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 Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 1:08 pm
Marcella stood over her pair of cloth book bags as she waited in line in front of the Sovereign Heights book store to sell half her texts back. As with her fall semester, she had shelled out on hardcover books and then barely used half of them. At least this semester, her anatomy book had proved actually genuinely helpful, and she planned to keep that one. Money was not too big an issue, at least, but selling back the other piles of now-useless texts at least meant she would not have to pack them, or carry them, or find space for them at home.
The line inched forward, and the girl bent down to pick up her two bags and waddled up a few more steps. Her turn to hold the door open for the next few minutes, it looked like; Marcella just plunked her bags down to prop it open. Her selection of texts to get rid of this year were not too overly heavy, but she had anticipated the line and was thankful she had decided not to just carry them. She had already been here about six minutes, and, now that she could see inside the store, the brown-haired girl could see that the queue snaked around once or twice more inside.
Such an awesome day to forget to charge her phone.
Crossing her arms, she chanced a look at the person behind her in line and sighed, "I sure hope they at least take my Statistics book back this time. I refuse to believe that the field advances enough in one year to completely render all four-hundred and eighty pages, and one hundred-forty dollars of book obsolete."
She was not usually desperate to engage strangers in conversation, but Marcella thought she might start to lose her marbles, having no one to text or talk to for what looked like perhaps another twenty minutes in line.
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Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:23 am
He had been very glad when he'd started at SH that his parents had left him enough money to take care of school and his living arrangements if he was careful. He knew college books were expensive, everyone said they were, but the prices on some of them were just insane. Even more so when you took in that in a year they'd be rendered useless because someone changed a sentence or changed the color of a diagram.
He had decided to keep a few of his books though. Most of the art ones he'd gotten were staying with him and he'd decided that he rather liked the anthropology book. The rest could go back and hopefully give him some extra cash for next years books.
If he ever made it through line.
Cordy was in class so she couldn't text him and he'd figured he'd have to spend the whole time listening to his own head. Which wasn't bad company but could get old.
The girl in line in front of him seemed to have other ideas and he looked over, eyes slightly wide in surprise, as she spoke to him. "Hm... oh ... math books." he grinned slightly. "They like changing diagram colors and rendering the whole book useless because of it.
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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 1:10 pm
"It's almost wasteful, you know?" she replied, nudging her bags with one toe. "Printing all those things over and over again with only different colors. I really hope we find a better way to do this in the next decade or so." She laughed once. "Or better yet, by next semester."
Marcella looked up at the sun and squirmed a little; it was getting a little warm to stand outside, when the breeze was not blowing. Moving into the doorway would put her too awkwardly close to the next person in line, even if it would get her out of the direct light. Oh well, hopefully just a few more minutes.
Then she smiled faintly at her line buddy. "Ah, sorry, I totally forgot to plug in my phone last night and it ended up running out on me about half an hour ago. I hope you don't mind if I'm a little chatty."
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Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 12:53 pm
"I think some colleges have gone to digital text books now." He nodded slightly as he shifted his grip on his own stack of books. "No wasteful printing and when they get a new addition you can just upgrade yours. Not sure how easy that would be given that i like being able to look things up in an actual book but i'm sure there are a lot of people who like it." He'd read about the books in an article while looking up colleges to attend. Having them portable would mean you could study on the bus or anywhere.
"No I ... i don't mind." He blushed slightly. "I'm sorry if i'm not as chatty." He was usually too shy to bother being chatty with anyone. "I'm not trying to be rude though ... just ..."
and he was bad at that too. How to you explain to someone 'yea i don't really like people so i don't talk. Persons can be okay though' without sounding like a pretentious doucebag?
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:49 pm
Marcella made a casual dismissive gesture. "Oh, it's fine, don't worry about it," she replied, shaking her head. "It's fine if you don't want to talk, sorry. I am usually not very talkative, myself, but I guess the end of the year has just been wearing on me a little." Not so she would vent to random strangers, but striking up conversation was not out of the question. And this guy looked admittedly a bit more interesting to talk to than some of the other folks she had seen around campus.
"I guess if we went digital, they would still find ways to charge us every year for superfluous things anyway, though," Marcella added with a small sigh after a moment. "But at least they wouldn't be so heavy."
A thought struck her then, and she tugged her purse open and rummaged around inside it before pulling out what looked like a wad of woven hemp fishnet. "Oh, I do still have this," the brown-haired girl murmured to herself, then untangled it slightly before offering it to the boy behind her in line. "If you wanna borrow this just till we get inside or whatever, it's one of those reusable bags. Might help keep your stuff together better so you can set it down if you want. It holds a lot more than it looks like it does."
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:53 am
"They would probably still charge for updates but it would be cheaper. With a digital copy you wouldn't have to buy all the pages over again." He smiled slightly. The book companies would probably make you re-buy the whole thing at some point if you had it long enough but it would be better than a whole new addition who's only change was a word being added somewhere.
As she dug out the bag and handed it to him he blinked slightly. He wasn't used to random strangers being so nice. "T-thanks ..." He took the bag and unfolded it completely before kneeling down to tuck his books into ti so he could lug them easier.
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 10:45 am
"Just make sure I get it back," she added, though her tone did not indicate that she doubted he would.
The line shifted a few more inches forward, and Marcella moved her bag up, then leaned against the door herself to hold it open. Chilly air streamed out of the open door; the air conditioner was likely running overtime with everyone holding the door open, even though it was not too hot out.
Then she abruptly remembered that she had not introduced herself. "Oh, I'm sorry," she told him, twisting so she could extend her right hand while still bracing her body against the door. "My name is Marcella, by the way. Pre-med student, so the only excuse I'll take for them not buying most of my texts back is if the human race has made some drastic physiological evolution in the last three months."
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 8:48 am
"I'll give it back ... promise." He didn't really have a sue for a bag like that. He had his own reusable bags for when he went grocery shopping he just hadn't thought to bring one along for his books. He'd have to remember next time.
When she held out her hand he smiled slightly and shook it carefully, it was obvious he wasn't used to talking to people. "Lucien, I"m a photography student. Which is why i keep most of my books." At least he kept all the fine arts books.
"Is pre-med fun? I would think it would be really hard"
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Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2011 7:32 pm
The brown-haired girl nodded, then bent down to move her own book bags slightly again once the handshake was complete. "How is photography?" she inquired after a moment. "Like, the classes, I guess? I know how to press the button on a digital camera, myself, but that's about it. What sorts of things do you learn? Mostly film cameras, no?"
In response to his questions about her own field, Marcella nodded and shrugged lightly. "It's hard, and there's a lot of studying, but I think it's very rewarding." She chewed her lip and slowly crossed her arms before adding, "Especially lately. Just, around." The girl was never eager to talk about all the goings-on in town when she could avoid it but ... well, it was sort of difficult to avoid the subject, especially in her line of study.
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:40 am
"I think it's fun." He smiled again. "You learn all sorts of things. Color theory, lighting, what looks good in a frame and how to make interesting images, perspective. Then there are all the technical things, different digital cameras, the old film ones, lenses and that sort of things. I like mostly digital but i do have a couple of old camera's that were my mothers that i play with some times. Sadly i try not to all that often since there are people in my classes who are convinced it's not real photography if it's digital and it's ... well sad. I think someone called them ... hipsters." He scrunched his nose slightly and shook his head.
Oddly the best way to get him to ramble was to make him talk about pictures. At her answer he frowned slightly. "... all the attacks and things?" He was pretty sure he'd helped put enough people in the hospital or doctors waiting rooms. Not to mention the wounds he'd gotten himself.
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 6:53 pm
Marcella listened intently, taking in the information with interest. She really did not believe herself to have an artistic bone in her body, in spite of her mother reassuring her that medicine was an art. In spite of that, though, she was at least vaguely familiar with the terminology, and so she more or less followed what he told her.
"You must be able to get a whole lot of variety in the images with different cameras, I guess?" she replied. "I've seen some photographers with two or three around their necks, and I guess they must really make a difference." Marcella laughed lightly at the mention of hipsters and added, "I say use whatever camera you want, if you think it'll work. If you know your own tools, digital versus film, then who cares what they think?"
Then he brought up the attacks specifically, and Marcella wilted slightly, and nodded. "Yeah, the attacks. We do what we can, and most of the time everything works out, but it's still busy." Draining, too, honestly, but the girl would never admit that, certainly not to someone she had just met.
But to turn the subject back to his apparent comfort zone, "There's all kinds of new technology in medicine right now, though, and that's interesting to learn about. To think that we can look inside people in all sorts of ways without having to make a single cut now, and then with a lot of surgery, the surgeon can just stick a camera inside and make a lot smaller cut to do the same work." The small smile reappeared. "Digital cameras for the surgery, and film cameras for the x-rays, so I guess we've got both, too."
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Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:16 pm
"Some times people just have multiple cameras so that they don't have to change lenses. You just put a different lense on each camera and you can get the picture you want without the hastle. I've always thought that was a bit heavy." And he really liked his camera and didn't feel like lugging around a ton of them.
He wasn't surprised that the doctors and things were a bit buckled under all the attacks. He couldn't really tell her about it but he was trying to make it so they didn't happen so often.
"I read an article not long ago abut the sorts of surgeries you can do without actually cutting into someone. It seems like something out of a scifi movie but it's great that we've come that far." He smiled.
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Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:57 pm
"I would feel weird carrying a bunch of cameras," Marcella agreed. "The fancy ones are expensive and I would be afraid of breaking something." She gestured to the necklace she was wearing, with three chain strands. "I'm always getting these caught on things no matter how hard I try to avoid it. I shudder to think what I could do to a camera."
She brightened at mention of all the latest surgical technology and nodded in agreement again. "Yeah, it makes me excited to see how things will change during my life time. In all fields, really, but of course I am biased towards medicine since that's what I'm interested in." Sighing a little, she glanced upwards. "We should have some serious R and D money going into Destiny City University to develop monster repellant, too." The brown-haired girl laughed once then shook her head. "Sorry."
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Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:39 pm
"Somehow i think that it would take way more money than the city is willing to spend to get rid of the monsters." He grinned slightly. He knew enough already to know it would take more than just some repellent and pepper spray to get rid of a youma. It would be funny to see the government try to figure something out though. "You don't have to be sorry, everyone seems to want to talk about it on some level. I'd almost be tempted to get my cameras out and take pictures so at least the press would have something factual to go on ... but i'd rather not get eaten you know?"
That and he was usually a little too busy trying not to get chomped on for trying to dust them.
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Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2012 1:58 pm
The brown-haired girl's response was a wordless nod. She did rather wish that the senshi were not fighting unfavorable media portrayal in addition to all the monsters that plagued the city, and was pleased to hear that it sounded like her partner in waiting felt similarly.
"Yeah, I guess everyone just gets scared and will listen to whatever anyone on TV will say about the monsters." She sighed, then inched up further in the queue and moved her bag of books up alongside her feet again. "Maybe there are places on the internet to upload them? I mean, all kinds of news happens on Twitter and things." She made a mental note as she spoke the words that it might be a good idea to get on Twitter in order to keep an extra eye out for monster happenings.
She spaced out for a moment, mind wandering to her own recent youma encounters, and failed to notice right away the bookstore had opened up a new cash register for textbook buybacks. The newly-arrived cashier beckoned to Marcella and she appeared not to quite see him.
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