For those of you who have both Chrissy and I as cyber-pals, you this might be a repeat -but hey, you get to hear the story told two different ways. This was too good a story to leave alone.

it was a dark and stormy night...

Well it was night anyway. Last night to be more specific. Around 11:30. Chrissy and I (or should I say Carnildo and Vexin), were backed into a corner in Stranglethorn Vale, killing endless numbers of Kurzan Medicine Men, hoping like crazy to get them to drop some kind of "remedy" -a quest item. Anyway, things were pretty tense, I kept getting jumped by re-pops and then there was this panther that kept going out of it's way to jump me as soon as I rezzed. You know how it is (or more likely you don't , but bare with me here). It was late, I was tired, and I kept dying 2 drops away from wrapping this stupid quest, when suddenly there is a great torrent of barking and noise from downstairs. Crap! I'm gonna die again, but I have to see what's going on with the DOG!

Actually, Chrissy got there first while I tried to run for cover near a rocky outcrop (little did I know that that same blasted panther was just waiting for me to get up from my computer to finish me off). Anyway, in the few seconds I took trying to park myself in a safe spot, I heard voices from downstairs. Chrissy was talking to someone. I figured it was a neighbor with some kind of emergency. But I got up anyway to see what was up. From the top of the stairs I saw a very tall woman standing in the hall by the front door and I heard Chrissy say "I need you to leave".

"Are you sure?" the woman replies.

"Yes." Chrissy says, calmly, but firmly.

And the lady walks out.

At this point I had made it to the bottom of the stairs, but didn't get much of a chance to say or do anything.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"She let herself in the house! " answered Chrissy. "When I asked her what she was doing here she told me 'I was told I had reached my Final Destination'"

Wow! Holy Shit, this is freaky! Anyone out there watching John from Cincinnati by chance? I was waiting for one of us to start levitating!

After getting over the initial weirdness, we both found ourselves disappointed in Tonka's performance. Yes she had barked, but then dropped the ball on the "Pounce and Eviscerate the Intruder" part. So we fired her on the spot, but later forgave her. The next step was "Gee, I guess we should call the cops?" So I did. Gave them the details. Told them there was a large crazy woman letting herself into houses and the last we saw she was headed out in the night, off for parts unknown. They wanted to know if we needed them out at the house, and I told them no, that was OK, she wasn't violent or anything. We'd just lock the doors and hope they picked her up. Frankly, we were more concerned for her safety at this point. I can't say that many of our neighbors would respond as evenly to a six foot black woman walking into their house around midnight as we did.

So the big weirdness had passed and we survived. We went back to WoW and of course the panther had eaten Carnildo again. So we moved along and tried to get those last few drops when BAM! there was a knocking at our door. This time it was the cops -I have to say in light of the evening so far, I was grateful for the knock. I guess they wanted more info. They took our names. phone number, etc and told us they thought it might be "Loretta", the town drunk that sometimes bums rides after drinking herself silly. I have to say I was pretty amused to hear that we have a town drunk. So they tell us that they were going to head out and look around a bit. We wished them good luck and went back to Wow -again.

Rezzed, this time I killed that SOB panther as he came around the corner and skinned him for the trouble. Got the final drops, turned in the quest and went to bed.

I thought the story was over at this point.

We spent the next day as usual, doing work around the house and running errands. When we got home, the phone rang and it was one of the cops. She wanted to make sure she had our names and birth dates correct. But then she started to tell me the rest of the story! I've never gotten to hear the conclusion to something like this and it was so cool1 I couldn't believe she was telling me all this !

"We found her, you know, on North Constitution, her car had run out of gas." the cop began. "She was acting really weird, I figured she was intoxicated so I administered a PVT(?) and she checked out OK. So I figure she's on something, so I asks her 'Are you on something?' Well, I finally get out of her that she's OFF her meds, that she's bi-polar. She wasn't violent or nothing, just really acting weird"

"Yeah" I interjected, "that's how she seemed to us, just weird, not necessarily drunk".

"Right, so she throws her keys in the bushes then tries to throw herself in the bushes too! When i tried to get her license and registration, she literally threw every credit card and such she had in her purse at me. She was a mess." the cop continued. So we can't get her car going, she's out of gas and lost the keys so later we got her parents to come up. She's 28, but lives with her parents. We told them she really needs to stay on her medication."

" So, is she a local then?" I asked.

"No, she's up from Baltimore"

"Wow! how the hell did she get all the way here? To my house?"

"She told me she followed the Yellow Brick Road"