Dice and Danger! [Thurs, 2nd Period]

[wrongkindofsith]

The tavern sim (complete with NPCakin) had been broken out once more. Though this week, there was a marked change, with the tables having various paints, brushes and palettes placed upon them.

"Apparently it's traditional for adventurers to meet in places like this," Cara said, and did you really want them getting creative at this point? Did you?

"And it was already programmed into the machine," Jane admitted. "But it's a good setting for today's activity: bringing your characters to life. With paint."

"In character." SHUT UP. IT WAS META. YOUR GMS WERE NOT FLAILING FOR IDEAS.

"In character," Jane repeated, nodding like it made total sense. "Feel free to talk to each other and figure out how you all might work as a group during this."

So You Want to Be a Detective; Friday, First Period [01/19].

[died8yearsago]

Offering a very different feel from last week's bullpen set-up, the class would find themselves, this time, in the warm and sunny kitchen of a quaint farmhouse, with a big red barn and cows and chickens outside and everything. Some real Country Living, Small Home on the Plains shit right here. And although there was a distinct, lingering scent of freshly baked apple pie in the air, there was, of course, no pie to be seen.

There was, however, an adorable little old grandma.

And Rosa, of course.

"You guys...." There was a smirk on her face, reluctant but nonetheless present, "...actually did a really good job last week." Open praise and a compliment? Don't get used to it! "You really took to the challenge and used your resources and did some pretty good preliminary leg work. We're going to expand on that this week and focus on interrogating and investigating witnesses, which is, honestly, my least favorite part of the job, so it'll be nice to just get it out of the way. So here's your situation: this here," she gestured toward the kindly old woman who looked like she stepped straight out of a book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, "is Esther. Esther here just baked a pie, and, as little old grandmas who bake pies are wont to do, she set it on that," Rosa pointed, "window sill so it could cool."

She shook her head. "Classic rookie mistake, Esther."

Esther, appropriately, hung her head in shame.

"Anyway," Rosa continued, "it's up to you guys to try to figure out who might have stolen the pie by asking around and seeing what kind of narrative or clues you can dredge up out of the likely suspects. Obviously, you have Esther herself you can question. There are two hired farmhands and a milkmaid, as well as the farmer himself...Esther's son....his wife, and their three adorable disgusting little children, ages 14, 9, and 5. There's some snot-nosed little kid from the farm next door who hangs out here all the time, and a vagrant living in the barn that no one else knows about. Esther's husband is dead, but the farmhands insist that he's haunting the place, so who knows, maybe that's a thing, and there's also cows, chickens, a really snooty house cat, a rough and tumble barn cat, and two loyal dogs." She squinted a little. "Maybe a goat? I can't remember. Anyway, this is definitely a serious investigation if I'm including dead people and animals as possible witnesses, but, hey, I've been here long enough to know that at least someone probably is all into the whole ghost whisperer or pet detective angle.

"So to sum up: old lady, missing pie, lots of suspects." Rosa was now moving toward the kitchen table, where there was, fact, a box with a pie in it. "Go figure out who took the damn pie."

With that, she dug a fork in and took a bite of said pie.

"This is a different pie," she informed them, then waved her fork at them impatiently. "Go. You're wasting time, the culprit might already be halfway down to the creek by now, or something."

Feeding Yourself 101, Friday Second Period

[carbsliftthespirit]

"Probably should have covered this last week," Raiden said at the beginning of this week's class, "but this class will focus on human food and food preparation, because that's the majority here, and on American food, because the ingredients and whatnot are the easiest to get your hands on since it's the country we're in. If human food doesn't really work for you, you can adapt things. You can talk to me and we'll figure out how to do it together! So, for now, let's get started with breakfast.

"Now, you don't have to eat breakfast foods at breakfast time. You can eat them any time of the day! My brother sure does. Breakfast for dinner is a classic. But you can't just have cereal and milk for three meals a day. I'm pretty sure that's how you get scurvy.

"Today we're going to cover some of your most basic breakfasts, the ones you don't really need cooking skill for. Cereal and milk is a good one. You don't need access to a stove to make it. You do need refrigeration for the milk. But there are loads of different cereals on the market, so you can find the one you like best...and the same is true for milk these days! I don't know how someone figured out how to milk an almond, but there you go.

"Toast is another good one. You can buy bread at the grocery store or the bakery, and you can put all kinds of things on toast! Butter, jam, avocados, eggs...eggs are next week, don't worry. You can make toast in a toaster or toaster oven, or with butter in a pan on the stove, or under the broiler...even over a fire. And if you burn it, just scrape the burnt part off with a butter knife and pretend it didn't happen!

"And then there's oatmeal. Oatmeal can get a little confusing. Steel-cut, rolled, old-fashioned, what? Just follow the directions and don't panic, and again, you can add toppings like fruit and sweeteners to make it however you want! The easiest form of oatmeal is going to be packets of instant oatmeal that you make with hot water, but today we're going to do something a little fancier: we're going to make a baked oatmeal. This is great because if it's just you you have breakfast for several days, you just have to reheat it in the microwave, or it can serve several people. This recipe uses blueberries and pecans, but it's very flexible. We've got some different fruit and nuts so you can pick your favorites. The recipe also includes some different options for if you have dietary restrictions right in the text, which I think is helpful for beginners who may not already know how to make the swaps--and if you are vegan or have an egg allergy and don't know how to make a flax egg already, please come ask me! Or if you have any other questions or problems with the recipe at all. I'm here to help."

Beaker No!/Beaker Yes! [Friday 1/19, 3rd Period]

[but_mostly_america]

Please pay no attention to the meeping from the snare trap on the ceiling. Beaker had tried to come in like a wrecking ball but noooooo, Sam chose to be un-fun!

How dare the narrative! Sam chose to be dignified and professional!

“Today, students,” Sam began, ignoring the meeps for now, “we shall focus on a very important facet of American Life. Today you shall learn about taxes!”

Don't everyone cheer at once, now.

“I shall be lecturing you alone as my unfortunate colleague is otherwise engaged due to his choice to try and set fire to this stack of tax forms.”

You know, trapped in a trap on the ceiling. That sort of otherwise engaged.

“Your W-2 form is an important item! Once received from your employer you must keep track of it! Otherwise how will you file your taxes? What if you get…” Sam dropped his voice and looked around the room “audited?”

Was the trap on the ceiling swinging? Was Sia’s Chandelier starting to play faintly?

“Now, some of you may never have filed income taxes before. Shame on you! Lucky for you I have prepared a very thorough presentation on the basics of tax law. It should take nearly the remainder of the semester to cover but of course we shall be finished with ample time to file before Tax Day!”

Settle in for a very boring PowerPoint presentation, kids! Very boring!

…was that the sound of a chainsaw? Beaker, no.

Library - Friday

[onlyajones]

When Jo arrived at the library, there to be a lot less shelves that there normally were and upon closer inspection it seemed that some of the shelves had ended up disappearing again.

This ended up making putting the books that she had to reshelve a lot harder since there seemed to be more of them and they were supposed to go on the shelves that had disappeared and in the end she wasn’t entirely sure what she could do with those, so she ended up putting away what she could and focused on trying to tidy things up as much as she could.