Tonight was the night for the other kind of phenomenon you only have to notice in passing when accompanied: the scary weirdo hanging out on your street.
Puck and I — spylike — took a back entrance so they wouldn’t know where we lived. And that wasn’t even the guy with the umbrella under his arm at the odd angle who kept pirouetting at the corner and told me "purty dog." Definite serial killer vibe.
To beat all, guess what my husband is getting ready to do on the mountain with the other smarty-pants writer types? That’s right. Play Dungeons and Dragons. I blame Holly — my sixth sense tells me she’s the ring leader aka dungeon master! (I shoulda totally asked her D&D questions in her interview. Except I don’t really know any.)
Now I’m going to go read more of Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible
, which turns out to be perfect fun post-semester reading (even if I am pretty sure I’ve figured out a big twist already).
Take a giant flashlight with you. After you blind the Scary Guy, you can whack him in the head, if necessary. Or just blind him and run away. I have a 12 inch Mag-lite–it’s very heavy and the beam is eye-ball searing. It will also scare away coyotes, coons, trolls and warg, and it’s perfectly legal. (Cop-tip from my father the cop who is very paranoid about young ladies walking dogs alone at night and who has thus made me paranoid too!)
Well, it wasn’t dark and we live right downtown, so I don’t worry about it too much. I don’t think there’s ever a place I couldn’t get to help fairly quickly — even if it was just the smokers at the AA meeting in the park’s carriage house.
The flashlight is a good tip though — and keys can be effective too, if you have to get in close range, and poke them through your fingers.
Oh! We were looking at the Grossman book just the other day. I’ll be interested to hear what you think; it looked pretty neat.
The design is gorgeous!
To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for it, but I’m enjoying it a ton. It’s not anything particularly _new_, I don’t think, but charmingly executed so far.