I’ve taken a few days off to recuperate from the past few days, and to make sure that the kids will get to actually see their father during their Fall Break. I’ve been coming home to find them either already in bed or trying to stay up to greet me after work, thus being so tired that they stumble over empty air.
I won’t stand for that, and I refuse to carry on the tradition of fathers in the US being absent in their children’s lives during the formative years.
So, as a surprise to Han, I was off today, dressed as a civilian, and took her to breakfast in town.
She’s setting up her list of questions for the morning.
She’s being ambitious and wanting to impress her father, but she’s set the bar a bit high. I get that she’s a Swift, but just because Dad can eat three plates in one sitting doesn’t mean she needs to try the “Three Pancake Special”. She tried, though.
We also have errands in town, and she’s asked if we could walk instead of drive. I warned her that we’d be covering a couple of miles with walking, but she said, “You walk 12 miles every day, so I can do it too.”
I’m both proud and readying myself to pack her around when the pancakes catch up to her.
“Dad! Dad! Look up! It’s perfect for your writing!” -Han.
She ain’t wrong, though.
I will admit that the morning was damn pretty, but I’m also wondering if I’ll be walking in the rain today. With new boots, too!
Sigh…
But hey, my time off was also just approved! Maybe I’ll be lucky and dodge a storm, too!
Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice: “But his luck was already spent with getting his supervisors to approve the time off, so Louisiana weather decided to balance the scales.”
Rain was starting while I was loading parcels. Gonna be a fun day.
If there’s anything that catches my attention on the Internet, it’s reading posts by people who are looking to join a campaign.
Also animal videos. They’re adorable and I won’t budge on this exposing of my sensitive side.
I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across an example of the former. A player was looking for a group to join! I let him know about this place and explained my rules/expectations. He, in turn, told me what he wanted to try out.
I won’t spoil the details, but when he’s introduced to the campaign, I’ll write up a Biography Page for him. For now, I’m wandering the route with my Campaign’s Notebook and plotting out new concepts to add in the timeline.
While I’m enjoying my nerdiness, I’m also enjoying the looks on the faces of management as I remind them about the multitude of contracts and manuals that they should be following when giving me orders concerning the mail. It’s a sort of perverse pleasure to explain to someone who technically outranks me that they need to pay attention to a set of forms that they do everything in their power to avoid.
I’m a nerd. I’m also a bureaucrat. I like going through books for references and having paperwork in proper order. It also annoys management because they can’t issue discipline just because I’m following rules that they find annoying. This is why I support unions.
Stay safe out there, readers! I’m off to make a supervisor sign off on six pages of paperwork. *Mad cackling ensues.*
I always feel slightly awkward when, on my half-days, I stay in the parking lot while my son is at his appointment. I get that the other parents do the same thing, but they also look like normal folks.
Whereas I, in one of my rare moments of being aware of my image, look like an oddball.
I know I’m weird, but I’m also lazy about my appearance, so I can’t just say I’m eccentric. too honest, not enough money.
But I take advantage of the moment of forced idleness to write, so while the other parents are staring at their phones, I’m leaned back in my seat with the tablet and notebooks spread out around me in an impromptu desk, plunking away at the stories and just adding on to the whole “that guy’s a weirdo” vibe.
But hey, it’s an hour out of the day that I can write without interruption from other chores! No pesky adult responsibilities!
This means I’ve most likely forgotten something.
Stay safe out there, readers. Gonna keep working on Mardek’s Side-Arc.
“Curiosity killed the cat” is an old line that I sometimes have to deal with at the house.
Specifically, keeping Penelope from climbing into the dryer during the laundry chore.
“What’s this? Can it kill me?” Yes, you adorably dumb critter.
She climbed in three times while I was loading the dryer. She’s lucky I’m paranoid about her surviving this world, or she’d be down a life and extra poofy.
To my players and readers, you’ll be happy to know that for the first time in over a month, I’ve had a full-nights’ sleep.
To Votosh Khall (played by Ben): I’ve rested, now stop worrying about me and let me go about my terrible habits of pushing myself too hard.
That said, it’s Columbus Day here in the United States. If you’ve studied enough history, or if you know enough history from the Native American tribes in the Indies and Eastern United States, you’d refer to today as Indigenous People’s Day.
Brady and I used to love debates about this holiday, namely because we did know a lot of the history surrounding this holiday and Christopher Columbus.
Trust me: it’s Indigenous People’s Day. I’d rather have a day to honor the People than that greedy goof.
On a purely practical matter, however, it’s a Federal Holiday in the United States. As a Federal Person, I’m allowed a day off! And management can’t say a damn thing about it. Granted, that means Tuesday will be horrendous as the mail actually does stop for the day, but as it’s also a half-day for me tomorrow (thanks to a prodigious amount of paperwork), I can avoid that headache after 1:30PM tomorrow!
Now, what do I do on such a day? Apparently, it’s sleep for nearly 11 hours straight. Even the kids respected this. That’s should tell me something, but I’m electing to ignore it.
What I will be doing is catching up on the vast number of chores the house needs, including the writing here at my desk. Mardek’s Side-Arc needs finishing, and I’ll be plunking away at it before I get to anything else in my “Writing List”, including the plot for the upcoming Main Arc Session this Saturday.
Yes, my handwriting is terrible. I write too fast for penmanship.
This is to mean: if I don’t, I’ll be winging it on Saturday and you should pray for my players. Me telling a story that I haven’t thought out fully beforehand is… well, dangerous for those involved.
Sidenote: the “Post Updates” project was accidentally done first, as I logged on to see that the last week of posts had formatting issues and stayed in the “Drafts” section. But they were easily fixed in way less than an hour and published in order. Apparently, there’s a problem between uploading pictures from my phones’ camera roll to my blog posts and writing out the posts themselves on the tablet. That’s just my luck with technology.
This list will be added on to throughout the day as I find other sections that need writing out, but that’s only a small part of what needs doing today. The yard needs cleaning up, the floors need sweeping (daily, really, as this house is a house of shedding, be it dogs, cats, or the hamster), and the Old 4Runner needs maintenance.
Lots to do, and I’m too damn cheap to pay somebody else to do any of it. So, off to work (housework) I go!
As a consolation prize to everyone who wanted to read through my hyping myself up for my house-spouse duties, I’ve snagged a couple photos of Old Man Casey.
He only looks sleepy, when really he’s just old and reluctant to be far from me on a day off.
He’s still playful, but when you’re an 11-year-old dog, the playing is a bit low-key.
“Don’t wanna chase the ball, so I’ll just grab at Swift’s hand while I lay on his foot.” -Casey
To think that I’ve tried to take this dog camping. He’d rather a couch and Netflix.
Stay safe out there, readers. Happy Indigenous People’s Day.
Just a quick moment I wanted to share between the chores/writing/wrangling of my small children at the park, but it turns out that one of my route customers is a watchmaker. I asked him a few weeks ago to look at my engagement pocket-watch, which hasn’t worked in a few years.
First: it’s fixed! Second: it was free!
The watchmaker refused to take payments from me, as he believed “your acts of service to the country is payment enough.”
I gotta admit, that was a great compliment, and I’m stupidly happy to see my old pocket-watch running again.
I’m off to go convince my 6-year-old daughter that it is, in fact, a bad idea to jump off a rockwall when there are other kids in her landing area.
When we’re out delivering the mail, we have a notation we make on the route paperwork “Animal Interference”. This is normally reserved for the any stray dogs that make us unable to deliver a certain part of the route, or in my case, a stray hawk wanting to eat part of my satchel.
That’s a tale for a different time, but I sent this to my Postmaster, citing “Animal Interference”.
The Postmaster responded with “They’re behind a fence, so you should be safe.”
Sir, I don’t think that fence is going to stop those dinosaurs. But I managed to get through the day without being eaten. It was a near thing, though.
It was just around bedtime for the kids when I found Han at my desk, of all places.
“Hey kid,” I said, confused. “It’s time for bed. Whatcha working on?” “I’m writing a story!” Han said, looking up from her construction paper. “Nice!” I said, smiling. “How’s it coming along?” “It’s finished!” she said, holding it up for me. “I wanted you to have before bed.”
“It reads well, kid!” I told her. “I want to be a writer, just like you, Dad,” she said, getting out of my chair and heading for bed.
Words cannot describe the pride I have for this, and there were tears.
Gonna find a frame to put this in. Stay safe out there, readers. I’ve some late-night writing to do of my own.
Swift's Corner 