We had an interesting night last night.

I suppose we should have realized something was out of sorts when we started noticing our cat Sasha paying an inordinate amount of attention towards our fireplace. I had caught her in there once, and for a good chunk of the evening she sat in front of it, just staring at it. Of our three cats, Sasha is the hunter; she has the best track record of locating intruders and terminating them. We weren’t sure what was going on, and put it down to her being weird (like she can be sometimes).

We had already gone to bed, had the lights out, and were watching The Daily Show. As we were watching, I saw a black shape sail right in front of the TV. I almost literally did a double-take, wondering if I was seeing things. Then I saw the black shape circling over us, and I brought it to Jennifer’s attention by saying, “There’s something in the room with us.” For her part, Jennifer thought I had lost my mind and meant there was someone in the room. I got up, headed to the door quickly, and turned on the light.

That was when we both realized that I wasn’t seeing things. There was a bat flying around our bedroom.

I’m not proud, but some combination of my “aspieness” and fear drove me to run away. I’m sure the bat didn’t mean me any harm and was probably as scared as I was (if not more so), but I was caught completely off-guard and had absolutely no idea what to do.

Jennifer got out as soon as she could, and we tried to think of a strategy. Pretty soon, she had an idea: she went into the garage, and grabbed a small raft float thing we use for when we go to the pool. It’s large, round, can fold, and the inside is mesh fabric. Her plan was to go into the bedroom, and try and catch it with the float.

Her plan worked flawlessly. As soon as she walked into the bedroom, float open, the bat flew right to it and latched onto the mesh. Our guess is that he hadn’t been able to find somewhere to land until then, so he was grateful for the perch. Jennifer then closed the float like a taco, carried it out the back door, and let him loose.

We’ve scheduled for someone to come out this weekend to check our chimney, just to make sure there are no other uninvited guests. Otherwise, we’re just glad no one was hurt in that little adventure, whether bat or human. :-)

As for Sasha, when the bat was flying around our bedroom, she was sat on the bed just watching it (it was well out of her reach). If I had to imagine her expression or thoughts, it would likely be one single sentence, directed to us:

“I told you so.”

I’ve mentioned it on here before, but my all-time favorite board game is called Talisman. Talisman is an epic quest game for 2-6 players where you play one of several types of characters, on a quest to retrieve the fabled Crown of Command and rule the land. With three regions to navigate, numerous places to explore, many monsters to fight, etc., I find each game lasts about one hour per person playing. I was introduced to the game when I was in eighth grade; sometime in college I lost my set, but my friends Jeff and Malinda got me a new set a few years back, and I’ve been playing since.

I’ve also mentioned that there was a video game version of Talisman in the works, but it ended up being cancelled due to issues with the game’s quality. That disappointed me, because I would have liked to be able to play the game against AI players when I didn’t have actual people to play against.

Fortunately, another company called Nomad Games got the chance to take another shot. :-)

Their first release was a game called Talisman Prologue, a single-player game in which players can follow different quests to learn how to play their character better, culminating in a solo quest to reach the Crown of Command. The game serves as a fun introduction to the world of Talisman, and not only includes characters from the original game, but from some of the expansions including The Blood Moon.

They’ve since followed it up with Talisman: Digital Edition, which is the full board game for multiple players. The game plays with four characters at all times, though if you have fewer than four human players the game substitutes AI opponents. The PC version of the game is tied to Steam, and you can invite your Steam friends to play (provided they have the game, of course).

The game itself plays just like the original board game, and even gives options for house rules. The biggest worry I have with video game adaptation of board games are cheating AIs; the iOS version of Monopoly and PC version of Risk are known to be bad about that. Fortunately, Talisman: Digital Edition’s AI is very balanced and I saw no evidence of unfair dice rolls. The game also allows you to set how long a player has to enter in commands, so as not to let the game get bogged down by one person being away from his keyboard. In addition, games can be left off and resumed at later times.

Since its release, the expansions The Reaper and The Frostmarch have been released, allowing for additional characters, encounters, and endings. There are also extra characters available as standalone DLC, which as near as I can tell are exclusive to the video game. Another exclusive feature of the videogame is the concept of runestones, which are “cards” you can earn that will alter your play experience in future games. For example, a possibility during the game is that your character is turned into a toad for three turns, thus losing all of his/her/its items, followers, and gold. The last runestone I acquired reduces the time spent as a toad to two turns.

All in all, I really have enjoyed Talisman Prologue and Talisman: Digital Edition. Both are available for PC (via Steam) and iPad (not iPhone). It’s a fairly inexpensive way to get to play Talisman, and is very well implemented to boot. I highly recommend giving them a try. :-)

My reading queue seems to be growing faster than I can finish stuff. :-)

I had posted before about setting Sundays aside as my reading days. As of late, that habit has been broken, though I have been doing a relatively decent job of reading through books. As soon as I finish books, however, I end up adding more to replace them. The queue is ever-changing, and what may have been a high-priority read at one time sometimes ends up at the end of the line. Amusingly enough, the three books I mentioned in the aforementioned post are still in the “to read” queue.

Admittedly, the majority of our book buying recently has come from Amazon, if only because of the price and convenience. That being said, whenever possible we like to buy from local bookshops… and by local, I mean “locally owned”. We try to avoid Barnes and Noble if we can at all help it, for example, but we have been known to go into Half-Price Books. On our last couple of trips to Austin, we made a point to stop at BookPeople, an independent bookstore which has the claim to fame of being the largest in Texas (independent or chain). My last trip, I bought several books, including the proto-Lovecraftian horror anthology The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, both volumes of The Intergalactic Nemesis, and a non-fiction book called Doctor Who and Philosophy.

Today, as part of our errands, Jennifer and I were in the Rice Village area. Instead of hitting Pearland Coffee Roasters for coffee, we decided to hit House of Coffee Beans in the Village. As it so happened, House of Coffee Beans is literally next door to my favorite Houston bookstore, Murder By The Book, so Jennifer had no problem with us going there first. :-)

It might come as a surprise to some, but my favorite literary genre right behind science-fiction/fantasy is the mystery story. I don’t collect mystery books anywhere near as much as I do sci-fi/fantasy, but I really do enjoy them when I get them. Some of my favorite TV shows have also been mysteries, like the various incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, Castle, Diagnosis Murder, In the Heat of the Night, and so on. A whole bookstore of mystery novels, as you might imagine, is right down my alley.

The problem, however, is that I get lost easily, as my knowledge of the mystery genre is not nearly as advanced as my knowledge of sci-fi. That’s where the staff of Murder By The Book shines, in that they have always been friendly and willing to help and lend their expertise. As a result, I end up leaving with a book I didn’t even know existed (much less had intended to get). For example, as mentioned in the previously referred post, I had noticed a book by ex-CIA operative Valerie Plame on display, and bought it on the staff’s recommendation. I ended up enjoying the book.

This time, while Jennifer picked up the latest Christopher Moore book, I picked up two books for myself. The first was a book by an author named C. Robert Cargill called Dreams and Shadows. While Cargill had written the well-received horror movie Sinister, I had first become aware of him when he was a reviewer for Ain’t It Cool News, under the pseudonym “Massawyrm”. Cargill’s reviews were easily my favorite thing about the site at the time; I had known of his book, but this was the first time I had seen a copy and decided to pick up a copy for myself.

The second book I picked up was called Loki’s Wolves by K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr. Unlike Dreams and Shadows, which I had at least heard of, Loki’s Wolves was completely unknown to me. The series itself is called The Blackwell Pages; I saw the second book on a table, with a note from a staff member recommending it, especially if one liked the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. That in particular drew my eye, as Jennifer and I both enjoy that series. (She’s much further along in it than I am.) I eventually found Loki’s Wolves (the first book), and my decision to purchase it was cemented when the gentleman checking us out praised the book rather highly.

Both books are in my reading queue now; I’m thinking I may have both read by the end of the month, but if worst comes to absolute worst I’ll save them for our upcoming trip to Corpus Christi. After all, other than playing in the water, my favorite thing to do at the beach is sit back in a chair and get lost in a good book. :-) I’m just hoping I can find time to go back to Murder By The Book at some point soon to get some more reading material.

But then, that would depend on me making space in my reading queue so it doesn’t become unmanageable. ;-)

(BTW, if you have a Goodreads account, you can find mine here. I don’t review books per se, but you can see what I’ve rated books I’ve read, and what’s in my queue.)

When Jennifer and I went to see Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike this past Sunday, we happened to notice a flyer in the playbill advertising the next season of the Alley Theatre. Reading it, I saw that one of the first plays they had listed was Dracula. This was the original stage play based off of Stoker’s novel, which became the basis for the 1931 classic film starring Bela Lugosi and the 1977 film starring Frank Langella.

As I’m a fan of vampire stories and Dracula is my favorite vampire novel, I figured it would be fun to see. However, I then noted that the flyer said the production features “the extraordinary designs of Edward Gorey”. At that, my heart sank a little.

If you’re not familiar with Edward Gorey, he’s a dark and macabre artist who I personally know best for having animated the intro/outro for the old PBS series Mystery! (and later Masterpiece Mystery).

I used to have a beautiful hardcover edition of Dracula with art by Greg Hildebrandt, best known for his work on the original Star Wars poster. The artwork in the book was a mixture of penciled drawings and painted works, with models playing each of the characters. (There was a credit list at the end of the book.) It was my favorite edition of the book, and to this day I wish I knew what the hell happened to it.

After that disappeared, my parents found a new hardcover edition of Dracula for me, with art by Edward Gorey. I was thankful for the gift, but it just wasn’t the same as the Hildebrandt version. I admit I tend to be a very visual person, and I really enjoyed how the Hildebrandt edition’s artwork not only showed the characters, but showed them in the different scenes throughout the novel. By contrast, the Gorey edition only had simple cartoonish character portraits.

I still have the Gorey edition, but I’ve since picked up a new hardcover copy with artwork by Becky Cloonan. Both Cloonan and Hildebrandt illustrate the novel’s events as opposed to doing simple portraits, but where they differ is that instead of using models and going for realism like Hildebrandt, Cloonan goes for a graphic novel style. It works very well for the book, and the book in fact ends up with far more illustrations, with the typeset sometimes going around the art. I have to say, I’m really digging this edition, about as much as the Hildebrandt edition.

As far as the Alley Theatre production goes, I’m still very undecided whether I want to go or not. While I’d like to see the original stage play, I can’t say that it’s my favorite version of the story. On the other hand, it can’t be as bad as Dracula: A Musical Nightmare, a musical version I had seen close to twenty years ago that turned out to be a comedic play-within-a-play that was frankly a right mess. In addition, Gorey’s designs seem too cartoonish/comical for me to really take seriously. That may be unfair, however, as the only reference point I have with them regarding Dracula is that book. On the other hand, at least one of my favorite Alley actors is starring in the production.

I’ve got time to think on it, as the play doesn’t open until October. I might spring for a matinee performance or go if there’s a good offer on tickets. Otherwise, as of right now, I’m leaning towards not going. It’s a shame, but while it might be my favorite vampire novel, I don’t feel the need to go to a performance if I’m not sure I’m going to like it.

It’s been a fairly quiet stage theater season for us.

While Jennifer and I both love theater, very few of the productions being shown this year have really drawn our attention. Nothing at Theatre Under the Stars looked interesting enough for us to spend the high price to go, and Bayou City Theatrics‘s season mainly made us go, “Huh?” As far as non-musical theater goes, our favorite is Alley Theatre, but again there wasn’t anything playing that we found too terribly interesting. The exception came when we were waiting for the Brit Floyd show (which was across the street from the Alley), and we saw one of the shows for this season was Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. We knew it had been the winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play, so we thought it couldn’t be THAT bad. We went ahead and got tickets, and saw it this past Sunday night.

So, how was it? Well, I liked it more than Jennifer did.

The entire play is pretty much a homage to the works of Anton Chekhov; Jennifer was far more familiar with Chekhov’s work than I was, so I was basically only seeing it on the surface without getting the reference. The play itself was about two siblings (one adopted) living in the same home they had since childhood, spending their days bemoaning the fact that they never did anything with their lives. Their expenses are paid by their sister Masha, who works as a movie actress. Masha returns home with her protegee and love interest, the handsome yet dim Spike, and informs her siblings that she intends to sell the house. The play then proceeds with the siblings worrying about Masha’s decision, Masha’s own insecurity about being upstaged, and Spike’s inability to keep his clothes on.

All in all, I enjoyed the performance and found it quite amusing and heartfelt. Admittedly, my favorite character was the housekeeper Cassandra, one of two non-title characters. Her character was funny, sassy, and resembled her namesake from Greek legend in that she would make dire predictions, but no one would believe her. The actress who played Cassandra played her with plenty of attitude to pull the role off.

I have to say that I was surprised by the other non-title character, Nina. Introduced as a potential rival for Spike’s affections, I was expecting the literal girl-next-door to be an antagonist, working against Masha to get Spike. The character was very sweet and kind, and instead of being interested in Spike found herself working alongside Vanya until the climax of the play, in which she helps Vanya perform a stage work he had written.

The only characters I really didn’t care for were Spike and Masha. Spike was one-dimensional and most likely intentionally so, more concerned about himself than those around them. Masha, on the other hand, was shrill and insensitive, and I found it difficult to feel sympathy for her as she worked to upstage everyone around her. Admittedly, neither Jennifer nor I have ever actually liked the actress who plays her, so my bias is probably showing there.

Again, not being familiar with Chekhov’s works, I only saw the surface elements in it. Once Jennifer explained Chekhov’s style to me, I got an impression of the deeper meaning; however, I get the feeling that I enjoyed it despite the Chekhov symbolism. Based on how Jennifer described his works, I don’t think I would enjoy them very much at all. Perhaps that’s why I liked the play more than she did.

Still, I was glad I got a chance to see Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and would recommend giving it a try if it’s playing near you.

Well, today was a long time coming.

I’m a coffee drinker. However, for health reasons, I only drink decaffeinated coffee. Some people might wonder why I would do so, but the simple fact is that I like the taste, plus being warm it helps wake me up in the morning. Being a decaf coffee drinker has its drawbacks, though, especially in the workplace. Usually, I end up being the only one who needs the decaf coffee.

At my last job, the IT department had its own contract through Community Coffee, and my boss had no problem with ordering decaf coffee for me. Once I left there and came to my current job, I found that I was the only decaf drinker, and the fact it was a smaller company and didn’t have the huge coffeemakers my last job did meant I was essentially out in the cold. I brought in my own coffeemaker, and started buying my own coffee.

A month or two after I started here, though, one of my former coworkers at the last job let me know that the CIO had said that as no one else was going to be drinking the decaf coffee, I was welcome to what remained. On my lunch break a day or two later, I went back there and picked up their remaining decaf coffee. It was about five or six boxes worth, which in the past would have lasted me a few months. Each box contained bags of coffee; each bag was good for one oversized carafe of coffee. As I was using a normal household coffeemaker, I didn’t quite need as much for each carafe. A few times since, I’ve supplemented it with the very occasional (as in, once a year) bag of Rouses Coffee or Cafe Du Monde.

That was well over three years ago. This morning, I used the very last of that Community coffee.

In that time, I’ve since replaced the standard coffeemaker with a small Keurig machine, but have still used the Community coffee with a My K-Cup reusable cup/filter unit. Now that I’m done with the leftover Community, though, I really don’t have any intention of switching to regular K-cups. I can get better coffee by going to local places like House of Coffee Beans or Pearland Coffee Roasters, and it will probably be cheaper overall than using the disposable K-cups. While I’ve only had House of Coffee Beans coffee once or twice, I have had Pearland Coffee Roasters coffee several times (at Killen’s Steakhouse), and have found it to be fantastic.

Still, it’s a bit bittersweet losing that supply of coffee that at one time looked like it was going to be infinite. I now have an “emergency” stash of Donut House Decaf K-cups at my desk, and this weekend I’ll probably get the Pearland Coffee Roasters stuff. I guess it’s time for me to get used to bringing coffee in on a regular basis. :-)