Month: November 2022

11/19 Saturday and the Season’s First Fire

Welp, with the last letter delivered and the paperwork finalized, I’ve clocked out and officially begun my Thanksgiving vacation.

It almost hit a rough snag, as my supervisor called me to say I didn’t have enough leave saved up for the vacation. She tried to say I wasn’t going to be able to take the time off.

“Well, boss, that’s a problem,” I said, way more calmly than you’d expect. “You see, the family is going to Disney for the week, and we’ve already invested several thousand dollars into the trip. I need you to look through the used leave logs and find out how my saved leave was used, because I had not authorized it. This can be resolved one of two ways: either we find out where the leave was used and correct it, or someone in management gives my family $8,000 before I clock out today.”

There was a long pause after that remark before the supervisor responded.

“Swift, I’ll just talk to the other supervisors and Postmaster. We’ll figure out what happened and you and your family can have a great time in Florida. We’ll see you Wednesday next.”

Paraphrased slightly, as I like presenting my managers with manners.

So now, I’m home and going through the last stages of preparing for the trip. Before we leave, however, it’s gotten down to the upper 20’s tonight, so I’ve cleaned out the fireplace, gathered the first supply, and lit the first fire of the season.

It will turn out I did this too well, but man the house was warm.

Also was the first time I’ve used pinecones as my primary kindling. My father-in-law kept swearing by it, so I gathered a few bundles and dried them out before the cold set in. They do the job, almost too well. This fire won’t die down until the early morning.

With that, it’s time to sleep and make ready for the morning.

Stay safe out there, readers! Sleep well.

-JB Swift

11/18 Friday’s Story Progress!

It was a half-day today!

Just goes to show that the guy with 12 years of painfully-earned experience might know more than the supervisor who failed up into their position after less than 3 years without ever learning how the job is done.

But hey, if they don’t want to listen, I can plan around it. I knew this was coming and scheduled our final weekday errands for this afternoon, which should be rather minimal.

After that, I can write! I’ve done a lot of work on the Adventure already (every adventure and arc has at least the story prompts based off the recordings), so hopefully I can whittle away at the story during the next two months.

The players keep telling me to take the half-season break as a rest period from all the writing. This is how I rest, people!

I’m telling myself to not do any edits on the already-written 6 pages from a couple months ago, at least until the draft is finished. It’ll get done.

But first, I have to see about rounding up a cat from outside so she’ll be boarded and not freeze to death because of her own idiotic stubbornness.

Stay safe out there, readers!

-JB Swift

11/17 Heavy Season Exhaustion and Han’s Weather Photo

It was another grueling day, another 12.5 hour shift and 16-mile walk. The supervisors haven’t been listening to my recommendations for the past few days, so instead of being assigned any assistance, I’ve worked nearly 60 hours so far.

I did warn them about this 60-hour mark, and that I was going to have overtime on my own route if I wasn’t given assistance. Alas, management doesn’t like listening to my opinions, so I’ll be clocking in tomorrow with 54-55 hours on my time card, and I can’t be worked over 60 in a week or they get all kinds of hell, so it looks like tomorrow will be an early day!

In the meantime, Han asked if I could post her pick of the weather photos from today.

Not my best one, I’ll admit.

It looks like time I should be heading to sleep. Good night, readers, and stay safe out there.

-JB Swift

11/16 New Tobacco in the Mornings

I’ve been a smoker for most of my life, which means I will most likely not live as long as I could.

A morbid start of an essay, but I wanted that out of the way. Smoking is bad for you, people. Choose your vices carefully.

When Sarah became pregnant with Han, I had to have a sit down with myself and figure out what to do. I’ve always had a rule when it came to my smoking: not around children or pregnant women. I had accepted that I was causing harm to myself with my addiction, but that doesn’t mean other folks should suffer for it.

That year, as a Father’s Day gift, Sarah helped me find a more palatable solution to cigarettes: a set of pipes and a beginners supply of pipe tobacco. Six years later, I’ve become an avid pipe smoker.

One thing I wasn’t expecting as a result of this was that I’d keep specific pipes and tobacco for work. I now have a “Morning Break” tobacco.

Time to sling letters. Stay safe out there, readers!

-JB Swift

11/15 Tuesday’s Hair Request from Daughter

I was driving the kids to school this morning when Han spoke up from her car seat, “Dad, you should do pigtails today!”

She saw the look I was giving through the rear view mirror and corrected herself. “Dad, would you put your hair in pigtails today, please?”

I’m actually impressed with myself, having done this without a mirror.

If they use their manners, I’m obliging. I got a few stares from the older coworkers, but I get odd looks at work already. It comes with the territory of being a weirdo.

Oddly enough, this was a favorite photo among the family, and one of my followers on Instagram called it “Nordic”.

Just wait until I start braiding it. It’s just about long enough.

Stay safe out there, readers.

-JB Swift

11/13 Sunday’s Special Request Session

An interesting challenge was brought to my attention via our newest player, Jeremy.

Readers, meet Jeremy. Jeremy, meet your new fan base.

Basically, I was going to write a Star Wars story in a Highlander-style, mapping out consequences in the modern-day Main Arc from the choices made in this prequel Side Arc.

With the character concept given by my player, and he being a brand-new player, I’ve found myself truly in my element: teaching tabletop gaming. If I can help a player understand what they’re capable of, and get them comfortable with describing what they want to do, I consider that a victory.

The new player has proven himself to be smart in both important aspects for gaming: he asked questions and explained his strategies. He was introduced to “consequential campaigns” rather quickly, having defenestrated someone in broad daylight.

Everyone does it at least once in their first campaign.

I’ll be making my notes and mapping out how his decisions will affect the Main Arc campaign (he’s starting at 5BBY, while the Main Arc is almost at 2ABY), and I can already see several points just from his first session that will have strong influences on the “future”. It’s turning out to be a lot of fun to write.

Stay safe out there, readers!

11/12 Saturday’s Final Session of the Year

The Main Arc sessions have ended for the year! We won’t be back until January 7.

Since the Heavy Season has hit its stride, I’ve taken a page from how the CW handled a season for their shows: the party finished their current adventure and are at the half-way point of Arc 3.

To the players: I will be working on a half-season finale-esque short for y’all, so you’ll have something to help keep where we are in your memory. Great session!

I’ve also discovered a new obsession with detailing my maps, but now I have to look into poster-sized graph paper to get the kind of details I’ll be wanting.

I’ll be using the interim to work on the dramatizations (Arc 1, Adventure 2 is going to answer questions, but also hurt) in between moments that work leaves me alone and if I have enough energy left in me to reach the keyboard.

With that, I’ll be getting to work on my story-writing.

Stay safe out there, readers!

-JB Swift

11/11 Veteran’s Day and Almost Fully Recovered

I wanted to give this post some thought, so I waited for the evening to sit down.

It’s looking like I’ve recovered enough from the past week, at least enough to handle the burden of the day job. I’m not certain if I’m not contagious anymore, so I’ll be sorting letters with a mask on. Had to lose the beard so it’d be comfortable, unfortunately.

Here in the United States, today is Veteran’s Day. In these days, it’s interpreted as honoring those who are currently active duty in the military,

Originally, this day was called “Armistice Day”, back in 1919. A year after the end of World War I, the President of the United States gave a speech that helped the American population come to grips with having survived “The War”.

Note: This blog essay is being written by a US American citizen, so the emphasis is given to that nation, but we should never forget the contributions, sacrifices, or atrocities experienced by everyone during this conflict. Some of those events still haven’t seen justice brought forward.

One of the key points to remember for this day was that we’ve had people go away to war and never come home, or some came home broken in body or mind. Whether the war justified or necessary, we had a day set aside to honor those who were sent away to face those conflicts.

While I will have strong disagreements with the reasons given for some of the conflicts our military was involved with, I’ve tried to keep in mind that those in uniform were still people and should be given a moment of such remembrance.

A frustration I have concerning this day is how politicized it has become. For all the grandstanding I’ve seen by folks in the House and Senate that they were thinking of our military veterans, I’ve also seen how they vote on veteran issues.

Note: They rarely vote to actually help.

As much as we’ve moved away from the history of the holiday, I’d like to take a moment during the day and keep to its tradition.

Stay safe out there, readers. Remember the fallen.

-JB Swift

A contemplation of upgrading

I’ve been maintaining this website for over a year now, and it’s become something of a preferred online home for me. While it’s primarily used for my Star Wars campaign (rather, I’m more obsessed with my campaign than other projects), I do use it for other writing projects. The problem to that is that there is no tension behind getting my writing finished here.

Put simply: I don’t pay for the website, and I don’t ask you, my readers, to pay me for what I write.

Granted, as what I write most of the time is Expanded Universe Star Wars, something that technically doesn’t exist anymore, so asking for payments to read that material would not only be overly pretentious but also inviting the Great Mouse to bring his wrath down upon me. But I do write other stories, and they get attention when and where I can give it.

I was looking at website upgrades and I had noticed the subscription options. It’s been something I’ve given some serious thought. Should I upgrade and let readers ‘subscribe’ to my writings? If anything, it’d force me to work on regular postings and to give it my best effort every time.

It’s something to consider.

Stay safe out there, readers.

-JB Swift