Category: Photography

10/15 Main Arc Session Night and Old Man Casey

I am both exhausted and excited. It’s Saturday, so it’s Game Night!

It’s also the third Game Night in a row, and I’m realizing exactly why I am so strict about my Session Schedule holding to a bi-weekly schedule.

I’m tired and getting grumpy. I don’t like that aspect of myself showing itself in my sessions, and I worry that my players would see this as resentment or disinterest. If the past year has been any indication, I’ve wanted one thing to come across: I love being a writer and RPG storyteller. Not only is it fun, but it’s also a personal enjoyment and challenge.

(There’s a voice I’m looking forward to trying out. After hearing other Narrators try their Bith voices, which always sound like Kermit the Frog if he had espresso, I wrote a Bith into the session so I could try it out myself. It’s not great, but damn is it entertaining. Pity the players who have to indulge me.)

That said, I’m looking at the calendar and having to make a hard decision. We’re officially in USPS’ “Heavy Season”, so the mail is picking up and the parcel count is hitting offensive levels. I’m going to be extremely busy during the ‘winter months’.

For those readers who are not familiar with the Southern United States, our winter months are still warm and humid, with occasional patches of “Why is it this cold?! It’s only 50 degrees out here! Damn humidity!”

I don’t want to push myself to the point of burnout, so in the interest of keeping the campaigns going, I’m ending my Main Arc Sessions for the year on November 12th, and my Side-Arc availability on November 19th. I’ll start back up January 7th 2023 for both.

That gives me two Main Arc Session nights left for the year after tonight. I wrote this adventure to be full of interesting details and notes for the players to investigate, and the last session showed me that they’re going about the adventure with intellect and patience. Other players in the main group, those who haven’t been able to join the sessions due to their own exhaustion (two of them have infants, so their exhaustion is absolutely valid) chime in with questions over the recordings and mapping out their decisions from ‘behind the scenes’. I’ve also been complimented by how faithful I’ve been to NPCing those characters.

I am enjoying this group far too much to let simple exhaustion from me drive them away from the table.

This is also to say that though I will be closing down my Sessions in mid-November, I will still be (trying) to make daily posts and adding on to the pages for the campaign throughout the Heavy Season. It’s a bit like therapy for me to sit down and add to a universe instead of stewing on the antics of management.

Don’t worry, I won’t take the remainder of the year off from writing altogether. I might have my month off in April next year, but I won’t know until next March and see what Tax Season looks like.

I’m off to handle up on house chores and finalizing details for tonight. I’ve asked Old Man Casey what he’s thought of my challenges so far:

I moved the dog bed to the office for while I’m off work. He approves.

He’s unimpressed and wishes luck to my players. I think.

Stay safe out there, readers!

-JB Swift

10/14 Father-Daughter Breakfast Time

It’s going to be a short post for today.

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.

Stay safe out there, readers!

-JB Swift

10/13 Thursday’s Weather Worries and Readying for the Extra-Long Weekend

“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.

Stay safe out there, readers!

-JB Swift

10/11 Taking Advantage of the Half-Day

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.

-JB Swift

10/10 Laundry Cat!

“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.

Pray for this cat, folks. She’s fine, just dumb.

Stay safe out there, readers.

-JB Swift

10/10 Federal Day Off and Catching Up (Plus Old Man Casey!)

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.

-JB Swift

10/08 “Should I Be Concerned?”

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.

Stay safe out there, readers.

-JB Swift

10/06 Han’s Story

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.

-JB Swift

10/05 Intermittent Typing and Being the Kids’ Encyclopedia

Well, I didn’t completely finish the Side Arc story. I didn’t set my timer for the plot-writing and lost track of time. But I did eventually realize it was after 11PM and went to work on the story for the time remaining to me.

Advice to other writers: when you have multiple projects and are obsessive, set time limits for them when you’re going to write. Otherwise, you get the above result.

I have a feeling that the mail will be “light” today, however. By that, I’m referring to the mail we keep in the front of our trucks on a loading table. The truck designers did not intend for this (having made the LLVs back before home computers were a thing), but those tables are at the perfect height for typing out fiction on a tablet. With a little finagling, I can set up a corner of the table to hold the tablet and whittle away at the story in between streets and during lunch.

That story is getting finished today, by thunder.

But the morning came, and the kids were bundled into the car for school drop-offs. There was a moment while we sat atop a bridge in the morning traffic that Ben gave a shout.

“Dad! The sky looks nice! Take a picture!”

After getting a rear-view mirror dad-stare and amending his demand with ‘please’, and checking to make sure we weren’t about to be moving again, I snagged a shot of what he was talking about.

Good eye, son.

Gotta admit, he was right.

The kids have also discovered two things: that Dad has “Sherlock Holmes for Kids” audiobooks, and what it means to have an encyclopedia named ‘Dad’.

I need more of these, Mark Williams!

They’ve always thought my collection of Holmes interesting, and Han has a youth version of the stories in her bookshelf, but I prefer audiobooks while driving and I let them pick the book for the ride. The “Red-Headed League” is easily their favorite, especially since it brings up questions.

“What’s an encyclopedia?” Han asked. I gave her a simplified answer and told her about the nearly 100-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica we have on our bookshelves, as an inheritance from my grandfather. Of course, the “Red-Headed League” also gave multiple examples of what to find in Section A of the Britannica, and both kids wanted to know everything about those words.

I knew when we started having children that I’d be tasked with answering questions for the rest of my life, but now I feel justified in my nerdy reading of encyclopedias, as I’ve apparently become one for these two.

With that, the kids are off to school, and I’m off to handle mail and whatever management is going to try for the morning drama.

Stay safe out there, readers.

-JB Swift