I was invited this weekend to do a reading in North Carolina at a fetish club, and just got home from that this afternoon. What a trip! I conned one of my best friends, Patricia, into going with me and we had a very weird, very fun road trip out to the middle of nowhere. Patricia drove her mother-in-law's van while I navigated, and I swear we must have hit every single tiny back road in South Western Virginia and North Western Carolina. Along the way, we saw a lot of abandoned buildings. So many in fact that we started playing a game of "Zombie Apocalypse." The game goes something like this...

Me: So Patricia, if the great epic Plague hits, and everybody dies off or becomes zombies, and you're still left alive and unzombified, which of these houses would you go into to poke around and find supplies?

Patricia: Oh, all of them! I'm always curious to know what's inside other people's houses.

Me: Yeah, me too. Plus it'd be time to do some serious looting.

Patricia: Definitely.

(A few minutes pass...)

Me: There are a lot of abandoned houses out here.

Patricia: Yeah. I wonder why that is.

Me: I wonder if we could hole up in one of these abandoned houses if the zombies attacked.

Patricia: We should pick a good abandoned house, not one that looks like the roof is going to fall in.

Me: Yeah, because knowing us, the roof would most likely cave in while we were doing something like going to the bathroom.

(Several more minutes pass...)

Me: Wow, there are a hell of a lot of abandoned houses out here...

Patricia: Yeah... It's like a ghost town out here.

Me: Or maybe a zombie town... (starts humming, then suddenly sings) ZOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOMBIE-BIE-BIE!! IN YOUR HEEEEEAD! IN YOUR HEEEEEEEAD! ZOOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOOMBIE! ZOOOOOOOOMBIE-BIE-BIE!

Patricia: Jeeze Louise, I haven't heard the Cranberries in years. You're really good at singing that song. In a crazed, scary sort of way, of course...

And so on. We made it to our destination Friday evening and spent the night with Beth Wylde, the author who set up the erotica reading. Thank you Beth for hosting us that night! Saturday morning, we all headed out for the fetish club for the reading. On our way there, Patricia and I decided we had to photograph at least one abandoned building we had seen. So we pulled over and photographed this abandoned church we found...

In between photographing abandoned buildings and playing "Zombie Apocalypse," Patricia and I made our way to La Fortresse, a BDSM/fetish club in North Carolina where we did a reading with Beth and a number of other authors. My sometimes partner-in-crime, Nobilis Reed was there, reading from his latest book, Scouts, and I'd say we did a pretty good job of entertaining the audience. We had a good sized audience too, which was always nice. I did not take pictures of the club, to ensure the privacy of the members who were there, but it was definitely a well equipped facility, and we did the readings down in the dungeon, where they had plenty of St. Andrew's crosses, a floor-to-ceiling web made out of sturdy chain, paddling stations, shackles and stocks, and other fun stuff. It was definitely worth the trip to see this place.

After the reading, Patricia and I headed out to visit the fantabulous sci-fi author/podcaster Mighty Mur Lafferty. We took every wrong turn we could getting there, and saw way more abandoned buildings than we would have liked at that point (because we were supposed to be headed for civilization, not going deeper into the zombie country). Finally, we ended up at a very large shopping center in Burlington, where we stopped and got a nice dinner at the Asian Bowl. We decided to hit Barnes and Nobles on the way out to get coffee, when I found a dead but still perfectly intact dragon fly that I insisted on picking up and taking back to the van to photograph. So there I was, walking into B&N, carrying this lovely dead dragon fly, and out of nowhere this tiny pixie child appears and starts dancing around me holding up a book. She stops and offers me the book and I see it's entitled "Night of the Living Trekkies!" It came complete with a lurid cover of a zombified rotting Trekkie in full original Trek uniform. When I asked the bookstore pixie where she found it, she dreamily waved over to the sci-fi section, then danced around me again and thrust the book at me. Obviously I was supposed to take this book, so I did and the pixie disappeared. At which point, I realized I was holding the perfect birthday present for Mighty Mur Lafferty, and since we were headed over to her place for her birthday party...

So I bought the book, got some coffee, explained to the barrista why I was carting around a dead dragonfly (and got a nice white napkin for my photo background because the barrista thought it was cool to take pictures of dead bugs) and we headed back out again. After photographing the dragonfly and respectfully laying it to rest in a grassy median strip in the parking lot, of course.

We stopped at a hotel briefly along the way to Mur's, got cleaned up, had a very embarassed hotel clerk walk in on us while we were cleaning up, laughed about that and then made our way to Mur's place where we had a fabulous time eating the world's best Boston Creme Pie (Mur's birthday cake made by her amazing husband Jim) and playing Rock Band and chatting with people about zombies and abandoned buildings and dead bugs. While we were there, Jim pointed out a very huge, very neat moth on the front porch, and naturally I snapped a pic of that too.

After the party, we crashed back at the hotel, and headed home this morning, stopping along the way to photograph a few more abandoned buildings. We found...

This abandoned house...

Which came complete with its own abandoned shack...

And of course there was this really lovely abandoned grocery store...

The rest of the trip was nice and quiet. Lots of driving along back roads and discussion of doing another road trip in the fall when the leaves would be changing colors, the weather would be cooler, and the abandoned houses would be creepier. If we go on this road trip, we are definitely taking Mary with us, because we just know she'd be really good at playing "Zombie Apocalypse" with us.

And that was my weekend. Hope you had as much fun and adventure!

Am I too old for video games? I have to confess. I never got into video games until after I turned 40. Even though growing up, my family was one of the first in our neighborhood to have a computer (a TRS-80 that ran software from a tape recorder), we didn't have much in the way of computer games. Yeah, the Trash-80 came with a clunky space shoot-'em-up that I recall, where you navigated the ship using the computer keyboard, and there was another game where you could explore an ancient tomb, but it was all text and no graphics, so it was kind of liking playing a video game blind-folded. Beyond that, we had no game console, no Atari, no Intellivision, no Commodore 64, and my dad wasn't really into computer games so we never got any more than those two that came with the TRS-80.

I didn't really get any experience with games until I started dating the Hubster. He and his brothers grew up with video games and played them compulsively. When I expressed some curiosity, Hubster set me up with a copy of Ultima, a fantasy adventure game that should have been right up my alley. But as it turned out, my interest in the game lasted all of about a month. The game was okay, but playing it seriously ate into my study time, and besides, killing monsters over and over, or being killed by monsters over and over, got pretty boring/frustrating after a while. No hack and slash for me, thank you.

I didn't play video games again until I was pregnant. The Hubster and I knew we were getting ready to make a big financial change in our lives, and as such were feeling pretty cash-strapped. No dinners out, no movies, and since this was in the days before Video on Demand and Tivo and Hulu, not much on TV to watch. To keep us entertained, Hubster figured out how to attach a computer to the TV, and bought us some of the Myst games. The Myst games were definitely more my speed. Exploring a digitally created environment, solving puzzles, finding clues to a bigger mystery... It was great fun for many months. Then we reached the point where we really needed a better, more expensive TV to be able to see certain key details in the latest game; otherwise, we couldn't play. And since we couldn't afford said TV, our game days pretty much came to an end.

It was another few years before I ran into games again. This time, it was the Wii. I first saw the Wii when one of my brothers-in-law brought it over to a family gathering, along with a copy of Rayman Ravin' Rabbids TV Party. This was a silly, bizarre, twisted game that appealed perfectly to yours truly. Plus, I found playing on the Wii to be far different from sitting on my assets in front of a computer; more interactive, more active, and more suited for playing with others, i.e. the kids. After my first taste of the Wii, I did some research and decided that I wanted to get one for our house. Lo and behold, the Hubster set us up with one that Valentine's day.

Since then, I've gone through Rayman's Ravin' Rabbids, Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus, EA Sports Active, More Workouts for EA Sports Active, etc. Someone gave us a copy of Mario Block Party. Hubster picked up a copy of Boom Blox and some other games he thought the kids would enjoy. Even I started buying games, picking up copies of Just Dance and Mario Kart.

In the last two years, I've really come to appreciate having the Wii. I can work out with it, or just blow off some steam and relax. I can enjoy it with my kids. And I've discovered I can enjoy playing games by myself. My first fun game, solely for me? Rune Factory: Final Frontier.

Yes, another fantasy game, but unlike Ultima, not one filled with monster killing and dungeon crawling of the Ultima games? While Rune Factory does have it's share of hack and slash, it also has a lot of other things going on too. In fact, I think Rune Factory was designed for people like me. If the monster kicks your ass, you don't die, you just end up in the hospital the next day and you can get back in the game without having to start all over. And the focus isn't on monster bashing. There's farming to do, and black smithing, and cooking, and characters to interact with and befriend. It's an immersive sort of game where you're living this whole other life, and yours truly actually geeks out on that sort of thing.

Which is why I eventually got myself a DS this year. Princess already had one, and while researching games for her to play, I came to realize that there were a lot of DS games I'd like to play too, including the sequel to Rune Factory.

When it comes to video games, I still prefer RPGs to adventure and shooter games. That will probably never change. But now I also enjoy spending an evening with the kids crashing around the race course in Mario Kart or shakin' our booties to Just Dance. And if I ever worry that all this game playing is causing my brains to leak out my ears, then I can just grab a copy of the latest Professor Layton game and bend my smarts around that.

So here I am, a 41-year-old woman, who has finally developed a taste for games. Who'd have thunk it? Regardless of how long it's taken me to pick up this new hobby, I'm glad I have. Sometimes, I need a little down time, and game play gives me exactly that.