist it right. Someone had screwed some screws into the part holding the wheels in that were too long and had actually dug into the wheels (which I fixed already). The biggest thing is that the bolts at the back of the basket don’t seem to be long enough. They’re just long enough to almost go through the pieces they’re holding together, but they’re not sticking out the other side of them so we can’t put the nuts on them. I checked, double-checked and triple-checked to make sure we had used the right pieces, and we had.

During all that, the father of our next door neighbor (her name is Heather, her husband’s name is Jared I think- I’ve only talked to him a couple times) came over and suggested we drill the holes out a bit more. His grandson had gotten the exact same basketball goal as the one I got and they ran into that very same problem. Jared came over a few minutes later with his drill to help us out. By that time we’d already done most of the holes of course, but it was really nice of him to help.

Michael went back and forth from the house to the basketball goal. There was a really close Mavericks-Lakers game on that went into overtime that the Lakers ended up winning.

Amanda fixed us grilled cheese for dinner. Since we had so many leftover sodas I decided to suspend my having given them up. I would just really hate for them to go to waste. I’ll give them back up when those are gone though.

I was flipping around the TV and nothing was on, so I looked through HBO On Demand. I suggested to Amanda (once again) that we watch The Shawshank Redemption, but (once again) she didn’t feel like watching something she had to pay attention to, so we watched Wicker Man. I said from the start that I wouldn’t last through the movie, as tired as I was, and sure enough I didn’t. I woke up while the credits were rolling and Michael was leaving.

Amanda watched the end of Extreme Makeover Home Edition while I checked on my two UltraCorps games (one of which was about to tick in just a few minutes without me having done anything for the turn). Amanda was really tired, but she has the day off tomorrow, and in light of that she didn’t want to go to sleep before 9:00.

I read that Clemson beat Maryland at the end of a game after being down by double digits. Seems to be the theme for ACC games this weekend.

Zach Dotsey