riverviewlogs | March Catch-All

Entry tags:

March Catch-All - Lola

who: Lola Pacini and YOU.
what: Catch-All
when: March, some are event related, most are just Lola.
where: Work, Residential Floor 2.
warnings: None..? If that changes I'll mark it in a header.

A. Residential Floor 2 - Open to whoever has business being there

It may look like an explosion of stuff on Lola’s bed. Because there is, Lola may have spent a good deal of her stipend on clothes, and make-up. Not so much jewelry because she did that during the festival. The clothes are vaguely organized by ‘type of garment’ and further organized by ‘color.’ But currently she is trying to recreate her make-up case with what she could find here. It wasn't with her when she fell into this world and she's felt practically naked without it. At least she had her phone, if she didn't have that she would feel naked. Almost as naked as, well, being naked.

Lola has mostly kept her chaos to her own bed and nightstand but it has managed to take some of the floor around her bunk as well. She'd apologize but it isn’t her fault she has to share a room!

B. Sunset Diner - Regular

The Sunset looks like it was office space, or a barber shop, or some other space reclaimed and changed into a diner. The name is a good description of the paints, a lot of orange and reds in the room to the right, but blues and blacks to make for twilight and calm colors in the room to the left. Allowing you to pick if you're here for a last bite before heading home for bed, or a wake-up call for a long day or night out. The kitchen filled a space between the two rooms, serving out plates of food to either room easily. Other than that quirk, the Sunset was like any diner with a menu of simple burgers, fries, chickens, fishes, sides, a few salads for those that couldn’t go anywhere else for their rabbit food. And the most valuable food item of all: coffee. In all styles, caffeine levels, and sizes. Normal small, medium, and large sizes. Nothing complicated.

Lola worked in either room, but she stood out a bit more in the sunrise room. Her uniform was a pair of dark slacks and a white shirt under her apron with ‘Lola’ nametag pinned to the breast. “Hi there!” She’s definitely on the friendly side while she works, “What can I start you off with?”

C. Sunset Diner - Blackout

The power had been flickering most of the day, but now it was just… out. Lola handled the change in light with grace and elegan- I’m kidding, she squeaked in surprise and terror. It wasn't a fear of the dark or anything, but a sudden change in light was more than she could handle.

The twilight room was closed, the sunrise room had better window coverage and light from outside. She still greets incoming customers with her usual pep, except, “Hi! Um… the kitchen is open and the grill works, but the coffee machines are kinda dead, we can make coffee but it’ll be just coffee. Nothing fancy.”

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Diner? Oh, yeah, you know Scott's checking that out. Sadly, he's the guy with the highly refined palate of an eight year old.

"You got egg creams?" Because he is jonesing for one. "And you got any ants?" He's still on a quest for friends, what?

Ivar wheels himself in, looking a little grimy like he's been crawling through some tunnels all day. Don't ask about the specks of blood on his face. None of it is his and it's not human, so hey, it's all good, right? He has an ax strapped to his back and seems nonplussed by the lack of lights. For him, this is a typical night at home, plus or minus a few candles.

He pulls up to a table. "What's your best sandwich?" Fighting monsters burns a lot of calories, alright? He needs protein.

There is a definite moment of disgust on Lola's face. It was the blood and grime. Followed almost immediately by confusion because of the wheelchair. She was trying to piece that together for the few moments before she answered his question.

"Oh, we have a great chili burger, the meat for it today is richer than usual and the better cook is on today. So it's definitely the pick over a cold sandwich." She snapped into her usual polite gentile server mode. Nothing overbearing, but a subtle friendly nature to her as she held out both a menu, and some napkins. In case he wanted it.

Asking if there were any ants took a rather terrible turn, "Ew, no, this place is very clean."

She handed him a menu, her smile was a little frostier than usual. Probably over the ants thing, "I have no idea what an egg cream is, so I don't think we have it. I can ask in the back if anyone knows what one is."

Ivar spurned the offer of the menu since he couldn't read, but accepting the napkins to wipe his hands and face off. He generally was only this grubby after battle. Vikings, unlike the rest of medieval Europe, were surprisingly clean, actually caring about taking daily baths.

"What's chili?" He asked. Chili was a dish that would be invented about eight hundred years after his time. Burgers he was more familiar with since he'd arrived here, thanks to the collective eating habits of floor five.

"Oh. I mean, that's...probably good. I mean, for food-service establishments." Still, he can't help but sound just a wee bit disappointed.

"Nah, it's okay. Can't have everything from home in a place like this, right?" As long as they have burgers and fries? He'll survive. Somehow.

She puts the menu away, humms a moment to think about how to explain it. "It's a sorta stew, made with chilis- peppers, ours has some meat and beans in it too, some other seasonings to make the flavor perfect. That gets poured over the burger patty. Really good."

It seemed like the right suggestion. Flavorful, rich, and hearty in ways not everyone would appreciate. She fiddled with her pen and paper and waited for if this was a go, or if she would be suggesting something else.

"We don't serve ants either, it isn't a thing our chefs know." Maybe he was used to places with more exotic tastes than normal. Bugs were a thing people ate, not that Lola understood that logic. She liked to try new things, but she had limits. There, that right there was the limit.

"I'm kinda surprised how many sandwich names are the same, you know? Maybe they got named by someone from Earth?" She had thought about it, not with any grounding. But they had the same names even if the chef regularly used local meats. The meats were, well, close enough. And food between bread was just always a sandwich, right?

One of the problems with Viking society was the food. It was all meat, potatoes, and the occasional vegetable. There was only so many ways that it could be cooked up. Since coming here, he'd come to appreciate the variety found in other places. "That sounds delicious. I'll take that and a tankard of ale."

Ivar, for one, was in a diner. Two, even if they had alcohol, he was sixteen. It was highly doubtful Lola was going to enable his drinking habits.

"Serve ants?!" Scott does not consider himself easy to freak out (UNLIKE Luis!), but, well, "Ewww. No, I was kind of looking for ants for, uh, other reasons." Suddenly, he remembers how weird 'I talk to ants kinda' is going to sound. "I'm not crazy, by the way."

Just, you know, in case it should come up in conversation.

"Huh." He...hadn't actually thought about that before. "You mean, like people they've swiped from Earth before us?"

You are a grown man asking for ants for no specific reason and insisting you're not crazy. Sorry but you have hit everything that suggests crazy. And Lola is looking at him like he's crazy, because... well, that's the best theory she has.

"I dunno? Maybe? They have diners?"

Lola quickly scribbles down the sandwich order, but then stops at the rest of what he asks for. Well, it does present a few problems for her. None that are moral, drinking is fun when you have the right people and she's done it on more than one occasion. But this was, in fact, a diner. There was one prep chef with a drinking problem that enjoyed a little Irish in their coffee but that wasn't exactly a menu item.

"I have no idea what a tankard is, but there really aren't any alcohols here to serve. It isn't exactly what we do." She seemed apologetic as she told him this, but it was what it was.

That surprised him a little. He'd never been in a world where alcohol wasn't readily available. "Damn. Soda then." He'd found that he enjoyed the carbonation of that drink quite a bit. It tasted delicious. If he ever got the chance to go home, he was dragging home cases of it with him.

"And tankards are usually hollowed-out animal horns. Perfect thing to drink out of after a long battle." That was possibly the most Viking thing he'd ever said.

Oh, he sees that look. Mostly because he'd probably give it himself if someone came up to him a few months ago ranting about ants. Are you crazy if you realize you sound crazy?

"Look. The ant thing is...kind of a long story." Actually, not really, but hopefully that sounds like a reasonable excuse not to go into it right now.

"Yeah, well, this is a creepy line of conversation. I'm just going to be happy they have burgers." Priorities!

"Well, this place is kinda slow, so I can listen?" Not that she was actually interested, but it seemed like the right thing to say. Also she wanted to know how he wasn't crazy, cause that still felt like the thing here.

"Well, I mean, it is the best way to eat if you can't sit down. What other way is there?" Lola was such a simple little thing.

"Okay, any particular type you want? Cola, Ginger Ale, Root Beer?" Lola tapped her pen against her pad as she waited, it wouldn't be that hard an order and things were a bit slow. So food should be out pretty quick.

"Huh." She has no idea how accurate that is, because she knows nothing about battles, or using animal horns as a cup, "Well, here we use cups, made of plastic that looks kinda like glass but not really? Easier to clean and don't break as easily."

"I want to try something new. Bring me a ginger ale." If he likes it, the next stop will be the nearest store so that he can haul a load of it back to floor five. Being in this place was strange sometimes, but the perks definitely offset feeling like a fish out of water sometimes.

"Sounds like an invention with more than one use. Can other things be made out of it?"

"Alright, I'll be out with your drink in a moment. The burger will take a few minutes," Lola gave him a dazzling smile and wandered off to the kitchen. She was back moments later with his ginger ale.

"Plastic? Yeah, in my world it's used to make a lot of stuff, it isn't as durable as metal, exactly, but it does enough for most home things. Durable and lightweight." Lola knew what plastic was, but why it was and how it was happened to be beyond her. She took a seat at a nearby table to take her break. It wasn't really that busy, and she could use the time off.

Ivar looked very pleased as he drank his soda. He had found that he had quite a fondness for the carbonation. He listened intently as Lola explained, always willing to acquire new knowledge. In a place like this, there was always something new to learn.

"We don't have anything like that where I'm from. Actually, we don't have a lot of what can be found here." He hadn't yet decided if that was a good or bad thing.

"This is mostly like home, I think. Well, other than the monsters and fighting, and this place seems a lot more okay about sex than home."

There was something in the social atmosphere here that Lola just noticed, it felt more open, more self-aware? She hoped that was the right way to picture it. But she noticed the roped off area of the first festival. It was a lot more obvious than anything like that would be at home. Everyone would be all worried about what people would think. The scandals, all of that. "I kinda wish there weren't monsters, on the other hand I've bought meat from some of them and it can be pretty tasty."

"Fighting is ones of the only things in common with my home. Though sex comes in a close second." Vikings in general were pretty casual about sex, with quite a few of them leaning more towards bisexuality than anything else. Threesomes and even polyamorous marriages were not uncommon. Ivar himself was a bit more complicated than most with the subject, having some hang-ups that made it difficult.

"If I find a furry one, I'm thinking of making a coat out of it." That's what he would have done with a bear or wolf back home. Might as well continue on the tradition here.

"Oh, there's sex at home, but nobody really wants to talk about it. They're a lot more open here," Lola was the only one of her small circle to have done the deed, but there were a lot more people at the school doing it. And the gossip moves so Lola knows who has and hasn't with about 80% certainty. "Not sure if this is better."

"We're not really going into the right season for furs, but with the right pattern that'd be great for a collar or boots!" Lola was... um, not opposed to real fur in this situation. She wasn't all that opposed at home if the garment was cute enough anyway.

"Try my home sometime. It seems all anyone ever thinks about there is sex." Not that Ivar was participating in much. Just watching, which was creepy enough in itself, but doubly so considering he'd been watching his brothers most of the time. He'd just not mention that.

"You know something about fashion?" Despite the way Ivar dressed, all in dull colors, back home the clothing tended to be a lot more colorful and detailed, at least among the women.

"Oh everyone thinks about it," Lola corrected, "Like, how else does sex happen if nobody wants to do it. But nobody really talks about doing it. It just sorta happens, you clean up, and go on with your day." Lola's, admittedly only, time having sex she had to pretend she didn't because it was kinda of her best friend's older brother.

Yeah, moving on.

"I love being fashionable, I'm trying to decide if I wanna go with the trends in this place, or just be me and make the trends do what I want them to be." She wasn't showing off how fashionable she was, being in her waitress uniform, but she had her hair and make-up all perfect. "You'd totally be able to tell if I weren't working. I love nice clothes."

Someone at the kitchen waved to Lola, "Back in a sec with your burger." And she'll make a quick exit to get him his food. That whole working thing cuts into conversations.

"Lead by example. Don't follow the herd." Good advice for every day life and for fashion. Not that Ivar was one to talk in regards to fashion. The gods only knew precisely what was going on with his hair.

When Lola returns with his burger, he practically attacks it. He's starving. He pauses long enough to tell her, "It's good!" Which was better than he was expecting. Ivar always kept low expectations for food in general.

"Well, yeah, but you have to know what they're doing in order to make it your own. If you're too different they will just call you crazy and ignore you." Lola knows what's what. Sure, the hair is a thing, but she doesn't go completely against the trends, she just takes them a bit further than everyone else.

"The cooks know what they're doing here. My dad would really like them if he were here." There's no sad sigh at the end, she's simply stating how things would be. "I've been learning the various recipes here. But the owner won't tell me who the supplier is on all the meats, that seems the key."

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March Catch-All - Lola

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