Construction Post: TOMU 2-48
11/28/2011
4:30-5:00 - ~500 words
6:00-6:30 - ~1000 words (+500)
6:30-7:00 - ~1300 words (+300)
[Beginning. There may be a bit more at the actual start of the chapter.]
"Well, I should get back," Nicki said, jerking her head towards the crystal station.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't mean to keep you from your friend."
"Oh, I wasn't planning on hanging out with Tasha the whole time," Nicki said. "I mean, she's working, right? But she has a big tendency to get flustered when she's doing something she doesn't have a lot of experience with, so I'm basically going to pop back and distract her any time she looks like she's about to blow. If that makes sense."
"That actually sounds like a really helpful thing to do," I said.
"You think?" Nicki said. "I can introduce you to her when she gets a break. That is, if you're not busy with your own friends."
"Well, we are planning on hanging out, but... it's hanging out," I said. "You don't exactly have to fill out a card or make a reservation to do it."
"Good point," she said. "Sorry, I'm overthinking... or underthinking and overworrying. Man, how did you get to be so cool about everything?"
She dashed back towards the table where the crystal jockeys were setting things up before I had a chance to come up with a response, though that honestly wasn't saying a whole lot. She could have dropped to the ground and inched her way back on her stomach and I still wouldn't have been able to come up with much before she was out of conversational earshot.
Cool? It might have made a tiny bit of sense if she'd been a freshman or something, but she'd started school at the same time I had... and I knew she'd been a witness to at least one occasion that had probably been pretty embarrassing to me at the time, though I didn't know which one because I wasn't about to press her for more details. Whenever it had been, it had happened and I couldn't change or hide it... did my seemingly blithe acceptance of that seem cool to her?
My freshman year hadn't lacked for excitement, though it hadn't been all good excitement... and I certainly hadn't been particularly cool about handling it.
[]
There was definitely something to be said for an outdoor dance. Having it out in the open air in a space where the boundaries were just lines on the ground and not actual walls allowed for more of a general party atmosphere than did a dance in a darkened salle or conference room. The dance had not even officially started yet, and already there were people setting up their own folding chairs off to the side of the pent, tossing around beanbags, and fighting with light mock weapons... the sort of thing that people tended to do on the pent during weekends anyway
The part of the school year where the weather was still summery and schedules were still light was a big time for dances, and there was never a shortage of campus groups looking to attract a little attention or demonstrate their hipness and with-itude.
[1 hour in.]
The compliment made me blush, and not just because it was a compliment but because it felt undeserved. Depths? I spent way too much time in my own head, but just because I had a head full of thoughts didn't mean they were deep.
What did I say to something like that?
"Thanks," was the word that came out of my mouth, eventually. It seemed safe... polite... and more than a little inadequate. If nothing else, I thought it might do something to help correct her impression.
"Well, I should get back," Nicki said, jerking her head towards the crystal station where a girl with a pair of tight, bouncy pigtails and a face full of piercings was looking increasingly frustrated with her attempts to align a pair of echo crystals while a skinny guy with a shaved head looked on with a look of mild amusement.
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to keep you from your friend."
"Oh, I wasn't planning on hanging out with Tasha the whole time," Nicki said. "I mean, she's working, right? But she has a big tendency to get flustered when she's doing something she doesn't have a lot of experience with, so I'm basically going to pop back and distract her any time she looks like she's about to blow... if that makes sense."
"That actually sounds like a really helpful thing to do," I said.
"You think?" Nicki said. "She was my roommate for half of one semester last year... we didn't really make good roommates, but she's probably my best friend now. I can introduce you to her when she gets a break? That is, if you're not busy with your own friends."
"Well, we are planning on hanging out, but... it's hanging out," I said. "You don't exactly have to fill out a card or make a reservation to do it."
"Good point," she said. "Sorry, I'm overthinking... or underthinking and overworrying. Man, how did you get to be so cool about everything?"
She dashed back towards the table where the crystal jockeys were setting things up before I had a chance to come up with a response, though that honestly wasn't saying a whole lot. She could have dropped to the ground and inched her way back on her stomach and I still wouldn't have been able to come up with much before she was out of conversational earshot.
Cool? It might have made a tiny bit of sense if she'd been a freshman or something, but she'd started school at the same time I had... and I knew she'd been a witness to at least one occasion that had probably been pretty embarrassing to me at the time, though I didn't know which one because I wasn't about to press her for more details. Whenever it had been, it had happened and I couldn't change or hide it... did my seemingly blithe acceptance of that seem cool to her?
My freshman year hadn't lacked for excitement, though it hadn't all been good excitement... and I certainly hadn't been particularly cool about handling it. Was that all it took to impress Nicki? It would have been easy to assume so, but she also seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know me. That and the fact that she was good friends with someone she'd apparently had a rough start with made me think that she was probably not all superficial... even if she did have some strange ideas about depths.
I didn't want to spend the whole evening wrapped up in my thoughts, so I stopped to take a look around the pent.
The dance had not even officially started yet, and already there were people setting up their own folding chairs off to the side of the pent, tossing around beanbags, and fighting with light mock weapons... the sort of thing that people tended to do on the pent during weekends anyway. Other people who were probably with the student activity committee were releasing floating paper lanterns in some kind of rough pattern.
There was definitely something to be said for an outdoor dance. Having it out in the open air in a space where the boundaries were just lines on the ground and not actual walls allowed for more of a general party atmosphere than did a dance in a darkened salle or conference room.
The part of the school year where the weather was still summery and schedules were still light was a big time for dances, and there was never a shortage of campus groups looking to attract a little attention or demonstrate their hipness and with-itude.
[]
I recalled an incident from early on in the previous year, from when we'd all sat at the same table every day in the lunch room, simply because it had been in a corner and big enough to accommodate us. There had been no plan to claim the table, and no sense of entitlement to it... but apparently in the eyes of some of the other students, it had become our table.
[]
I believe there was some racism in play there. We weren't the only group that sat in the same area again and again. Possibly the human student who'd confronted me over claiming the table in the corner had even had a favorite table he tended to sit at. Probably every time he glared at us across the cafeteria for using the same table for every meal, he'd had to look past several apparently human students doing the same thing. It only bothered him because it was us... table-hogging only became a thing when we did it.
[]
[1.5 hours]
The compliment made me blush, and not just because it was a compliment but because it felt undeserved. Depths? I spent way too much time in my own head, but just because I had a head full of thoughts didn't mean they were deep.
What did I say to something like that?
"Thanks," was the word that came out of my mouth, eventually. It seemed safe... polite... and more than a little inadequate. If nothing else, I thought it might do something to help correct her impression.
"Well, I should get back," Nicki said, jerking her head towards the crystal station where a girl with a pair of tight, bouncy pigtails and a face full of piercings was looking increasingly frustrated with her attempts to align a pair of echo crystals while a skinny guy with a shaved head looked on with a look of mild amusement.
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to keep you from your friend."
"Oh, I wasn't planning on hanging out with Tasha the whole time," Nicki said. "I mean, she's working, right? But she has a big tendency to get flustered when she's doing something she doesn't have a lot of experience with, so I'm basically going to pop back and distract her any time she looks like she's about to blow... if that makes sense."
"That actually sounds like a really helpful thing to do," I said.
"You think?" Nicki said. "She was my roommate for half of one semester last year... we didn't really make good roommates, but she's probably my best friend now. I can introduce you to her when she gets a break? That is, if you're not busy with your own friends."
"Well, we are planning on hanging out, but... it's hanging out," I said. "You don't exactly have to fill out a card or make a reservation to do it."
"Good point," she said. "Sorry, I'm overthinking... or underthinking and overworrying. Man, how did you get to be so cool about everything?"
She dashed back towards the table where the crystal jockeys were setting things up before I had a chance to come up with a response, though that honestly wasn't saying a whole lot. She could have dropped to the ground and inched her way back on her stomach and I still wouldn't have been able to come up with much before she was out of conversational earshot.
Cool? It might have made a tiny bit of sense if she'd been a freshman or something, but she'd started school at the same time I had... and I knew she'd been a witness to at least one occasion that had probably been pretty embarrassing to me at the time, though I didn't know which one because I wasn't about to press her for more details. Whenever it had been, it had happened and I couldn't change or hide it... did my seemingly blithe acceptance of that seem cool to her?
My freshman year hadn't lacked for excitement, though it hadn't all been good excitement... and I certainly hadn't been particularly cool about handling it. Was that all it took to impress Nicki, though? It would have been easy to assume so, but she also seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know me. That and the fact that she was good friends with someone she'd apparently had a rough start with made me think that she was probably not all superficial... even if she did have some strange ideas about depths.
I didn't want to spend the whole evening wrapped up in my thoughts. It especially seemed like a bad idea to try to get a handle on who Nicki was and why she thought the things she did when I barely knew what she thought, so I stopped to take a look around at the preparations for the dance. The part of the school year where the weather was still summery and schedules were still light was a big time for dances, and there was never a shortage of campus groups looking to attract a little attention or demonstrate their hipness and with-itude.
This wasn't the first outdoor dance I'd seen, but it was the biggest... in the wake of Leda's highly publicized death, the school had taken a slightly less laissez-faire approach to campus security and had supposedly made a few alterations to the protective enchantments around the school. Officially students who went out after dark were still taking their lives into their own hands... except for times when they weren't.
It was an open secret that they were capable of strengthening the protections during times like the beginning of a semester or around midterms or finals or during an important skirmish match, but the powers that be seemed to have reasons for keeping campus life on the hazardous side. Learning how to cope with mortal peril was considered part of a well-rounded education, after all. I doubted that any of that had changed, but the university leadership had decided to leaven the terror with more "safe" events. Hence the start of year dance had been moved from the big conference room in the union to the open space just outside it.
There was definitely something to be said for an outdoor dance. Having it out in the open air in a space where the boundaries were just lines on the ground and not actual walls allowed for more of a general party atmosphere than did a dance in a darkened salle or conference room.
The dance had not even officially started yet, and already there were people setting up their own folding chairs off to the side of the pent, tossing around beanbags, and fighting with light mock weapons... the sort of thing that people tended to do on the pent during weekends anyway. The dance organizers, other students from the activity committee... were shooing them away from the actual grass space so they could get stuff set up. Some of them were releasing floating paper lanterns to provide a lighted ceiling for the dance floor.
It was probably not actually necessary, since the pent was completely encircled... or enpentagoned... with glowing paths anyway, but it gave a nice sense of this is the dance floor, this is where the dance is happening. The CJ station was set up on the edge of the paved plaza in front of the union, and there were long tables being set up for refreshments there, as well.
"Okay," Nicki said, coming back to rejoin me. "Crisis averted... or postponed.
[]
I recalled an incident from early on in the previous year, from when we'd all sat at the same table every day in the lunch room, simply because it had been in a corner and big enough to accommodate us. There had been no plan to claim the table, and no sense of entitlement to it... but apparently in the eyes of some of the other students, it had become our table.
[]
I believe there was some racism in play there. We weren't the only group that sat in the same area again and again. Possibly the human student who'd confronted me over claiming the table in the corner had even had a favorite table he tended to sit at. Probably every time he glared at us across the cafeteria for using the same table for every meal, he'd had to look past several apparently human students doing the same thing. It only bothered him because it was us... table-hogging only became a thing when we did it.
[]
This entry automatically cross-posted from http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/333882.html. Comment hither or thither. Void where yon.
4:30-5:00 - ~500 words
6:00-6:30 - ~1000 words (+500)
6:30-7:00 - ~1300 words (+300)
[Beginning. There may be a bit more at the actual start of the chapter.]
"Well, I should get back," Nicki said, jerking her head towards the crystal station.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't mean to keep you from your friend."
"Oh, I wasn't planning on hanging out with Tasha the whole time," Nicki said. "I mean, she's working, right? But she has a big tendency to get flustered when she's doing something she doesn't have a lot of experience with, so I'm basically going to pop back and distract her any time she looks like she's about to blow. If that makes sense."
"That actually sounds like a really helpful thing to do," I said.
"You think?" Nicki said. "I can introduce you to her when she gets a break. That is, if you're not busy with your own friends."
"Well, we are planning on hanging out, but... it's hanging out," I said. "You don't exactly have to fill out a card or make a reservation to do it."
"Good point," she said. "Sorry, I'm overthinking... or underthinking and overworrying. Man, how did you get to be so cool about everything?"
She dashed back towards the table where the crystal jockeys were setting things up before I had a chance to come up with a response, though that honestly wasn't saying a whole lot. She could have dropped to the ground and inched her way back on her stomach and I still wouldn't have been able to come up with much before she was out of conversational earshot.
Cool? It might have made a tiny bit of sense if she'd been a freshman or something, but she'd started school at the same time I had... and I knew she'd been a witness to at least one occasion that had probably been pretty embarrassing to me at the time, though I didn't know which one because I wasn't about to press her for more details. Whenever it had been, it had happened and I couldn't change or hide it... did my seemingly blithe acceptance of that seem cool to her?
My freshman year hadn't lacked for excitement, though it hadn't been all good excitement... and I certainly hadn't been particularly cool about handling it.
[]
There was definitely something to be said for an outdoor dance. Having it out in the open air in a space where the boundaries were just lines on the ground and not actual walls allowed for more of a general party atmosphere than did a dance in a darkened salle or conference room. The dance had not even officially started yet, and already there were people setting up their own folding chairs off to the side of the pent, tossing around beanbags, and fighting with light mock weapons... the sort of thing that people tended to do on the pent during weekends anyway
The part of the school year where the weather was still summery and schedules were still light was a big time for dances, and there was never a shortage of campus groups looking to attract a little attention or demonstrate their hipness and with-itude.
[1 hour in.]
The compliment made me blush, and not just because it was a compliment but because it felt undeserved. Depths? I spent way too much time in my own head, but just because I had a head full of thoughts didn't mean they were deep.
What did I say to something like that?
"Thanks," was the word that came out of my mouth, eventually. It seemed safe... polite... and more than a little inadequate. If nothing else, I thought it might do something to help correct her impression.
"Well, I should get back," Nicki said, jerking her head towards the crystal station where a girl with a pair of tight, bouncy pigtails and a face full of piercings was looking increasingly frustrated with her attempts to align a pair of echo crystals while a skinny guy with a shaved head looked on with a look of mild amusement.
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to keep you from your friend."
"Oh, I wasn't planning on hanging out with Tasha the whole time," Nicki said. "I mean, she's working, right? But she has a big tendency to get flustered when she's doing something she doesn't have a lot of experience with, so I'm basically going to pop back and distract her any time she looks like she's about to blow... if that makes sense."
"That actually sounds like a really helpful thing to do," I said.
"You think?" Nicki said. "She was my roommate for half of one semester last year... we didn't really make good roommates, but she's probably my best friend now. I can introduce you to her when she gets a break? That is, if you're not busy with your own friends."
"Well, we are planning on hanging out, but... it's hanging out," I said. "You don't exactly have to fill out a card or make a reservation to do it."
"Good point," she said. "Sorry, I'm overthinking... or underthinking and overworrying. Man, how did you get to be so cool about everything?"
She dashed back towards the table where the crystal jockeys were setting things up before I had a chance to come up with a response, though that honestly wasn't saying a whole lot. She could have dropped to the ground and inched her way back on her stomach and I still wouldn't have been able to come up with much before she was out of conversational earshot.
Cool? It might have made a tiny bit of sense if she'd been a freshman or something, but she'd started school at the same time I had... and I knew she'd been a witness to at least one occasion that had probably been pretty embarrassing to me at the time, though I didn't know which one because I wasn't about to press her for more details. Whenever it had been, it had happened and I couldn't change or hide it... did my seemingly blithe acceptance of that seem cool to her?
My freshman year hadn't lacked for excitement, though it hadn't all been good excitement... and I certainly hadn't been particularly cool about handling it. Was that all it took to impress Nicki? It would have been easy to assume so, but she also seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know me. That and the fact that she was good friends with someone she'd apparently had a rough start with made me think that she was probably not all superficial... even if she did have some strange ideas about depths.
I didn't want to spend the whole evening wrapped up in my thoughts, so I stopped to take a look around the pent.
The dance had not even officially started yet, and already there were people setting up their own folding chairs off to the side of the pent, tossing around beanbags, and fighting with light mock weapons... the sort of thing that people tended to do on the pent during weekends anyway. Other people who were probably with the student activity committee were releasing floating paper lanterns in some kind of rough pattern.
There was definitely something to be said for an outdoor dance. Having it out in the open air in a space where the boundaries were just lines on the ground and not actual walls allowed for more of a general party atmosphere than did a dance in a darkened salle or conference room.
The part of the school year where the weather was still summery and schedules were still light was a big time for dances, and there was never a shortage of campus groups looking to attract a little attention or demonstrate their hipness and with-itude.
[]
I recalled an incident from early on in the previous year, from when we'd all sat at the same table every day in the lunch room, simply because it had been in a corner and big enough to accommodate us. There had been no plan to claim the table, and no sense of entitlement to it... but apparently in the eyes of some of the other students, it had become our table.
[]
I believe there was some racism in play there. We weren't the only group that sat in the same area again and again. Possibly the human student who'd confronted me over claiming the table in the corner had even had a favorite table he tended to sit at. Probably every time he glared at us across the cafeteria for using the same table for every meal, he'd had to look past several apparently human students doing the same thing. It only bothered him because it was us... table-hogging only became a thing when we did it.
[]
[1.5 hours]
The compliment made me blush, and not just because it was a compliment but because it felt undeserved. Depths? I spent way too much time in my own head, but just because I had a head full of thoughts didn't mean they were deep.
What did I say to something like that?
"Thanks," was the word that came out of my mouth, eventually. It seemed safe... polite... and more than a little inadequate. If nothing else, I thought it might do something to help correct her impression.
"Well, I should get back," Nicki said, jerking her head towards the crystal station where a girl with a pair of tight, bouncy pigtails and a face full of piercings was looking increasingly frustrated with her attempts to align a pair of echo crystals while a skinny guy with a shaved head looked on with a look of mild amusement.
"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to keep you from your friend."
"Oh, I wasn't planning on hanging out with Tasha the whole time," Nicki said. "I mean, she's working, right? But she has a big tendency to get flustered when she's doing something she doesn't have a lot of experience with, so I'm basically going to pop back and distract her any time she looks like she's about to blow... if that makes sense."
"That actually sounds like a really helpful thing to do," I said.
"You think?" Nicki said. "She was my roommate for half of one semester last year... we didn't really make good roommates, but she's probably my best friend now. I can introduce you to her when she gets a break? That is, if you're not busy with your own friends."
"Well, we are planning on hanging out, but... it's hanging out," I said. "You don't exactly have to fill out a card or make a reservation to do it."
"Good point," she said. "Sorry, I'm overthinking... or underthinking and overworrying. Man, how did you get to be so cool about everything?"
She dashed back towards the table where the crystal jockeys were setting things up before I had a chance to come up with a response, though that honestly wasn't saying a whole lot. She could have dropped to the ground and inched her way back on her stomach and I still wouldn't have been able to come up with much before she was out of conversational earshot.
Cool? It might have made a tiny bit of sense if she'd been a freshman or something, but she'd started school at the same time I had... and I knew she'd been a witness to at least one occasion that had probably been pretty embarrassing to me at the time, though I didn't know which one because I wasn't about to press her for more details. Whenever it had been, it had happened and I couldn't change or hide it... did my seemingly blithe acceptance of that seem cool to her?
My freshman year hadn't lacked for excitement, though it hadn't all been good excitement... and I certainly hadn't been particularly cool about handling it. Was that all it took to impress Nicki, though? It would have been easy to assume so, but she also seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know me. That and the fact that she was good friends with someone she'd apparently had a rough start with made me think that she was probably not all superficial... even if she did have some strange ideas about depths.
I didn't want to spend the whole evening wrapped up in my thoughts. It especially seemed like a bad idea to try to get a handle on who Nicki was and why she thought the things she did when I barely knew what she thought, so I stopped to take a look around at the preparations for the dance. The part of the school year where the weather was still summery and schedules were still light was a big time for dances, and there was never a shortage of campus groups looking to attract a little attention or demonstrate their hipness and with-itude.
This wasn't the first outdoor dance I'd seen, but it was the biggest... in the wake of Leda's highly publicized death, the school had taken a slightly less laissez-faire approach to campus security and had supposedly made a few alterations to the protective enchantments around the school. Officially students who went out after dark were still taking their lives into their own hands... except for times when they weren't.
It was an open secret that they were capable of strengthening the protections during times like the beginning of a semester or around midterms or finals or during an important skirmish match, but the powers that be seemed to have reasons for keeping campus life on the hazardous side. Learning how to cope with mortal peril was considered part of a well-rounded education, after all. I doubted that any of that had changed, but the university leadership had decided to leaven the terror with more "safe" events. Hence the start of year dance had been moved from the big conference room in the union to the open space just outside it.
There was definitely something to be said for an outdoor dance. Having it out in the open air in a space where the boundaries were just lines on the ground and not actual walls allowed for more of a general party atmosphere than did a dance in a darkened salle or conference room.
The dance had not even officially started yet, and already there were people setting up their own folding chairs off to the side of the pent, tossing around beanbags, and fighting with light mock weapons... the sort of thing that people tended to do on the pent during weekends anyway. The dance organizers, other students from the activity committee... were shooing them away from the actual grass space so they could get stuff set up. Some of them were releasing floating paper lanterns to provide a lighted ceiling for the dance floor.
It was probably not actually necessary, since the pent was completely encircled... or enpentagoned... with glowing paths anyway, but it gave a nice sense of this is the dance floor, this is where the dance is happening. The CJ station was set up on the edge of the paved plaza in front of the union, and there were long tables being set up for refreshments there, as well.
"Okay," Nicki said, coming back to rejoin me. "Crisis averted... or postponed.
[]
I recalled an incident from early on in the previous year, from when we'd all sat at the same table every day in the lunch room, simply because it had been in a corner and big enough to accommodate us. There had been no plan to claim the table, and no sense of entitlement to it... but apparently in the eyes of some of the other students, it had become our table.
[]
I believe there was some racism in play there. We weren't the only group that sat in the same area again and again. Possibly the human student who'd confronted me over claiming the table in the corner had even had a favorite table he tended to sit at. Probably every time he glared at us across the cafeteria for using the same table for every meal, he'd had to look past several apparently human students doing the same thing. It only bothered him because it was us... table-hogging only became a thing when we did it.
[]
This entry automatically cross-posted from http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/333882.html. Comment hither or thither. Void where yon.