The Weekend I Almost Died

  So, here's the thing, I didn't really plan on writing anything today. It is Saturday after all. That means it is time to put all work aside, grab Kelly and head to the beach. I've got a new Captain America speedo I wanted to show off.

  Unfortunately, Kelly, my girlfriend, saw what I planned to wear to the beach. I have a feeling something about the speedo didn't sit well with her, because after seeing it she fainted and hit her head on a watermelon. She's at the doctor right now getting the watermelon removed. Sticky like glue those watermelons.
  Anyway, since I know have some free time, I figured I would kick out a quick blog and I already know the topic thanks to you guys. Everyone has been emailing me asking, "How did the weekend getaway to the cabin go?"

  I originally meant to write about my little vacation as soon as I arrived home Monday afternoon, but several things forced me to post pone it. Like my computer coming to life and having to get a new one, a crickets vs bearded dragon war, a desire for ketchup and  giving dating advice. Although, I would say the main reason I haven't written about this weekend is the same reason you don't look in the mirror and say Bloody Mary three times. I was concerned that by writing about certain things that occurred this weekend I might draw their attention, but after getting some blessings done by a local gypsy I am ready to go.

Welcome to Nowhere!

  The three hour drive to Willard for Kelly and I, was fairly uneventful. There was some interesting scenery, a few rest stop breaks and I stalked a JuJu Fruit truck. It wasn't till we were just about to arrive at the cabin that things started getting a little weird. We passed under a bridge and we came out the other side our Garmin GPS had gone blank. According to it, we were no where.

  I should point out that after this trip I have decided to add a lot more rules to my Rules for Not Dying list. My next trip I will post an updated list.

  The area was very peaceful and secluded. Our next nearest neighbor was like a quarter mile away. The literature the nuns gave us when we checked in claimed that the Center was a great place to do some painting or writing or to simply 'unplug' from the world for a bit. We were choosing the unplug part. Sort of. Kelly brought her computer to act as a radio and I left my phone on just in case. I would like to point out my phone was of little use since I didn't get a signal the entire weekend. Go Sprint.

  Our cabin was awesome. It was actually pretty big with a loft. The cabin had apparently been moved from an old Native American burial ground to the center. Once at the Center the nuns had electricity and plumbing installed. I thought we would have to bring a lot of things with us, but the cabin was pre-stocked with bath towels, blankets, dishes, pots and pans, soap, stove and microwave. I think Kelly and I spent about 10 minutes exploring the place. Like two kids running around on Easter trying to find all the hidden eggs. While checking out the sink and the shower, I accidentally knocked a glass cup of the counter. It broke on the ground. At first, I didn't think anything of it. That is until I read a typed note that was next to the cup. It said:

"This cup was made by the original nuns

who first came here in 1824. The cup

brings blessings to all who use it and

sorrow to those who disrespect it."

  Great, we were there for about 15 minutes and already I am cursed by nuns. Ah well, I figured I would buy the nuns a new one and that would make things all good. Then I looked down and saw that the rug on the floor had slid revealing something. I bent down and pulled the rug all the way back.  What I saw almost made me grab Kelly and my bags and head for the truck. There secret hatch. 

Secret Hatch to Hell?

  Kelly came and looked at it. She told me it was probably where they kept the water heater. I hypothesised that it was where the nuns buried the bodies. After about ten minutes of Kelly calling me chicken, I finally manned up and pulled the hatch up. We were both wrong. It was an empty space, but towards the back of it there looked to be an opening to a small tunnel.

  Okay, great way for the nuns to get us. I closed the hatch and calmly searched the cabin for the heaviest thing I could find. It was a sixty pound statue of a monk.  With a lot of effort I moved the statue on top of the hatch. George, as I came to call the statue, became the center piece of our bathroom.

Evil statue uses evil heat
vision on a butterfly. 

  By the time we unpacked and put everything away, it was to late to go get dinner provided by the nuns at the main building, so instead we looked on the map and found a town about thirty minutes away that had a family restaurant in it. Being the hungriest I ran out of the cabin, but came to a stop. There was another monk statue. This one was right in front of where we parked the truck. The thing is, it wasn't there before. And it didn't have the smile that George did. This one looked like he just had Maury tell him, "you are the baby's daddy".

  I asked Kelly if she remembered seeing the statue when we first pulled in. She couldn't remember, but she assumed it had to be there. It's not like it just appeared out of no where. Kelly realized she forgot her keys, and went back for them. I can't be sure what happened next, but I'm pretty sure the evil statue made a butterfly explode.

  A lot of crazy stuff was going on, but so far none of it went against my rules. Although as I said before, I have since added to my rules. Luckily, nothing else weird reared its head the rest of the day, so we enjoyed a nice meal then came back and sat on our porch and talked. We both even got a good night sleep.

  Day two or round two. I suppose it depends on how you look at it. After, a good night sleep I had pretty much forgotten about all the previous days craziness. I was ready to do some hiking and exploring. Kelly had done a little research and knew of a town about twenty minutes away with some awesome hiking trails.

  The trails were well maintained and went on for some distance. I think the shortest one was about 1.5 miles. The best part was, there was no sign of houses, businesses, and on that day no other people. We pretty much had the trails to ourselves. Or so we thought.

Bigfoot like creature vanished into
this tree line.

  When we were hiking the trail took us near the bank of a river. It was so beautiful we stopped and took a little Powerbar break. On the opposite bank I swear I something that looked like a giant ape. It was hard to tell but I knew it wasn't a bear or a human. It stood about 7 feet tall and walked like a human and had long arms dangling at its side, but it appeared to be covered in hair. The eyes though. I saw the eyes and they were definitely human. I tried to take a picture but by the time I pointed the camera it was gone. I didn't bother mentioning it to Kelly. She was already having doubts about my sanity due to the previous day observations. With my mouth shut, we continued on.

  On the hike I was pretty sure I saw a leprechaun and maybe a U.F.O, but I kept silent about it all. And as with Bigfoot, I just wasn't fast enough with the camera.

  We hiked for about fours hours then hit the town for another meal. As with the last, the food was perfect and the serving sizes were huge. I suppose ordering a chili cheese dog for the ride home was a bit of overkill, but I have a rule that states: Whenever you run across a A&W, you stop. Full or not. Kelly made the more sensible choice of getting some ice cream.

  Back at the cabin, we once again decided to just relax on our porch. Kelly was finally getting some writing in and I was delving into the book I have been trying to finish for the last three months. At one point I looked up and  was a little disturbed when I noticed the evil monk statue was gone, but I decided it was better to keep my mouth shut about the crazy things I see. I figure either I'm super sensitive to supernatural stuff or going insane. Either way, I'd rather Kelly not look at me like I've been sipping from the crazy juice. And that is the main reason, I didn't mention the Deer of the Damned.

Deer of the Damned!

  I saw a deer grazing among the trees about ten feet in front of our cabin. "Awww, aren't you a cute little deer. Do you want a chili cheese dog?" Kelly gave me a smile then went back to her writing

I swear that as soon as she put her eyes down, the deer glared at me with eyes as red as blood.

  With a deep sigh, I went back to my book, but this time I focused on every single word. Blocking the Deer of the Damned from my mind.

We stayed on the porch for a little while longer, but when the bugs came out, Kelly was ready to go in. And even though I couldn't see the deer anymore I knew it was out there and hungry for human flesh. As we went in, I saw a nun walking down the road. I waved but I don't think she saw me.

  The next couple of hours passed pretty quickly thanks to some friendly games of Uno. We quit after about five games, because our check out time was 10:00 am and we still had to repack our stuff. Once in bed, I turned off the lights. What was odd was that the night before when I turned off the lights there was still a lot of light coming from the moon. Tonight however, the cabin seemed to be filled with pure darkness. I couldn't see my hand when it was right in front of my face. For a while I tried to deal with how dark it was, but with everything that had already happened, there was no way I would get any sleep. As I reached for the lamp next to me, I noticed two glowing white circles in the window. Not just circles, they were eyes. A gasp escaped from me and I turned on the lamp. It was a face. The face of the nun who checked us in. Her eyes were glowing and she was showing fangs that dripped with saliva. I checked the other windows. There were Cannibalistic Demon Nuns at all of them. They reached for the windows but as soon as their hands made contact, they began to smoke and burn.

  I had placed protection charms on all the windows and on the hatch that George guarded in the bathroom. Which turned out to be a good idea because I could hear pounding from beneath it. Through all of the commotion Kelly continued to sleep. I think the snoring helped to cover the nuns pounding and chanting.

  Needless to say I did not sleep at all that night. The Cannibalistic Demon Nuns finally gave up when the sun started to rise. I guess they can only show their true form in the night. By the time Kelly woke up I had finished packing everything and was ready to leave. With a final good bye to George, we left.   

  The ride home was fairly uneventful. I would go into detail about all the places we stopped at on the way home, but I just received a call from Kelly. It seems the doctors were able to finally get the watermelon off her head. Time to go be a good boyfriend. Till next time.

The Battle Lines are Drawn

  I originally meant for this post to go up on Monday, but given the fact my computer had become self-aware and was confiscated  by some secret shadow organization, it had to wait.

  To be honest, this post would have been perfect for Memorial Day, because it reveals how they have drawn the battle lines. They have hidden themselves everywhere, and often attack when I'm sleeping.

  I've tried to reach a peaceful solution, I really did. They just kept coming and taking more and more territory.

  Finally, I was left with no other option, but to set aside my humanity and answer their declaration of war. Over the last few weeks I fought back with everything I had. I took the lives of at least a dozen of their soldiers, but still they continued their invasion. I've given this war everything I have, and while I refuse to give up and surrender, I find myself having to admit... they are winning. The crickets are taking over.

  Yep, you heard right. I said, crickets. What? You think just because they are crickets, it makes this war less meaningful. Let me tell you, crickets are vicious and care only about themselves. 

  I suppose the real question you are asking yourself is how did all these crickets end up in my apartment in the first place. It all began with a sand demon who wears his heart on his sleeve.

  In October I purchased a little bearded dragon. The idea was to decorate his cage in a dessert theme, so I thought an appropriate name would be Gaara. Loosely translated it means "demon who wears his heart on his sleeve."

  When I first bought Gaara, he only ate about 20 to 30 crickets a day. And those crickets were really small. I think they called them pin size. So every couple days i would buy about a hundred crickets. When they are small like that all you need is a little cricket cage and  you never have to worry about them  getting away. Sadly, Gaara continued to grow, and now he eats about 50 to 70 crickets a day. That amount of crickets would cost a lot of money if you were to buy them from a place like Petsmart. One weeks worth of crickets would cost you about $50. Not wanting to spend $200 a month in crickets, I went online and found a website that allows you to buy 2,000 of them for $12. A much better deal. Sure they are sold out of some government lab in Nevada, but at the time I figured who cares. I was saving money.

  For a while everything was still okay. I did have to buy a bigger cage but it seemed to be doing a good job of containing them. That was until one day I was feeding Gaara and eating a corn dog at the same time. I might have dropped a few bits of corn dog in the cricket cage. Like Piranha the crickets swarmed over the corn dog bits, devouring them in seconds.

Genetically advanced cricket hungers for human

  A few days later, I came home from work and saw the lid to the cricket cage open. I also noticed my crickets seemed to be bigger. Over the next few days I kept finding more and more crickets in my apartment and also noticed they were now about 7 inches long.

  This didn't seem right. So I did something no one would do in this day and age. I called the company and asked them why my crickets are getting close to being able to attack Tokyo. They told me some stuff about the crickets being part of an experimental breed, and that when they eat breaded meat it causes a rapid mutation. They offered no solution except to buy some bug spray. I tried that. The crickets came up to me, took the can out of my hands and sprayed me in the face with it. I even tried extreme cold, but all the crickets did was go skiing down all the furniture and ice skating in the bathroom sink.

  For weeks now our battle was raged. Neither side able to gain an advantage. That is until I realized why those mutant crickets were able to hold their own. Not only were they big but there was literally thousands of them. I know I only started with two thousand crickets, but in their mutated form, the crickets breed like nympho rabbits.

  The crickets had become too big for Gaara to eat, so whenever I had the chance, I would crush them up and then feed them to Gaara. As the weeks and war went on, I noticed Gaara was starting to grow bigger too. Instead of a normal sized bearded dragon, mine was about four to five feet long. So big in fact he could stand on his hind legs and look out a window. It took me a while to realize that whatever chemicals were present in the crickets that made them grow to ginormous sizes must have been absorbed by Gaara when he ate them. 

Gaara standing 4 Ft tall
and looking out the window

  Finally the sides were a little more even. I'm actually able to sleep at night since Gaara can patrol the apartment. The war has slightly shifted to our favor, but the crickets were still growing and getting braver. I can't say how this will end, but I will warn you to be careful when buying crickets online. Always make sure your crickets are from a non-governmental secret test facility, and never ever ever feed them corn dogs.
  Wish me luck.