Words from Work

Emily pushes open the door to the office slowly, as if opening it any quicker would break some kind of spell cast on the library. There is no one there, all five of the chairs are empty, even the one normally occupied by her boss who, in less busier times, would be busy flitting between her e-mail and her twitter account.
It seemed odd to call this one of the busiest times of the year for her department. The look of the library certainly wouldn't justify that statement. There was a hush that had fallen on every floor - that spell that falls when finals ends. She had seen maybe five people since entering the building, a shocking number compared to the hundreds that had traversed the halls only a week before. Yet this was when Emily, and her fellow Stacks workers, were busiest of all; the carts of books to be reshelved taking up the totality of hallway space outside the office.
She shut the door as gingerly as she had opened it and laid her belongings in the back corner, contemplating on the sense of having a slow and busy day.

Last Survey Class

A crisp day, to say the least, but it had gotten warmer since Emily had arrived at work in the morning. Still, she hurried the short distance from the entrance of the library to the archways and entrance of the hall that her survey class was housed in (never can remember the names of these places, she thought, it's some kind of hall, I'm sure). She entered into the warm, quiet lobby, complete with two modern chairs and a couch, oddly empty because she had gotten there even earlier than normal.
Really though, Emily was starting to wonder if time was trying to mess with her mind. She felt like she left work for class a little bit later each day, but was continually showing up earlier and earlier to class. She checked her watch; 10:02 am. Didn't she leave the Stacks office a little after ten? Shouldn't it be at least, like, 10:07 or so? It made no sense to her whatsoever, but any extra time that she got to read before class she wasn't going to question. Hopping up the flight of stairs to the second floor, she walked the short distance to her classroom at a brisk pace, weaved her way through the chairs past the one other student in the room, and to her oddly chosen seat on the other side of the room.
Emily would almost always choose a seat that's easy to remember. She fancied herself especially habitual, and loved to sit in the exact same seat every class. In all uninteresting classes, she would find a seat in the back but closest to the door, so that she could make a quick exit when the time came, but most of what she did would be fairly inconspicuous, hidden behind so many other students (activities such as reading, drawing, knitting scarves). In small classes where everyone is meant to be involved, she took a spot close to the front row (never the third or fourth row back, those rows were so forgettable), normally either the front row itself (on the end closest to the door), or a column on either side of the classroom (second or third seat, never farther back). She didn't like choosing the random seats in the middle of the classroom, she felt like just another one of the crowd in those seats and there was a good chance that she would forget which seat was hers anyway and mess up the order of absolutely everything. That was what made her Survey class seat so odd, it was second column from the end, about halfway down, fourth or fifth row. There was so much uncertainty to where she sat that she had no clue where her actual seat was compared to where she was the week before.
Those thoughts left her mind fairly quickly though. She sat down in her seat, hung her hoodie and coat on the back of her chair, and got out her book. That was what this class was really good for. Let's see what the dragons' plan of attack is now...

Rides Back Home

The air in the suburbs of Westerville always seems so much cleaner after living on Ohio State campus. Although not exactly a warm day, Emily was nevertheless tempted to roll down her window, at least a crack, to breath that fresh air that seemed like an apocalypse away.
"Do you ever..." Laura watched out the window at the passing scenery, a familiar sight to both of them. "This is silly, but do you ever drive by and wish that you were back there, at Central?"
Emily glanced out the window in the direction Laura was looking. There was her old high school, the one she had been attending less than half a year before, and already it seemed like ages ago. "I wish I was back there all the time." There was something going on at the high school, the parking lot was full of cars. Cars belonging to kids now much younger than herself. "This is my first time driving by it since I graduated, though."
"Really?" Laura sounded surprised. The school was long past them already now, as well as the turnoff to Laura's neighborhood, which Emily had expertly missed as always.

Creating a Blog

She feels both disgusted and happy with the title of her new blog. Happy, because she's been on stumbleupon all day stumbling in only the Japan category, and has renewed, once again, her love for the island nation. She's happy because soon she'll be starting classes to learn what she has just copied and pasted from google translator, and simply because it looks fantastic.
She's disgusted with it too, though. She's disgusted with it because she knows that to anyone who has had nearly as much experience as she had with sites like DeviantART and GaiaOnline, she will look like a total noob with this title. After all, she's not writing anything in Japanese in the blog, and the blog is not in any way about Japan. Because it will look like what it is; a copy/pasted set of characters from google translator that she does not even (yet) understand or read.
She wonders if she should take it down, put up something that makes sense. After thinking on it for a minute, the deliberation is that if, in another couple days, it haunts her, she will change it. But not right now. Right now it's still fun and pretty.

The Third Person Plan is Emily's response to her inability to make believable dialogue in her books. It's her way of, at least for the moment, solving the problem. She will write about one character in particular that she know inside and out, and that has at least semi-natural trains of thought. That character is herself.
Emily clicks her fingernails against one another, re-reading what she has written and glancing at the new Harry Potter lego figure (a gift from her boss) sitting on her computer. Then she hits publish post and goes back to thinking about the rice and ramen she plans to have for dinner.