[I bring my breakfast into the dining room/office where Aack is playing Fallout 3.]

[Game voice chattering]

Aack: blah, blah, blah, plot, blah, blah, blah

Me: How’s it going?

Aack: They want me to pretend I’m a slave, so I left all my stuff, but they kept attacking me. So the hell with the plot, I’m gonna kill them all and let god sort em out.

[Aack reloads her game]

[Silence. After a moment, the sound of violence.]

Aack [loudly and distressed]: They took my shit! [Pauses for a moment, then sounding incredulous] They took my shit!!

Aack: VSC, they took my shit!

[I snicker]

Aack: It’s not funny, they took my shit! You don’t understand, at this level, I had some really good shit!!

[Clatter of keys]

Aack [to herself]: I’ll show those fuckers. I’m gonna get my shit and fuck them up.

[a few minutes of silence other than the occasional mouse click and keyboard clatter.]

Aack: oh shit.

Me: what?

Aack: I loaded my saved game, and dropped off my shit in town so they couldn’t steal it, but I did it a scene too early, and now I’m running around in my underwear.

—–

[gunfire]

[explosion]

[Aack laughing]

Aack: Ohhh… [giggling] Whoops. An escaped slave accidentally ran over a grenade and blew up. [explosion. Aack laughs until she snorts] There goes another one.

—–

I love this game. Specifically, I love Aack playing this game

I’ll be honest, while some parts sucked (you’ve heard the best of those stories), the overall vacation was actually good, and I was, as always, sorry to leave. After the first week, I got more relaxed and had a pretty good time.

But that’s not nearly as funny as the vacation from hell parts.

Because I stayed until the very end, I had to clean up my room.  This wasn’t a big deal, except for the part where I had to go back in the bathroom with the spider from hell.  I opened the door just a crack, and peered in.  Nothing jumped at me.

I packed up my stuff and cleaned up a bit, all without seeing the spider in question.

Until I went to empty the garbage can.  Sitting right on top of the garbage was the spider.  (Admittedly, in daylight, and NOT JUMPING ON ME, the spider was smaller than I remember, and turned out to be brown, not black.)

That was the end of me emptying the garbage.

Later on it was requested that I put the garbage can outside so the spider could leave.  I took the can outside, and as my last act of “communing with nature”, I dumped the can out, shook the spider out of the can and over the edge of the deck, and picked up the garbage.

The little fucker had built a web inside an empty toilet paper tube.

I’m ready to go home.

My last night.  Oddly enough, I don’t really want to leave.

I went to bed late (around 4 AM).  Last stop before bed: the bathroom.  As I turn to close the bathroom door, this gigantic, beefy black spider launches itself from the vicinity of the toilet, LANDS ON MY CHEST, then launches itself back into the vicinity of the toilet.

I used the other bathroom.

I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.