Morningstar Manor

Ben "Ponce de" Lyon was back in town. His family had spent Christmas in Paris (just like the McCallisters in Home Alone!) and now they were in the City again, just in time for New Year's. Not too long after that he'd be heading back to Connecticut to resume his so-far excellent junior year at Yale, but right now he was in the Manor lobby, and that was were his mindset was. Because Ben Lyon lived in The Moment. Except for all those times he didn't.

As he walked across to the elevators, he looked up instead of straight ahead, taking in all the holiday decorations. He kind of missed seeing these every year.

Eli had been in and out of meetings today. It regarded a lot of nonsense that he didn't agree with, but he had to do because of his job. He just hoped that if deployments got handed down again, he would be sent before some of the other guys with families and girlfriends.

Feeling a little frustrated and slightly disappointed, he ducked into the Mocha for coffee remembering to remove his beret only after he'd stood in line for a minute. Class A's were one uniform he didn't like wearing all that much, but when in meetings they were sometimes required.

The weather would be getting cold soon - one could feel a small bite in the air - so Hugh was taking advantage of the fresh air. He'd walked through the maze and now sat at a bench, jotting notes and ideas in his notebook. Or tried to.

Writer's block sucked.

Dear Miss Madsen,

Many thanks for your offer to work as a volunteer nursery assistant. I will be very glad to have you on the team.

I have enclosed details of schedules etc and look forward to seeing you on your first day,

Yours sincerely,

P Pascuale
Morningstar Day Care Manager.

Gilly was a very early morning person. She was discovering that being a commuter to college, even when it was close by, was a bitch when you were on a sports' team. She'd gotten a scholarship that paid half her tuition if she played on the soccer team and in her opinion that was pretty damn awesome. The thing that sucked is the team had practice four mornings at week at six a-m that consisted of a three mile run, weight training and then shuttle runs. The only convenient thing was that Bailey lived on campus so sometimes she could get away with bunking with him and then leaving early to get to practice. Today was just such one of these days. She'd said goodbye to a sleepy boyfriend at quarter to six, went to practice, showered and changed and then dragged her ass back to the Manor. After stopping in the apartment to switch out clothes in her gym bag since they had a scrimmage later tonight, she packed up her not-yet-broken-in new messenger bag with appropriate books for the day as well as her handy dandy netbook (which was no where near as awesome as he mac laptop but got the job done when it came to note taking) and then she headed for the Mocha. She had three hours to kill at that point before she had to head back to campus.

After tucking her bags under a table in one of the corners by the windows, she went and stood in line to get a coffee, a bagel, a big ol' bowl of fruit and a bottle of water. It was a lot maybe but she was hungry after all of that work. She also had some readings to do for Professor Kwon's Hitchcock Film Theory class - a continuation of the class she took in the summer. So she settled in at the table with her food and drink and dug out the book for her Hitchcock class. She dug around in her bag until she found and orange highlighter and started reading. She became rather absorbed and only reached for a drink or a bite to eat every now and then, without looking away from her book. Today seemed like a mellow day in the Manor. Most days she could scarcely sit in the Mocha without having to deal with all of the emotions of the fellow patrons. Being an empath sucked most the time. There were some occasions when it was just damn awesome but she kept those to herself. Today, this morning rather, the Mocha wasn't quite crowded yet so Gilly thought she might get through her readings before class, though she was honestly not opposed to an interruption at all.

Now that Lara (and Peter!) had agreed to let Gilly use Upstairs are one of the sets for her movie short - the main one at that! - Gilly had some other stuff to work out. One of the main things was finding a good band to play in said venue during said short. Naturally her first thought was of Lis. Gilly had been spending time at the Lake since her classes were over, instead of just around the City, both to spend time with Bailey and some of their other friends, and also to give J, Matt and Max some alone family time. Today, however, she had come home early in the morning. She set up in the Mocha for some breakfast and list making and when she figured it was late enough in the day, she sent Lis a text, around noon.

Get your ass up and come down to the Mocha. I shall caffeinate you...and then proposition you! What are you waiting for?

To: Lara
From: Your Favorite Gilly
Subject: Heyyyy bestest best short pal!

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Lara! How are you? It's been ages since I last saw you! Or...rather since Sunday. But this is simply besides the point. Today is Wednesday. Wednesday is a good day for lunch, don'tcha think? If I was to say, offer to buy you a meatless lunch, would you accept?

- Gil-Master Flash

Gilly had no classes on Mondays. Granted she only had two classes for the summer and they were six week classes. One was a Hitchcock class that met for two and a half hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at eleven in the morning. The other was a script writing class that met on Tuesdays, and Thursdays for an hour and a half. She would have slept in for her nice free Monday, but Max was being fussy and wanted to just cry it out until he was tired. Gilly had tried to stay asleep but eventually she'd given in and now here she was in the Mocha.

She had a notebook tucked under her arm, her beat to hell messenger bag on her shoulder and her right shoelace was untied but at least she'd showered before leaving the apartment. She took the stairs down, still gun shy with the elevators after all this time and also hoping the walk woke her up some more. Her leg muscles were in perfect shape for soccer tryouts from all the stair climbing she did in the Manor, that was for sure. Once she got to the Mocha, there was of course a line, but that didn't bother Gilly. She stepped up to the back of the line and waited, swaying in her spot some and generally fidgeting while she thought about what she was going to get. At the same time she was trying to think of script ideas for the scriptwriting class.

Gilly hated laundry, really, she did. It did, however, provide her with a relatively quiet room to go over her stupid speech stuff for graduation. The idea that she had to make some poignant speech about surviving the perils of high school and moving on to college was baffling. The shooting made it even more literal for that perils of high school part. She was positive that there were going to be lots of news/media people hanging about as they'd already gotten calls for interviews for before or after graduation. Gilly declined both. The closer the day of graduation came, the more anxious Gilly became. What if she was too nervous to give her speech? What if she didn't do it justice? What if she got up there and the empathy shit messed with her and she just...puked all over the podium or something embarrassing like that?

She was trying to quell the nerves with the help of background noise from the washers and dryers while she closed her eyes and mentally tried to recite her speech from memory. She got a few sentences in before he let out an aggravated groan and flipped to the appropriate index card to reread the words she'd written. Did she even like this speech? Maybe she should just rewrite the whole thing. Maybe she should be a dick and recite the lyrics to the Sunscreen Song as her speech and make everyone graduate with that damn song in their head. Maybe she should just wing it. Go up and say whatever came to mind at the moment when she was actually graduating. She was tempted to tear up her cue cards right then.

( Offer up best defense, but this the end, this is the end of the innocence )

Gilly rarely had time to herself. Even when she was completely alone, she still had her empathy issue to contend with on a constant basis. That added to her hectic routine of splitting her time between high school, soccer, Bailey, work and her college courses. Oh, and babysitting Max too. It was exhausting, really.

Tonight she had actually scheduled a night off. A night off for Gilly consisted of school until 1:30pm, college film class until 3:30pm, then Andover soccer practice until 5:30pm and finally dinner with the family at around 6:00pm. After finishing the last of her homework around (at the dinner table, despite J's requests for her to put her books away), Gilly had changes into her two piece bathing suit and had gone up to the hot tub. Currently she was using her towel as a pillow as she looked up through the glass ceiling above her. She was definitely tired enough to fall asleep right then and there, but thoughta of everything she had to do kept getting in the way.

( Just some catching up, )

Thomas Avery pushed the door of the kitchen open with force and strode in, biting his teeth together.

"Have you seen that girl?" he turned and pointed back towards the dining hall. "That tactless untrained stupid 14-year old girl who thinks she's a real waiter for being hired here by our idiotic managers?"

The kitchen staff stared at him, but most of them shrugged as they continued their work. They felt suspicious of the new waiter as well, and it was easy to say that she had not received a very friendly welcome to her new working place.

Emily, in her sparkling white chef's jacket, did not even look at Thomas before she had finished decorating the set of three desserts that looked like modern art sculptures.

"She is 17, and I understand she has some previous experience," she replied midly, but not smiling. "Did she mess up?"

"Yes. She brought the starter soups of table 17 to table 8 when they should have gotten the salads," Avery explained grinding his teeth together. He opened the buttons of his dark suit jacket and paced up and forth in the kitchen. "We can't afford to have anyone like her around! She's a disgrace!"

Emily shook her head and snorted at such a mistake - but out of the corner of her eye she saw the girl in question approach to pick up the desserts.

"Gilly?" Emily called over the counter. "Let Scott take those desserts. Come over here for a while, will you?"

She made it sound more like an order than a request.

Gilly had a love/hate relationship with October/Halloween time. At the beginning of October, she started feeling the tingles, as if her finger tips toes were electrified. She could deal with the goosebumps, but the butterflies grew steadily in her stomach as the month progressed. When it was particularly intense, her eyes watered as if her tear ducts were overwhelmed with excess saline that they just needed to expel at any given moment. That fact always caused her extra stuffy noses and some coughing too what with her sinus' drainage system.

In the morning, she'd leave for school and with in a block or two it would start clearing up. By the time she reached homeroom, it was almost always gone. She'd picked up a waiting job at La Fee Verte in order to keep herself out of the apartment even longer than usual. She'd even spent a few nights sleeping over at Bailey's dorm on the Rutherford campus, but she did that sparingly (sadly) so she didn't make him feel all cagey and like she was crowding him. Also, J wasn't too fond of her decision to spend the night over at Bailey's dorm, ever.

( Cut cause Ceil rambles )

Gilly was working. She should have been putting finishing touches on her documentary, but she'd had a long day already between school, practice, work and homework. She needed to do laundry, so she was in the process of doing that. And it turned out that the laundry room was more relaxing then the Madsen apartment which was full of a very fussy baby Max who just did not want to go to sleep and, in fact, only wanted to wail for thirty to forty minutes at a time before he tired himself out, passed out for twenty and then started wailing again despite being changed, fed, burped, rocked, sung to, etc, etc.

So she had her laptop, playing an itunes playlist. She'd started out editing STS concert videos before she'd turned that off, turned on her playlist and had gotten down to research on camel spiders. Oh yes, consider her next movie idea forming - from zombies, to alien musicals, to important documentaries, to monster movie. God forbid she see a spider in the laundry room, she was totally going to freak out since she was looking up monster-sized camel spiders, gah!

( Gilly's nightmare gets a visit from Grace )

Originally, Gilly was supposed to return home in the evening on July 31st, but after some flight delays, she'd cabbed it back to the Manor from the airport in late night/early morning of August first. She had spent a good amount of time unpacking, napping, and hanging with Max on the second during the day and hanging with Bailey and trying not to nod off at night. She'd returned to the Manor this morning, still exhausted but too restless to sleep.

She'd dragged her laundry to the basement and loaded two washers and then she went to the mocha and got some caffeine and a mountain of cookies. Now she was set up in the lobby in a cushy chair, sitting indian style and her laptop across her lap, headphones on and reviewing some of the film she had.

Gilly was already tan from being out in the sun numerous times this summer so she wasn't worried about getting sunburnt while at the lakehouse today but she'd done the whole sunscreen thing earlier before lunch time while she was sitting out around the pool and working on some editing while she waited for Bailey.

After around noon or one or whatever in the afternoon the heat started to pick up and Gilly couldn't concentrate on editing and electronics, so she'd tucked her computer and such back inside the house. She trekked down the dock and ditched the shorts she had over the bottom of her two piece and dropped her sunglasses at the end of the dock before she dove in to cool off. Once she was sufficiently soaked and her hair was back, she swam over and climbed into one of the two larger innertbes that were tied together and connected to the dock after splashing some water onto it from the lake to cool it off. She leaned her head back on the tube and sinking her feet and arms over the edges into the water after leaning up to get her sunglasses and slide them on. A little relaxation was probably in order before her trip which wasn't exactly going to be a vacation. Now that she was cooled off and lounging, she just had to wait for Bailey, whenever he got off of work or...whatever he was doing.

Lara was in an extraordinarily good mood on Wednesday. She (and Stone) had slept in way late and eventually parted ways in the afternoon. There was work and stuff that had to be done, unfortunately. But even that didn't seem so bad since Lara was feeling so super awesome. The previous night had been pretty great, with the date-like stuff and the apartment all to themselves, so she was going to be riding on the fumes from that for a while.

As she stood in the Mocha line, Lara bounced a little on her feet. Not because the line was long (even though it was), but because of all the awesomeness.

To: Bailey, Casey, Lara, Lis, Poe, etc, etc
From: Gilly
Subject: Nephewtown!
Attached: photo of MiniMadsenSavage

( Doo doo doo doo doo....e-maaaaaiiil! )