xp_logs | LOG: Angelo and Jane - homework and other stuff

Wednesday, Jane asks Angelo for help on her CompSci homework. They also talk about Angelo's last post and about his relationships with Paige and Jono.

Jane knocked on the door to Angelo's dorm room, hoping he was in. She needed some help with her CompSci homework, and since he was in the class, too, maybe he understood it better than her. Also, she just wanted to talk to him. His post about his old life and adjusting to his new one was worrying. Maybe he'd want to talk about it? She'd see.

Angelo glanced up when he heard the knock at the door, unfolding from his desk chair and going to open it. Seeing her, he smiled. "Jane! Hey!"

"Hiya, Angelo!" She gave him a quick greeting hug. "I was wondering if you'd help me out with our computer homework? I don't quite understand some of it."

Angelo grinned. "Well, I'll try, of course, but I'm not the tech genius round here. If I can't help, maybe go to Kitty or Doug?"

"Yeah." She handed him her notebook to show him what she'd already done. "It's the stuff about HTML I don't get. I know some things are to make letters big or small or different types and stuff, but I don't get some of it. Whenever I try doing it on the computer, my pages come out looking funky."

Angelo nodded, glancing over what she'd done. "Well, like I said, I'll try. Got a computer in here, so we can try an' see what you're doin' wrong."

"Thank you! I won't be disturbing your roommates, will I?"
Avariel Wings: Angelo shrugged. "Nah, Jono's off somewhere else an' it's just the two of us livin' here."

"Okay, good." Jane watched as Angelo sat down at the computer and pulled up the correct things. "Here's what I already have," she said, handing him a disk with her work saved on it. "Have you already done this homework?"

Angelo glanced at her wryly. "Not yet, no. When's it due in again?"

"Um, I think it's due next class? I'm bad at remembering when stuff is due. I'm doing this one because I think I've had it in the to-do pile long enough. It's probably due soon, anyway." She poked him in the shoulder. "You should do yours, too, mister!"

Angelo laughed, raising his hands in surrender. "I will! Didn't say I wasn't goin' to, did I?"

"Good! You will help me, and I will help you, if you need it," she said magnanimously.

Angelo smiled. "Well, thanks."

"No problem! Okay, here it is," she said, pointing to all the HTML she'd already done in the editor. "It looks right to me, but when I publish it, it goes all funky." She leaned over Angelo's shoulder to use his mouse, putting actions to words and calling up a preview of what her code would look like if published. There were several problems. She'd obviously forgotten break tags between her paragraphs, she'd forgotten to close one of her links, and there were a few other minor errors. "What do you think?"

Angelo scanned through the text, nodding to himself. "Okay, all this looks pretty easy to fix. Just stuff you've forgotten to do. Here." And he began pointing to the places that needed correction, then typing in the changes as she moved the cursor.

Jane concentrated on where and what Angelo was pointing to and typing in. Most of her mistakes were simple, just easy to miss. "This isn't that hard. I guess I should have just gone over it more carefully. I'm impatient." She laughed.

Angelo grinned. "It's easily done. Doc McCoy wouldn't be mad, anyway. I don't think he gets mad, or not easily at least."

"Well, maybe he should get mad? Sometimes, getting mad helps," she said innocently. "But I'm glad he doesn't."

Angelo eyed her a little suspiciously, wondering who she'd been talking to. "Yeah, I know it does sometimes, but I don't think gettin' mad at us for homework mistakes would help anyone."

"Oh, I don't know. It would probably help some of the more frustrated teachers!" She giggled.

Angelo laughed. "Well, yes, but I'm sure there are better targets they could be gettin' mad at."

"Yeah, like the people who've hurt us." Jane hesitated, then plunged onwards. "Like your old gang. I read your post about adjusting to not fighting, Angelo. Do you wanna talk about it?"

Angelo looked up at her sharply, then sighed. "Well... 's just somethin' I'm workin' through, an' I'm not sure what I could say that I didn't already. But if you got any questions, I'll try an' answer them...?"

"I don't remember if I've ever had to fight for anything, let alone just for survival, but I think I understand just a little. You're used to one thing, and then that changed, and you don't know how to change along with it. You're used to one place and then you go somewhere new and all the rules are different, right? I was used to the institution, but it's very different here, so I'm still unsure and stuff. Is it kinda like that?"

Angelo nodded. "'s a lot like that, only it's not just a place I left behind, 's a way of life."

"Which must be even harder, because you have to change everything about yourself, how you think and stuff." Jane had checked out a few books on society and how societal norms shape who a person is to help herself, so she knew that it must be hard on him.

Angelo nodded. "Yeah, it is. But I'm workin' on it."

"Working on it is good." She patted his shoulder. Her eyes wandered upwards and she spotted a string of blue lights on the ceiling above one of the beds. "Oh, that's neat!" she said, pointing. "Clarice put a glowy moon above my bed. I like it."

Angelo followed her eyes, and grinned. "Yeah, I think those came from Clarice as well. Jono brought them with him from the basement, but he said somethin' about her givin' them to him."

Jane nodded. "She seems to be good with light and sparkley things." Jane paused and cocked her head to the side. "There's a basement? What was Jono doing there?"

"He used to live down there. Sarah doesn't like heights, so she's always refused to live up here with the rest of us, an' he was sharin' her room for awhile before the faculty made them move. She's still got a room down there, but a different one."

"Oh! Well, it was very nice of you to room with him, then. You two must be very close, what with you both loving Paige and all." She still didn't understand what the problem between he and Paige and Jono was, either. Marie had told her that she could help them by just asking about it. Maybe she should? "You said that you were both with Paige, but not together, right? Why?"

Angelo was suddenly very glad he hadn't been eating or drinking at that precise moment. He blinked at her, coming up with nothing more eloquent than a slightly bemused, "Er..."

"I mean, you're obviously good friends with Jono, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't live together. People can have more than one love, can't they? Amanda told me about her family in England. Or maybe that's not what you want. What do you want, Angelo?"

Angelo took on a somewhat deer-in-headlights expression. "We... get on okay, I guess. Most of the time. An'... yeah... they can... I guess..."

Jane waited. "So? If they can, why not you? What do you want?"

Angelo shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I know I want Paige, an' what we've got, but..."

"But?" she prompted.

Another shrug. "I don't know. I was raised Catholic, Jane, an' I still am. An'... that's not the way it's supposed to be at the end. Fun is one thing, but when it comes to settlin' down... 's all right for some. Romany seems to be happy with it."

Jane was puzzled. Wasn't Catholic the thing where people were nice to each other and went to church and ate bread and wine? What did that have to do with who you loved? "I guess I don't understand. Being Catholic means you can't 'settle down' with Jono and Paige?"

"The way I was taught, yes, it does", he answered flatly. "Doesn't matter what you do before that, but marriage an' kids at the end of the day. An' maybe someday I'll decide that's not the way for me, or doesn't have to be, but for right now... I got enough changes to work through, don't you think? Wanna just stick with what I can keep, for right now..."

"What's to say you can't have marriage and kids with Paige and Jono? But I understand about change being hard." Jane privately thought that Angelo was enough of a fighter, still, that he should be fighting harder for his own happiness. Maybe she just didn't understand. She'd have to read up on it all. "Then what you want is to just work through everything else right now? I guess that works, too."

He nodded, relieved that she seemed to have dropped the subject. "Yeah. I think I need to work out the stuff I posted about, for now."

Jane nodded. "Speaking of working on stuff, thanks for the help with my homework!"

Angelo grinned. "No problem. Glad I could help you out."