Skook Words (and Pictures) #16

It’s time to Friday like you’ve never Fridayed before!

These Days …


I made one of my customers’ HOA newsletters! Specifically, one of the residents took a photo of me as I put mail into one of their new CBUs (Cluster Box Units). For more than a year a big condo development on my route has been undergoing renovation. The buildings were constructed in the 70s and, almost 50 years later, needed some serious work. Construction crews have been tearing off the sidings, the roofs and pretty much everything else – replacing the old rotting materials with new shiny ones. As part of the renovation they installed new CBUs for the mail.

The CBUs come without master postal locks. Those locks have to installed by an official USPS locksmith using locks and keys specific to the zip code where the CBUs are located. In Seattle, I’m told, there is only one guy who installs those official locks. None of our stations get to keep locks on hand. In Seattle there’s a construction boom. New buildings are going up everywhere. New buildings mean new mailboxes.

Those new CBUs were installed on my route at the end of 2022. The locks for the CBUs were installed in April, 2023. But only for the boxes on 25th. The boxes on 26th are still waiting for their locks. Hopefully they won’t have to waiting until 2024. The old CBUs on 26th are a mess. I’m really looking forward to seeing them go away.

The Unpublished

For this week’s pictures I’m presenting galleries of illustrations from a couple of the adventures from that never to see print book of WW1 Call of Cthulhu scenarios. These two had nautical settings.

Medusa’s Garden

These illustrations were for a scenario in which American sailors discover the weirdly mummified bodies of a troop of Japanese sailors. The goal of the adventure was to figure out what had happened to the Japanese while avoiding the same fate.

In Which German U-boat Sailors are the Good Guys

During WW1 the Germans got painted with a lot of negative propaganda. In this scenario, the German characters got to be heroes, facing down halfbreed Deep Ones, a corrupt bishop, a cadre of worm sorcerers, and rescuing some orphan kids from sacrifice – twice. This is assuming the players succeed. In Call of Cthulhu roleplaying, success is not guaranteed.

And that’s it for this week. May the next week treat you well. May you treat yourself and others well.

See you in seven!

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Tuesday Night Party Club #43

Gallery – Mansions of Madness

The first interior illustrations I did withr Chaosium was for Basic Roleplaying. My gallery of that work can be found here.

My second interior job was in 2007 for an updated edition of Mansions of Madness. I illustrated a scenario featuring of family of inbred weirdoes.Some of these folks were hideous but harmless. Others would happily have you for lunch.

 

Soty Seed #92
Floating

Have you ever had a dream where you remembered that you could float? You start to swim through the air. You never get very high but, as long as you remember you can do it you can move without having to touch the ground. When you forget you can float gravity pulls you gently down.

Imagine that people develop the ability to … not exactly fly but to defy gravity as long as they think about it and make some effort. They can still walk and stand and sit but they can also swim through the air. How would that affect the world? How would that affect the way we interact with each other?

Recommendation

I know that Halloween hasn’t passed yet, much less Thanksgiving, but if you’re the sort that likes to get ahead of things you’re already thinking about Christmas. And if you the sort who likes sending weird Christmas cards take a look at these offered by Studio Wondercabinet. I used to have breakfast with a lively group of folks including Heather and Daniel on a regular basis. They are talented, delightful people and well worth sending your money to.

Local News

The biggest thing that happened last week was me starting to wear my new glasses. My sight has been getting dodgier in the last year. Things were appearing blurrier in both the near space and the distance so I finally got my prescription updated.

I got two sets of glasses, a reader pair and a pair with graduated lenses for general use. I didn’t use either pair at first. I’d gotten used to drawing and working at the computer without them so I kept forgetting about the reader pair. I really only started wearing the reader pair after I started wearing the general pair delivering mail.

About a third of my deliveries are mounted – that is, I drive my truck to a mailbox, pull the mail out of trays on my left and then insert the mail into the box through my right side window. The weather has been gettig grey, more clouds and light rain and, with evening arriving soon, most of the daylight has been dim. It’s hard enough to read the 10 point (sometimes 8 point) fonts on the mail in regular light much less twilight. I was starting to have to hold the mail up to my face before I passed it into the mailbox. Not only did that make delivery slower it felt embarrassing.

Wearing my glasses while doing the mounted part of my route makes a huge difference. I can read the addresses in the trays. I have to drive a little slower because I’m not used to how the glasses make the rest of the world look but that’s fine.

Once I’d started wearing the glasses at work I thought to try them out at home. And now I can see the details in the television shows we watch in the evenings. And I can read the titles of the books in my library from across the room. Walking while wearing them is still a little weird. I don’t wear them while doing the walking parts of my route. They throw off my proprioception.

I hope your week has gone well. Thank you for reading. Take care of yourself and those you care about. Practice floating.