Bad Ass Bitch Survival Guide; Tuesday, Second Period [09/4].

[died8yearsago]

Students coming to class that morning would find a sign posted on the classroom door:

Gym Today
Last one there is the punching bag.

And when they got to the gym, they'd find Rosa there with a practice dummy and mats covering the floor. She checked her watch and when it was time for class to start, she launched right into.

"Okay, so, today, we're doing hand-to-hand combat and defense," she informed them. "Hope you're wearing clothes you can move in, but, hey, look. If not, I dug up these super cool and stylish gym uniforms you can put on if you need to. They might even be clean.

"Any Bad Ass Bitch should be able to defend herself against anything, and weapons are great, but you're not always going to have them or they might not always be the best choice for a situation. There are three things that you can usually have on you at all times that'll make a hand-to-hand situation swing further in your favor, and that's a knife," to which she pulled a switchblade out from behind her, let it flash open, then twirled it back in a smooth, steady movement, and when her hand came back around she displayed the next item, "brass knuckles," hand into her pocket and she pulled out a small container, "Mace. They're small, easy to get to, and can help out a lot in a difficult situation, especially knives. Good knives can go just about anywhere; five bucks to whoever manages to guess exactly how many knives I've got on me just now.

"Raise your hand if you're already familiar with hand-to-hand combat."

She was...not at all surprised by the response there, and she had to grin a bit faintly. "Good. Those of you who aren't, pay attention, you're going to get the most out of this. Those of you who are, same thing. Never hurts to brush up on your basics.

"Hands are just as much weapons as knives or axes or guns, only not as much fun or as cool because nearly everyone has them. To attack, best places to hit on the body are..." And as she lifted them, she delivered a deft and precisely blow to each spot on the dummy, and, if it looked a little like a dance when she did it, well...rest assured, her ballet training was clearly going to good use now. "Eyes, nose, groin, knees, solar plexus, knees, fingers, and...my personal favorite...throat!"

"Let's say you can't get that first attack in, though, they've got the upper hand. First, protect anything they can use against you, and that's usually things they can grab onto. Long hair, baggy clothes, hoop earrings, whatever those things on Blue's head are,"--sorry, Vette--, "can all be used against you, so don't even let them close. And then go in for a defensive move to subdue the attacker, and that's what we're learning today.

"Okay, Braids," she gestured to Uma, who'd been the last person to walk through the gym door according to the RNG, "you're up. You think I was joking about the punching bag thing? Don't worry, it'll just be a demonstration, I'm a trained professional, you'll be fine, just go along with it, okay? I'm going to teach you all a few simple moves for getting out of some of the most basic attacks. Punching Bag here's going to come at me, and I'll demonstrate. Alright, first one, grab for my arm..."

In addition to the arm grab, she had Uma also exhibit a grab from behind, a choke hold, and a hair grab, explaining what she was doing as she went through the motions, with some bonus body throws. Hey, she didn't drag those mats out here for nothing.

And if she might have finished some of those with a little twist and kneel like she was about to handcuff Uma, well...that was just habit.

"Good job," she told her when they were finished, gesturing for her to rejoin her classmates. "What I want you guys to do now is pair up and practice with each other. Those of you with experience, try to help those without. If any of you feel more comfortable having me going over it in a little more detail first, come see me, otherwise I'll be walking around and correcting all your terrible forms. Please be careful, take your time, be aware, and try not to actually injure anyone. I'm sure Dr. Yang is bored as balls down at the clinic, but I sure as hell don't want to fill out that paperwork. Any questions before we begin?"

Cooking 101, Tuesday, Period 1

[glacial_queen]

"Today, we're making pesto!" Karla announced to the class because I live out my dreams through RP. "Pesto is a nice, basic, easy recipe, with very little cooking involved at all. It's one of my Consort's favorite meals and he practically begged me to focus on this today as our first real lesson."

Mostly out of a hope of minimizing damage. Warren had your back, y'all.

"It has a bright, summery taste and it just seems fancy, so once you've perfected a recipe, it's something you can make fast and easy, but people are really impressed," Karla continued. "It's also really versatile. You can have it over bread or over pasta, you can have it with no meat or with chicken or pork or fish. It makes a good appetizer or a perfectly fine dinner. At its most basic, pesto is basil, garlic, olive oil, and cheese. But as you get more confident, you can start adding more things: pine nuts, lemon, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, spinach for...I dunno. Reasons? Cook likes sneaking other vegetables into it, probably as punishment for whatever we've done as a family to deserve more spinach in things."

So, in five minutes, when you were wondering how the household didn't starve with Karla cooking for them, there was the answer: a cook.

"We're going to start with an intermediate pesto recipe, but feel free to scale back a little if you're feeling uncertain when it's your turn," Karla said. "So, pesto with pine nuts over pasta. First thing you wanna do is put on a pot of water to boil. I'm using a smaller pot so it boils faster," she explained, putting a pot that was way too small for the amount of pasta she had out. Maybe some of it was for show? "A smart chef flavors the water before boiling the noodles, so add some salt to the water before it boils." Definitely a big handful like the amount Karla just threw in, good job class. "While that's waiting, start toasting your pine nuts." Normally, that meant putting them into a pan over a very low heat. Karla grabbed a toaster off the counter and poured them into the slats, then pushed down the lever. "Make sure you have two different toasters if you're gonna do this," she instructed. "One for bread, one for nuts. Otherwise, you end up with breadcrumbs in your pesto and nobody wants that."

There was a whole lot going on here that nobody wanted, honestly. "Next, take your basil. At home, we have to strip off the leaves from the plant, but here, you can buy whole packages in the store that's just pre-stripped basil leaves. So convenient. Anyway, take a whole bunch of leaves and shove them into a food processor. I mean, you can do it the old-fashioned way, which is mincing it by hand with a knife? But...why? Food processors are faster and easier and, honestly, if I were going to be teaching a class on knifework, it would be for stabbing, not cooking." And also, she'd probably leave it to Surreal to teach anyway. "If you want to know how to mince by hand, go find Dr. Lecter. He's probably got a class on kitchen tools. Me? Well, there's a reason I leave the general prep work to the apprentices and journeymaids of the coven. Ain't got time for that."

Karla finished shoving all the basic she'd brought for the demonstration into the food processor. "First, you chop up the basil," she explained, while the toaster behind her started to smoke a little. "Hands down, questions will be answered at the end. So, first, let's get this all chopped up." She cranked the dial all the way to the highest setting and turned it on, instantly obliterating the leaves and turning them practically to a liquid. "Yeah, okay, so that's looking a little watery in there right now," Karla said loudly to be heard over the high-pitched whine of the processor, "but that's why you add the pine nuts. Thickens it right up!"

The smoke from the toaster was getting thicker now. "While that's chopping--" more pureeing, really "--check your water. If it's boiling, you can add your pasta." A little surprising that the water was already boiling, considering the concentration of salt, but then, she hadn't used a lot. "Dump your pasta in." She added far too much pasta for the volume of the pot or the water "And then go back over and start adding the rest of your ingredients for the pesto!" The processor was still madly whirring along. "So, for pesto, you need garlic and powdered cheese. I got garlic salt because, again, I didn't want to chop anything." She also set out a container of bright orange cheddar cheese powder. Anyone looking close enough to the bottle would see that it wasn't even real cheese, but cheese product. "So next you add these and the olive oil to the basil and--"

Karla hadn't bothered turning off the food processor. Instead she just pried off the lid and tried dumping everything into the top. Instead, to the surprise of likely nobody but Karla, the contents went spattering everywhere, hurled out at high velocity: the basil, the stream of olive oil, and a cloud of garlic salt and fake orange cheese.

And that's when the toaster burst into flames.

Practical Ethics, Tuesday, Period 3

[jedigrammarians]

"Hello again," Anakin said from the front of the class.

Aphra waved at them. "So we realised we never did introductions last week." Because you derailed the conversation, Dr I-used-to-work-for-Darth-Vader.

Details! "And we could probably figure it out eventually," Anakin said, "but this seems more expedient. So today, you give us your name, and then two truths and a lie about yourself. And we'll all try to guess the lie."

"For example, I'm a rogue archeologist, I once defeated an insane immortal Jedi, and I think Skywalker's hair looks great." Aphra trusted that everyone would be able to pick up on the blatant, completely unbelievable lie about Anakin's hair.

Anakin's glare said that he didn't need the Jedi mind-reading skills to know which was her lie. "I'm a Jedi, I have five children, and I've been teaching here since 2007," he said, making all the muns feel ancient.

He pointed at the person least likely to be paying attention at the moment. "You. Go."