Ukulele tid! - Open to friends/aquaintances

[Annabelle Coronova]

Remember that song about that really annoying fifteen year old (or was she twelve?) who was so torn that she had no idea which seat she could take? The poor thing, that girl. Fortunately for Annabelle, she always had a place to sit in the cafeteria, which was the far table on the right, near the window. No one really sat over there, it was a deserted table, right next to the trash cans. Perhaps they had some reasonable thinking, as those bins could get pretty stinky, but it had its benefits too. After all, you hardly had to sit and talk with people who lived off of telling you all of their daily drama, and you didn't have to pretend to care or listen to what they had to say. Wasn't that a good thing? Belle at least thought so.

It was also a nice small getaway from all the talking in general. It wasn't like the whole table had a nice magical force field around it that blocked out all noise, (not saying that wasn't preferable,) but it was away from most of the chatter and gossip. For these reasons, Anna found it an opportunistic time to bring out the ukulele, her worn koa and rosewood soprano ukulele that she had had since she started off at Hammel. In fact, she bought it off of Amazon because she wanted something to play when she wanted to enhance her music playing time. She had, of course, learned the guitar already, something her uncle taught her since she was seven years old, a nice gift to the family. But the ukulele was easier that the guitar: it was lighter, and needed no strap, it only had four strings, which was two less and that much more easy to make a chord, even a bar chord, and three, even if you were just messing around on it, odds are, it would sound bright and happy. This being said, there was to be no question why she'd be playing during her lunch time. Besides, she wasn't that hungry after all, bringing just an apple with her in case she got the munchies.

She took one big bite out of her red delicious, put it down on the table, and began to play some simple arpeggios, practiced her bar chord progression quickly, before leading into song. She'd just learned the music last night, eager to see what it sounded like in a much louder and public setting. First, she strummed along with Dream a Little Dream for Me, a little slower tempo than the original song,
eventually progressing to the original tempo. Once she hit the final chord on that, she started in on Day Tripper. Belle had an admittedly wide variety of music favorites, including some lovely Ella and then the Beatles as well. (Although Ella didn't write the song, she sure as hell sang it the best.)

All of this strumming and chucking was in her lonesome, a place that despite all the noise and constant murmur, she could truly find a little 'me-time' in the middle of it all and enjoy the sweet-sounding instrument for all it was worth.

(OOC: Ukulele tid literally means "Ukulele time!" in Norwegian. I, along with my character, have a love for exotic and barely-spoken-in-the-U.S. languages. Just keepin' it real.)

[Jeffrey Dougal]

Jeff didn't like sitting in the cafeteria. It meant a larger number of people could possibly hear his thoughts more than if he was in the bathroom, or took his food back to his dorm like he normally did. As it was though, he was hungry and the cafeteria wasn't as full as it usually was. So he thought why not? People might not even notice me. That was optimistic of him, yes, but his mood today wasn't so down. The absence in the cafeteria allowed him just a shred of hope.

So he went through the line, never making eye contact with the lunch ladies. They always seemed to hear his opinions on them and they never failed to yell at him. It was extremely embarrassing because the people in line next to him never hear the thoughts so they have no idea what is going on. He mumbled a thank you (mistakenly in Korean so he got a glare instead of something of a friendly smile) and moved towards the one table he has taken to sitting at, in the event that he did sit at a table. Next to his empty table, he couldn't help but notice a girl playing a ukulele. It was the most adorable--and the most random--thing he had seen all day.

His top lip rolled a little forward and he tried to hold in his smile, but he could hardly help it. The ukulele was a foreign musical instrument to him (thanks to movies, he knew what it was, but had hardly ever gotten to hear one like this) and it was unbelievably happy and cheerful. And the girl was just enjoying herself. Jeff picked at his meal, but he found himself just wanting to listen to her music. He didn't want to assume that she had written the pieces she was playing, just as he didn't want to insult her talent by assuming she was playing someone else's. Jeffrey himself had a few drum beats he had made himself, as well as a full arsenal of songs he could play along with. He didn't particularly care if someone came up to him while he was playing and asked, wow man that's good, did you make that up?, but Jeff didn't want to just take for granted that this girl wasn't a serious musician. Some people were just like that, and it was a big gamble to assume one or the other.

After her song, he clapped his hands softly and smiled in her direction. "You are very good." He chose to go with that. But he really did believe it. She was good. Not many people here were musicians.

(Feel free to have her hear any of his musings about her, for the lols)

[Annabelle Coronova]

Annabelle looked up from her ukulele spielen and smiled at the thought of what she heard as a compliment. People usually didn't come up to her and just say that, but she wasn't complaining. Instead, she decided to make the most of it, and chucked her ukulele as she turned her head towards the male voice and thanked him, as she quickly tried to study his face and figure out who he was. "Why thanks!" She flashed him a smile as she quickly looked over his facial features. She couldn't figure out how tall he was from where he was. She could see he was trying his hardest to keep a nice smile though, even to the severity of his upper lip, which she found minute amusement in and replied, "Just relax your face though, you're starting to look scary." She chuckled and held out her ukulele to him. "Have you ever played, and better yet, do you want to give it a shot?"

Integrating in this was part of the new Annabelle. She wasn't going to be a grump and would tried to defy her loner personality just a bit to reach out to people in some way, shape, or form, even if it was still up them to come up to her. She wasn't going to ignore someone if they had made the initial effort to be nice to her and compliment her and such. This whole 'friendly Annabelle' part of her could do her some good eventually.

[Jeffrey Dougal]

She responded positively to his compliment, which was score one for Jeffrey. His smiled loosened a little and became just a little less forced, but when she mentioned he was starting to look scary because of his smile, his face relaxed immediately. He certainly didn't want to be perceived as scary. He shifted a little, and was perfectly ready to return to his food because he was proud of himself for what he had accomplished so far. He had told another person his opinion, without the rest of his thoughts getting in the way, which was great. He didn't want to push his good fortune in that area so he looked down.

However, in the corner of his eye, he saw her hold up the ukelele towards him and he looked back up, almost an uneasy expression on his face. He was a musician, yes, but his powers of awesome rarely transferred to different instruments. He wasn't really sure he wanted to attempt on the little thing, because the sound it made projected and if he messed up, that too would be projected out to the crowd in the cafeteria and Jeff didn't like or want that sort of attention.

On the other hand, his power of being good at instruments might pass to the guitar like instrument (though Jeff was actually pretty bad at guitar because the size and weight were weird) and he could potentially find something else he was good at to boost his confidence a hair or two. And also; this girl seemed pretty nice and interesting, and it wouldn't hurt to have a friend since that Braxton fiasco. Jeff still didn't understand what went wrong with that.

"Okay." He said with a small smile. He couldn't exactly reach her from his old seat from the other table, so he got up with his food table and moved to hers. After he was seated, he took the instrument from her and strummed experimentally. He winced faintly, but he hadn't even put his fingers down on the frets.