When I was 12 there were a series of murders in our town. They all involved people who went to the same butcher shop near our home. We were forbidden to go out in the woods anymore, because our parents were too afraid. But soon after, the murders stopped. The police never caught the killer. I still have the hatchet buried at our fort.

So, last night, close to midnight, I was in bed, reading my Zombie Survival Guide, with the windows are open, fan is on --it's a wicked nice night (right before the heat that's supposed to be coming) When I hear what sounds like a group of kids walking by outside. I think, Oh, great. Bored teens on a summer night. I half keep an ear out, because the street it pretty dark and we've got a barn that's separated from the house and just never know what kids will think of as amusing that late at night.

A few minutes later I think I hear a motorcycle start somewhere down the street. Or maybe it was a moped? It lacked the real base rumble of a motorcycle engine. It starts off down the street, toward our house. 

As it passes by, it skids and there's a thump. It's loud and I think for sure it's dumped in the street. But it squawks and starts off again real quick. The whole thing wakes up Tine with a start. Tine grumbles a "What the hell was that?" 

I tell her I think it was some kids screwing around on a motorcycle.

Then we hear somebody saying something outside, only I can't make it out. At first I assume it was more than a couple of kids out there and they're messing around. But Tine says it's TheBoy. She's not fully awake yet, so I tell her it's outside, still thinking it's a group of kids. She's insistent and I say,"No, it's definitely outside." 

I get up to look out, even though it's dark and there are no streetlights.

I say again, that's it's outside, and we both listen. She nods and agrees it's outside. I tell her that I think it's some kids on a motorcycle. 

Then Tine says, "Is someone calling for help?"

It slowly comes together. She hears the "help me" again. Her eyes get wide. 

"I think someone got hurt," she says, somewhat panicked. 

Now I can clearly hear a "help me" from outside. I don't actually remember what got said after that. We got moving and I threw on some pants as we raced downstairs. I know she asked me if she should call 911 and I said a strong, "Yes, of course." 

I flick on the outside lights and open the door. 

I jaunt down the driveway. Honestly, I'm expecting to find some teenager in the road and I start to worry about what I might see, because I can hear the "Someone, help me please!" and it sounds like a teenager's weak cry for help. But, out of the darkness staggers a woman. She's probably 5 feet,dark skinned and bleeding from the head. 

She's still calling for help, I say, "Hey, hey, are you okay?"  

As I get over to her, I  reach out to her and say, "Come over here and sit."  

She grabs my arms and I try to get her to sit down, but she doesn't. "Can you drive me to Taunton?"

"What?" I say and she lets go of my arms, streaking them with blood. She starts staggering around in a circle. 

"Someone's coming," I say, trying to be reassuring.

"Don't call the fucking cops," she says and sort of twirls. 

"What? We called rescue," I say, and she sort of hunches over and repeats that I shouldn't call the police.

Now I start to notice her slurred speech and the way she's staggering around. She keeps asking me to driver her to Taunton. And then swearing at me some more when I say no. 

I take a few steps back up the driveway. She's clearly not just suffering from the fall. 

I look at my arms and there's a solid, five-inch streak of deep red on my left and my right is all a mess of smeared blood. 

"Why can't you just fucking drive me to Taunton," she screams at me. And then she starts saying she'll walk. Now she starts asking me which way Taunton is, but I keep trying to just get her to sit down. I keep my distance. She swears at me some more and yelling at me to tell her which way to go. Finally, I think: Fuck this, why am I trying to help this crackwhore who keeps swearing at me? 

She yells at me one more time to give her directions. "Fine, go down that way, take a left and keep on going." There's no way she won't run into the police that are coming.

Almost as soon as I finish, a patrol car come whipping around the corner, lights flashing, barreling down to the house. The cops hop out and see her and start talking to her. They can't get her to sit either. Another cruiser comes whipping around and stops behind the first one. Two more cops get out. Then an ambulance arrives a few seconds later. 

I wait for one of the cops to come over to me. I tell him what I heard and what I think happened. I think I said something about her being a little messed up. I'm not 100% sure, actually, because as soon as I'm done, I say, "Is it okay if I go in and wash this blood off?"

The cop turns around and shines his light on my arms. 

Up until this point, I was a little too excited to really think about the blood. My adrenaline was going from the moment we thought some kid might be lying in the street, seriously hurt.

He looks it over and says, "You should probably have the paramedics wash it off with an alcohol wipe."

"Oh," I say and it starts to sink in that I've got someone else's blood on me. Someone who's starting to look more and more like your stereotypical crackwhore. 

The cop turns back to me and says, "Naw, you can probably just wash it off inside, just use some alcohol." 

He walks back over to the women. He actually uses that tough cop, stern voice to tell her to Sit Down and she does. 

I walk back inside, now holding my arms out like they're radioactive. Once inside I wash them down with soap and Tine can't dig up any alcohol. I finally find some of that waterless soap. It's mostly alcohol and I wash them down again. 

What the heck, three times can't hurt. 

We watch the cops and the ambulance from inside. They put the woman in the ambulance and the cops are all talking. They sweep the area with flashlights and talk some more. They're out there for about 15-20 minutes, lights flashing, before finally all driving away.

I figure our neighbors probably think Tine finally snapped and killed me.

I stumbled across this in a string of comments after an article on the Media Matters site and had to share:

Drove up to back up to Maine on Saturday and, with the family, down home on Sunday. I'm still beat.

On my way up Saturday morning, I got yelled at by a cop in Waterboro. He was, apparently, blocking off a street for a parade or something. But his car was face-forward in the center of the road and he was waving off to the side. It looked like he was probably parked in front of something, like a gaping hole or some other hazard. I took his waving to mean go-around me. But it wasn't the case. 

As I flew by him, he yell at me and I stopped. I backed up and apologized left and right. He let me go after I explained what I thought his signaling meant. Seriously, if you're gonna block the street, block the street (I didn't say that, of course). 

Other than that it was mostly uneventful. Parent's bought another tube that looked a lot like an inflatable swamp-boat. A much more comfortable ride around the lake. When Kelly was in it, she was light enough to actually get some air when the boat was flying. Speaking of flying, Kelly also took the most spectacular, flying crash off one of the tubes. The boat was swinging around and it caused the tube she was on to go skittering outside the wake, where the water got real choppy fast. The tube bounced up and down and the it flung sideways, toss her off it like a rag-doll. 

In the space of about a half-second, Kelly's body flung in a circle, head over feet at the same time spinning on her axis. Her head hit the water first and she just tumbled in. It really was all over in a heartbeat and she was perfectly okay. She bobbed up and climbed back on the tube when we came around again. I almost had it on video too. I was shooting a short piece with the camera when it started to get too bumpy so I stopped. The images stop right as she's about to dump (I'll see if I can't post something tonight). 

I'm all out of sort for the last couple of weeks. Seriously, I've blown all kinds of things off and I can't seem to make it all come back around. Especially this past week, with the holiday, Maine and being home alone have really messed me up as far as routine goes. I've be seriously neglecting this whole thing and, if it's any consolation, I do sort of feel guilty about it.

I finally met up with BillC (of the Leonard Cohen CD fame) after about 2 months of trying to plan something. We met at the B&N in Burlington. I was half hoping that they would still be carrying some of the board games I've been looking into (Twilight Imperium or Return of the Heroes -- something other than Life or Monopoly) but it was no dice (har-de-har). On the plus side, I guess I saved some money. I did pick up Fray, Joss Whedon's Buffy of the future and that Zombie Survival Guide (you just never know).

It was good to see BillC again. We hadn't see each other in about 5 years, so I had a great time. Now if we can just do it again before another 5 years pass, that'd be swell.

Anyway, here's a sort of update on everything else:

SEIV

I've gotten several communiqués  that I haven't responded to as of yet. The only thing going in my favor there is that turns have been pushed back to Last Person Upload, so I haven't been missing my turns. But it's been about a week or so since I've seen a game file. Unfortunately, I haven't looked at the game since then either. There's some reorienting when it comes around again and I'm sort of afraid I'll royally screw it up this time. 

Myra

I see that Alfred made inquiry. I'm a bit behind on that too, obviously. I have the next chapter about a third done, but I let it slip with everything else. I'll try to have it ready for next week because I really do want to keep up with it. On the flip side, the wait is much shorter than if I were actually snail-mailing it to you. Sometimes months would go by before an episode arrived. On the plus side, I'm constantly thinking about it whenever I'm in the car by myself (granted, that's not much of a plus-side).

The BrikWar Mechanix Sketch

I have done just about nothing with this. Tine and I were talking about buying the graphic tablet and I'm about 90% there. I still want to churn this out (along with other things) so I think I'll just bite the bullet and buy the tablet. Unfortunately, this will probably take another couple of weeks. Mike, if that's too long, let me know.

Vassal

Over the last six weeks or so, I've been on-and-off working on porting a turn-based game I found on the internet over to the Vassal engine. I'm about 90% done; it is currently very functional. I'll need a guinea pig or two to test it out online. 

Frankly, I'm hoping that I can somehow rope a few people into playing board games with Vassal (or CyberBoard) because I damn well miss playing board games (they have Axis and Allies!).

That's about all that's going on that I can remember at the moment. After this week, things should start to return to normal (whatever that means).

I managed to make the almost 4 hour trip from Maine last night in just over 3 hours. Somewhere along the way I shaved about 45 minutes off the journey (probably that stretch of 95 where I was doing about 95). There was almost nobody on the roads last night, which was awesome. I really expected trouble what with today being a work day and all. But the only significant traffic was around the Hampton Tolls and that's to be expected just about all Summer. 

Dad got a new boat and it's fast. I spent a lot of time in the shallow water reorienting the boat so the kids could go tubing and the various attempts at water skiing. The only time I tried skiing, the boat literally ripped the tow rope from my hands. Dad said it was only at about half power. Yikes. 

Tubing was more popular. Each of the kids couldn't wait to keep going. We tried to get a second tube attached, but as Mike tested it out, the tube lurched forward and down into the water and we went flying. It also tore the rope and cover off the tube, making it unusable.

My own tubing experience was just this side of terrifying. 

I've never gone that fast at the opposite end of a small, nylon rope. Not to mention I was quite sure I was going to dump at about 40 MPH. Once I managed to cross out over the boat's wake, I could never get back in, so I took a really pounding out there. The tube would hit the side of the boat's wake on a turn and it would go airborne for a second and I could feel the tube and me separating. Luckily, my fat ass crashed back down inside in solid thump. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. My neck was somewhat twisted the whole time and it aches today like someone's tried to strangle me.

The rest of the family stayed up at my parent's place to finish out the week. I might head back up there this weekend. It occurs to me that this is the first time since TheBoy was born that I've actually been really alone at home. And before that, it had to be the time Tine went to Florida with the kids --that could be close to 6 or 7 years ago. 

Bring on the beer and hookers!