I have slain the bat!

Let me tell you a tale of my previous Saturday:

It started like any other Saturday night: I stopped at France and 44th to pick up a 12 pack of beer on the way home from work. Lately I've been enticed by variety and have grown fond of buying sampler packs from various breweries.

However, I found a completely new brew this night and decided to take a risk and purchase a full twelve pack of it. It was Leine's new seasonal, Fireside Nut Brown. It was pretty good, but had a very sweet cocoa aftertaste to it.

When I got home, I had the entire house--and more importantly, the tv--to myself. With no friends, family, or girlfriend to distract me, I could concentrate on drinking beer and watching NCAA football. There were three prime-time games on that night: Florida versus Vanderbilt, Boston College versus Notre Dame, and Texas Tech versus Oklahoma State.

I knew Florida-Vanderbilt would be no contest, so I only flipped to that game if both of the others were on commercial break. The TT-OSU game was supposed to be amazing, since both teams were both ranked in the top 10, but Tech started to run away with this one pretty quickly. So I settled in with the BC-ND game, which I guess was also a one sided contest (BC won 17-0), but it was more interesting because it was a defensive blowout. Notre Dame was just stifled by Boston College. Just when they would get something moving, BC would come up with a big stop or takeaway.

Now I mentioned earlier that I was just going to concentrate on football and drinking beer. Well I wasn't really concentrating on the beer drinking part. If I was concentrating, then I wouldn't have been drinking it at such an alarming rate. I cracked into my seventh brew before halftime. I was now officially drunk. It was a weird kind of drunk that I hadn't experienced since I was a minor and we would always drink really fast in order to get intentionally plowed. I couldn't feel my lips.

I slowed the pace and only had one more beer in the second half. I also was starving, so I ordered a Pizza Hut Pizzone and a small order of Quepapas. I actually despise Quepapas. They are the biggest waste of space I have ever put in my stomach. I even knew this before I ordered them. However, the Pizzone was only $5.99 and I needed a minimum order of $8.50 for delivery. The Quepapas were only $3.00, so I got them.

When the delivery guy came, I had a hard time speaking. Normally when you drink in a social setting, you are talking constantly and don't have an issue with speaking as you get more intoxicated. However, when you get drunk alone, you aren't really talking. So when the time comes and you have to actually put together some coherent words, it can catch you off guard and be more difficult then you expect.

I finished the Pizzone and the football games were ending. It was still relatively early that evening, but because I was now intoxicated, I could not drive anywhere. This was disappointing because I got a text from a friend who was going to the Park Tavern. They have karaoke there. I love karaoke.

I decided I would hoof it to the nearest Blockbuster video store to find me some Saturday night entertainment. I picked up John Carpenter's The Thing. I also brought back my video I received in the mail. With the Blockbuster subscription plan, you can exchange your DVDs received in the mail twice a month for a free rental at the store. After those two freebies, you can still exchange them for $1.99 rentals.

Every time I bring a DVD back for the $1.99 rental, the cashier fucks it up. Saturday night was no exception. I approach the counter with my DVD I want to rent, the DVD I am exchanging, my Blockbuster membership card, and a box of Mike and Ikes. He rings it all up and gives me a total of over $6. The Mike and Ikes were only $1.79and the total with the $1.99 movie and sales tax should have been somewhere between $4-$5.

I inform the clerk of the error and he seems to get it right away. He just doesn't know how to ring it up properly on the computer. He flags over the manager to help him out.

The manager types up some stuff on the register and then gives him a reassuring, "There. Now scan it in again."

The clerk scans the stuff again and gives my total: $0.87. Now this obviously makes no sense to me, and it really shouldn't to the clerk or the manager who's still standing there supervising. The right thing to do would be to correct him again so we could get the right total amount due. But I was drunk, and they may have sensed that, too. Maybe they were afraid I would go on a belligerent rampage and wanted to get me out of there as soon as possible.

Whatever. I got a movie and a box of candy for $0.87.

On the way home, I grew impatient of walking. It was taking to long. I wanted to be back in the house and watching my movie. So I did what any rational man would do: I started jogging. I jogged all the way home.

I got home and got myself all ready to enjoy this feature film starring Kurt Russell. I was wearing sweatpants, covered up in my blanket, and was sitting in the dark while munching on candy. The movie was starting to pick up right away in the first 20 minutes. A Siberian husky mutated into a giant monster and started attacking the other dogs in the kennel and it's handlers.

That's when I saw something fly across my basement room. It was too big to just be some bug. It flew around the corner and back again.

"Great," I thought, "there's a damn bird down here."

It came around the corner again and then at me. Startled, I swung at it with my trusty blanket. I either hit it or it got disoriented and flew into the wall. It then fell down behind some junk piled underneath the window. I turned on the lights and grabbed my weapon of choice: my trusty blanket.

It rustled behind some bags of stuff and then crawled on top of a pillow in the corner. It was no bird. It was a bat. And it started flying at me again.

I took a swing at it again with my blanket and again either hit or stunned it. He fell to the floor by my desk. Unsure of what to do next, I just followed my instincts. I proceeded to pick up one of my shoes and hurl it at him. I missed by about 4 inches. He started flying again and ran into the wall in the opposite corner. This time he fell onto a pile of seasonal decorations. Actually, it was just an Easter basket with a couple small Christmas decorations in it.

I sat there and waited for him to emerge. He didn't.

I stood there pondering my next move for about 15 minutes. I couldn't just go back to sleep knowing this little bastard is floating around in my room. On the other hand, I didn't want to go digging in that corner for fear of it attacking me.

But I decided to face my fear that evening. I grabbed a broom and started poking around. He wasn't coming out, so I had to start picking some things out of the pile. I was trying to pick up the Easter basket with the broom handle but I ended up dropping the whole basket. That's when I started to hear a faint squeaking noise. I believe he was in the basket and was injured by a heavy snowman figurine that was also in the basket.

I cleared the holiday decorations away and found the furry little bugger just lying there and making this innocent little squeaking noise. I then proceeded to pummel the living shit out him with my broom. First, I attacked with the broom head. Then I flipped it around and got him once with the broom stick. Finally, I put him out of his misery with a fatal jab straight to the chest with the tip of the broomstick.

Despite not really leaving the house and having very limited human interaction, last Saturday night was pretty eventful.