Twilight Watch

I was browsing through a bookstore earlier this week and picked up (in a non-metaphorical sense) a copy of Twilight Watch, which oakeyo is reading. I noticed that some newspaper -- and please forgive me but I don't remember if it was the Independent or the Telegraph or some other British paper altogether -- had called Lukyanenko "the Russian J.K. Rowling."

Say what? Are they high? I mean, they're both... wildly popular, and fantasy, and about the struggle between Good and Evil. Aside from that, I'm really not seeing much in the way of similarity between the settings, characters, or even format.

Important raccoon update!

Last night I went to the gym. (Applause. It's all thanks to life_on_queen actually.)

While I was gone, Jen was watching the second half of Death on the Nile* in my living room** when she heard a scratching noise from upstairs. Skritch skritch. Hm, she thought, that sounds like a raccoon. But it can't have got into the house, can it? Robin wouldn't have left a window open, could she? Better check.

So she went upstairs to the third floor. Sure enough, there was a raccoon*** outside the front window (the top set of windows in this picture), scratching at the screen. The window was actually mostly shut, but that hadn't deterred it. Jen banged on the window (thinking "oh, how CUTE!") and it gave her a Look and wandered off. She went back to the movie.

A few minutes later... skritch skritch skritch.

She went upstairs again, and discovered that the little bugger was back and had actually ripped a small hole in one of the screens! (Which were, btw, quite expensive.) She banged on the window again and it went away, presumably for good. Although who knows?

Once again, we are glad it hasn't brought its friends and relations along yet. oakeyo reckons maybe none of them believed it when it told them about the chicken, and now it's an outcast.

*Apparently the body count went way up, but the pace did not pick up any.
**because her DVD player is on the fritz
***We're pretty sure it's the same one every time. Chicken is a powerful force.