Dr. Janice Covington

This is Janice. Leave a message, but don't waste my time, got it? And if you're Jack Kleinman, I've got a little painful something waiting for you.

She could have gone home for Christmas, but Mel would have been spending it with her family in South Carolina, and well -- to put it mildly they'd never liked Janice's company very much. So she had stayed here, and had spent the past couple of days hauling trunkloads of artifacts off to her contact on the mainland, netting a nice price for them even by 2006 standards -- in currency minted no later than 1933, of course. But now, the last of her things were packed, the smuggling secret compartments emptied out, and the house as clean as someone who had grown up in open jeeps and dusty tents was ever going to get it.

A few more things to wrap up in her office, and it was going to be time to catch a portal and head for home. A few days with Mel would be a welcome change of pace before she headed for India and the tantalizing promise of the Xena White Scroll, just waiting to be found. She was so excited about the whole thing that it was impossible to sit still. Yeah, that'd make paperwork a bitch.

So -- kicking back on the porch with a bottle of brandy and a couple of cigars seemed to be the way to go. Janice was comfortably settled in the easy chair, boots up on the porch railing, blissfully blowing fragrant smoke rings into the air in between sips.

[OOC: Owing to various worldwide telecommunications issues, I have -- nothing to do today. Come say goodbye to the crazy archaeologist if you'd like.]

Normally Janice wouldn't be in her office for more than the first half of the day on Wednesday, but she had two good reasons to stick around today. The first would, of course, be putting the finishing touches on tomorrow's Myth final -- as evidenced by the occasional throaty evil chuckles, followed by a flurry of scribbling or typing.

The second would be the letter she received from Mel today, which as it turned out demanded a great deal of thought. On the one hand, the expedition she mentioned promised to be lucrative in the extreme on top of looking like a very, very promising chance of getting her hands on the elusive Xena White Scrolls. On the other hand -- there was no telling how long she'd have to be away.

And she was actually starting to enjoy it here.

Argh, decisions.

At any rate, the door was open.

Janice was in her office, surreptitiously repairing any damage that had been done to her bullwhip over the weekend. Okay, mostly she was trying to get the troll smell out, because troll-stench really put a dent in the familiar, comforting smell of well-worn leather.

Luckily for anyone within earshot, this meant that the PS2 was off, for now at least, and no video-game renditions of rock songs were in any immediate danger of being horribly butchered.

. . . shut up, that hadn't been on Easy mode, either, no matter what the screen said, dammit.

No, that really wasn't what sounded like badly butchered electric rock guitar coming through the open door of Janice's office.

Look, she was from the early 1940s, all right? The regular Playstation 2 controller was hard enough for her to master without having to get used to this thing. And she kept snagging her jacket sleeve on the stupid whammy bar.

She'd probably be glad of a distraction from this game, should anyone come in. Otherwise odds were good the stupid fake electric guitar was going to end up through the television screen by the end of the day.

[OOC: This office hours post is in no way inspired by the fact that we somehow managed to acquire Guitar Hero tonight. Really.]

A sign was posted on Dr. Covington's office door:



[OOC: As previously mentioned, I'm stupid-busy today and totally forgot about office hours until now, so -- tomorrow it is. Argh.]

Janice's office was a bit of a huge mess today, since she was madly cramming all the notes and research papers she had amassed over the past couple of months into a large bag to take home for the Thanksgiving break.

It was going to be interesting, heading back to wartime London to celebrate an American holiday, especially after having gotten used to a world without rationing. But still, for all that, Mel was there. And Janice couldn't think of having a Thanksgiving without Mel.

Thus, packing -- but the door was still open in case anyone had reason to drop in before she left.

[OOC: Sorry for the lateness -- busy day. Open, but massive slowplay for the next few hours since I've got a lot to get done before the long weekend. Silly international offices.]

Janice hadn't finished the last video game she'd played, but that hadn't stopped her from picking up a new one. That would be why she was now essentially glued to her desk chair, gripping the PS2 controller, smoking a cigar with furious concentration as she played.

This active battle system was a little tricky to get the hang of, and she kept forgetting to hold down the L2 button to center the camera on her target during fights.

[OOC: Open as office hours are, though occasional bouts of extreme slowplay may occur for the crazy doctor and the Jock Squad today.]

I totally forgot to mention this in the OOC note on the post itself, and it's kind of late to go back and edit it in, but . . . this week's class is open for the rest of the week if you want to play things out.

Come to think of it, that's sort of the general policy for all the classes. That I apparently never stated anywhere. *facepalm*

In a bizarre fit of completionism (which is so a word now, by God), Janice was attempting to complete a 99-level optional dungeon, level up all her characters as thoroughly as possible, and acquire as much money for her party as humanly possible, all at the same time.

Hey, it was a pretty painless way to spend her office hours.

. . . except for those stupid dragons. Ouch.

Doctor Covington was in.

Not by design, and certainly not out of any intent to make herself accessible to visiting parents.

Look, the Playstation was here, all right?

The usual cigar smoke and stream of profanity-laced mutterings made their way through the half-open doorway. Today's stream of mutterings were something along the lines of:

"Stupid dungeons . . . take damn well forever . . . stupid monsters . . . can't just create a rockslide, no . . . treasure you get isn't even worth the effort . . . died again?!?"

She might notice if you came in. Might.

Maybe it was a bad idea for Janice to get a checking account with a debit card the week before she'd discovered online shopping.

Maybe it was an even worse idea that she'd then ordered herself a TV and PlayStation 2 for her office (hey, she'd found one used on eBay for a pretty good price), and managed to get them hooked up properly.

In any case, she was smoking her usual cigar while playing through a dungeon of some RPG video game that probably closely resembles Final Fantasy X-2 but with a meta name I can't spare the brainpower for right now, and protesting very loudly and frequently that none of the dungeons she had ever been in ever looked anything like that.

Whether or not she'd ever really been in any dungeons was highly debatable. Doubtful, even. But shhhh.

The door was open -- but her voice probably would've carried pretty well even if it had been closed.

[OOC: OMG, I nearly forgot for a second week in a row -- though you could probably say I had it literally knocked out of my head this time. Guh. Well, late, but up now. And I will actually be around for an hour or two tonight. >.<)

Janice wasn't usually in her office on Thursdays, but after having gotten too caught up in a spirited "argument," shall we say, with a museum curator (*ahem*) on the mainland the day before, she'd missed out on her usual office hours.

So today she was here to make up for that.

No, that wasn't a wad of cash she was counting just beneath the surface of her desk.

No, she wasn't grinning like the cat who ate the canary.

No, no, no, for the love of God she would never describe her facial expression with such a godawful phrase.

Her cigar was doing its part to contribute to the office's atmosphere, and the door was open.

[OOC: GAH. I totally blanked on office hours yesterday. I am so, so sorry. Ergo, she'll be here all day. Now with the first sentence intact. I WIN AT CUT AND PASTE.]

Or the Battle of Marathon in a thimble. Or a nutshell. Maybe a sunflower seed hull. Some sort of compact digest form.

Why? Because while (thanks to the consistency-free crack that is Xena canon) Janice is often off-base about a lot of details according to the "real" world, in this case she's flat-out wrong. Hey, don't blame me, blame the Xena writers. Actually I kind of love them for it but ANYWAY.

( The rundown on the Battle of Marathon )

Just so's you know, and in case you want to use this for further "OMFG the teacher is insane" fodder (by all means, go ahead). Class will be up shortly and will include a link to the Wiki article on Marathon in case you want to know more.

Janice was puffing away at her usual lit cigar, a large (and judiciously brandy-enhanced) cup of steaming coffee within easy reach.

There was a large, ornate, and open box lying on her desk, and she was currently engaged in attempting to make sketches of it for her journal. You'd think, in this day and age, it'd be much easier and faster to just take photos of the damn thing, but old habits die hard after all, and besides, that would involve her having the patience to learn to use the brand new digital camera sitting on a crate behind her.

So, sketches it was. Even if she was an abysmal artist. Hey, it was marginally less frustrating than the half-finished game of Spider Solitaire that was open on her computer screen.

And because it was that whole required office hours thing, the door was open. Smoky, but open.

The usual cigar in her mouth, Janice had an open crate next to her desk and was going through the contents, cataloguing them with as much care and detail as her impatience would allow. Over the course of the afternoon, interesting trinkets in varying degrees of shininess ended up decorating the shelves and desk.

The door was open for anyone who cared to brave the cloud of cigar smoke.

Janice's bedroom was, to put it tactfully, a shambles. That was what happened when she had to pack for just a weekend. Months-long trips? A year? That was easy. Three and a half days, on the other hand, were way more trouble.

But after five or six hours' worth of packing, repacking, and enough swearing to make even her father hit her, Janice had the backpack cinched tightly, her whip and revolver carefully tucked away inside the front pockets where she could reattach them to her belt once she'd gotten off the island, and her fedora finally rid of the seagull droppings from her class this morning.

She shut off the lights, locked the door, and set off down the street toward the portal she'd booked at the end of the causeway. "Mel, sweetheart, this had damn well better be worth it," she muttered. Time to get down to the real business: there were more Xena Scrolls to be found.

[OOC: And "Mad Dog" Covington is off for the weekend -- as I will be, as of tomorrow, 3PM PST. Conner and Anders will be around, just in their (respective, thank you very much) rooms and mainlining soccer and basketball. Which, funny -- mainlining soccer is exactly what I'll be doing. I'll be back Sunday afternoon. Whee!]

Janice had brought her unopened mail with her today, intending to go through it instead of playing that damned Spider Solitaire game. Tossing the envelopes down on the table, she grabbed the heavy ruler from the top of her desk and held it up, ready to strike in case any more wayward spring-gremlins were lurking in her cigar drawer.

She was almost disappointed when she didn't need to use it.

The letter opener in her desk was a tiny replica of Excalibur; as she opened her mail, Janice made a mental note to eventually have a replica of Xena's sword for a letter opener. By the time she was done opening the mail, she'd decided this would be tantamount to blasphemy and scrapped the whole idea.

Propping her feet up on the desk as usual, she lit up a cigar and read over a letter from Mel.

Can you get away for the weekend? There's word that some unusual scrolls were discovered . . .

Janice hadn't gotten any further than that before she decided the answer was, of course, "yes." But now, on to the tedious part where she had to figure out all the details. Sigh.

Engrossed she might be, but the door was still open for students who might need her, and were willing to tolerate the cigar smoke. Hey, it was a nice-smelling cigar, damn it.

Janice wasn't planning on holding office hours today, but now that the office was arranged to her liking it wasn't too much torture to spend a few extra hours in here.

. . . besides, that damn Spider Solitaire game was getting addictive.

She propped the door open and booted up the computer, feet up on the edge of her desk as she swiveled her chair around and reached for the lower desk drawer where she kept a stash of cigars.

Only to have something that was definitely not a cigar box leap up at her as she opened the drawer, nearly knocking her out of her chair in surprise.

"Goddammit! What the hell?" she bellowed, brandishing a heavy 18-inch ruler (the kind with the really keen metal edge) in the direction of the spring-loaded gremlin. Janice watched it cautiously for a minute and, when it didn't move again, she plucked it cautiously from the drawer and laid it on top of her desk before getting up and shutting the office door.

If anyone were to, say, press an ear against the outside of the door for those few minutes when it was shut, they might have heard an arrhythmic series of grunts and muffled thwacks.

Once she'd had her "moment" Janice opened the office door again, propped her feet back up on the desk, and lit up a cigar as she got cracking on Spider Solitaire. She'd earned this cigar, damn it. The battered, decidedly worse-for-wear toy gremlin on the floor in front of the desk proved that.

[OOC: Open for class purposes, OMGWTFGREMLIN purposes, or 'STFU with the yelling, Covington!" purposes, whee.]

As with last week, long muffled strings of profanity came drifting out the door of Janice's open office, along with the smell of cigar smoke.

This was really not going that well, was it?

. . . the game, that is. Evidently Janice had discovered Spider Solitaire.