This weekend begins the annual week alone after delivering my wife down south to visit her parents. She goes to celebrate their joint birthdays later in the week, deliver all the Christmas presents, get a break from work, and go see the wider family. I do the driving back and forth, doing the 7-hour round trip twice.

But I enjoy the week with evenings home alone – because, of course, the reason I’m not staying along with her is that I have to work next week. This leaves me with time to read, play, or prep as the whim takes me. Usually there is more than a little vegetating in front of the TV watching Star Trek re-runs.

Of course, this week has the scheduled first session of Griffin Island on Monday night and then a Saturday night session of Fellmyr next weekend. I’m also attending The Dice Cup Cafe on Friday evening for a gaming session with a new group… but I’ll talk about that another time. The point is that I am getting plenty of opportunity to play.

My big hope is that I can dig deeper into reading various books that are stacking up at home. Time alone is a great opportunity to sit on the sofa and turn a few dozen pages with largely unbroken focus. This is a rare event in our household and one that I relish. Justin Alexander’s new book is top of the stack.

And that’s about where I am as the week begins… except for a couple of hopeful side projects around getting a face-to-face game. But if you want the skinny on that, you’ll need to check out today’s podcast episode.

Game on!