floating around like an oversized tinkerbell

Karolina had almost forgotten what day it was. It wasn't until the late afternoon that her phone beeped to signal the arrival of an email.

From all of us here at the Dean Foundation, we wish a very Happy Birthday to you, Ms. Dean!

It was January 28th. And Karolina was turning 23. And it didn't feel like much of anything. It wasn't a significant birthday in any legal sense, and it wasn't one of the culturally important ones, either. But even more than that... Karolina's relationship with her birthday had been pretty weird ever since her parents' deaths. Kinda hard to have a birthday and not think about the people who were the reason you were in the world in the first place, you know?

So she wasn't going to be making a big thing of it this year, either. The same as every year. But she had gone down to J,GoB and bought a box of vegan cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles. And then a small package of those cute little candles meant for birthday cakes from elsewhere in town.

And now she was in her kitchen, trying to decide whether she felt like being this dorky or not.

[ooc: Open for visits and calls and texts, should you feel a reason for any of those! ETA: NSFWness down-thread!]

Was the guidance counselor doing her own homework in the office today? Yes, yes she was. She was taking a class on navigating the currrent job market this term, and this week's task was to create a LinkedIn profile and an online resumé.

The latter was the cause for the occasional, soft 'goddammit's coming from Karolina's office.

She was not very technically minded, and anyway, that site that was supposed to help her was totally working against her, and had probably been designed by a villain. And that was her frustration before even getting to the issues with what she had to fill the resumé with, which was... not a whole lot. 'Freelance superhero, 2012 - present' just didn't sound that professional.

Someone please rescue her.

[ooc: Open office!]

Karolina was in her office today, ready to talk to anyone who might want to discuss a student they were visiting, or just the school in general. She was even prepared to keep it as non-weird possible for those family members and friends who didn't seem like they were fully in the know about the reality of the island.

She also had some cookies on her desk.

Just in case.

[ooc: Open!]

Another school year had begun. Not just for students of Fandom but also for part-time community college students like their guidance counselor. Which meant that Karolina was splitting her office hour between counselor-y paperwork for the school, and marking important stuff from her own classes' syllabuses into her calendar.

And, um. Also browsing Tinder every once in a while. The season was swiftly turning into fall, and that always made her miss -- everyone. And things.

But still, definitely mostly working on that paperwork. For sure.

[ooc: Oh so open!]

It had taken some wrangling to make this happen: you couldn't really just up and visit someone on a spaceship whenever you decided you wanted to. Even if that someone happened to be the captain. But, Karolina was persistant! And Jim had leverage!

And so, today, Karolina Dean found herself aboard the Enterprise. There was a backpack filled with Earthside treats over her shoulder, and a look of poorly-concealed wonder on her face as she looked around where she'd been received. Everyone looked so official in their uniforms, it made her feel like she should be introducing herself as 'Counselor Dean' or something. Or at the very least wear something that wasn't a yellow hoodie with some light blue jeans.

She was as much in awe as she was feeling out of place. But, there was someone else on this ship who'd make her feel more at home. So, now she just needed to find Jim! Easy!

... She probably shouldn't go looking for Jim on her own, huh?

[ooc: NFB, and for that guy!]

Karolina's phone call project hadn't been going very well, these past few weeks. Like, there'd been the week when apparently all the calls had gone to the office moose's voicemail. Why the moose even had voicemail or a phone in the first place was beyond Karolina.

And today? Well, today she got to her office only to find out the phone that was usually there was just gone. And her cellphone was suddenly not getting service, either.

She was beginning to think she'd be better off just going door-to-door at the dorms or at least standing outside it and handing out leaflets or something.

... In fact, since the phones were out of the question for the day, she was going to spend her office hour designing a flyer. It passed the time while she waited to see whether anyone came by, and maybe something would come out of it!

[ooc: Open!]

Karolina was completely normal today. (Well, normal by her own standards, anyway.) And so, she was trying to get back to calling up more students for their check-ins. She was supposed to move up to the juniors today!

Except whenever she tried to call any of them, all she got was the Monster Mash playing over the phone. So, either all the juniors had inexplicably chosen to change their outgoing voicemail messages to the same song, or Fandom was up to something.

And Karolina was far too familiar with the island to really suspect the former. So, guess today was going to be about putting a couple of Halloween decorations up in her office, and seeing if any of the students she'd already called before would like to drop by today.

[ooc: Open!]

Karolina came to her office full of energy and will to finally get going with her job.

So of course there was a mountain of paperwork on her desk when she got there. A mountain. And on top of it, a note from the administrative office. Apparently they thought that since she'd been so efficient with getting things in order before her unfortunate doll break, she could now be trusted to handle a bunch of stuff the previous counselor had completely overlooked.

It was nice that they had confidence in her, but...

Karolina sighed heavily as she took a seat behind her desk and began to sift through all the papers. This was going to be a long day.

[ooc: Open! SP warning for my evening.]

Karolina had missed the picnic due to an unexpected case of villainy back in LA early on Saturday. She'd only gotten in town late last night, but, hey! Mondays were a good time to get started on a new thing. And for this new thing, coming to see her new office for the first time seemed like the best way to start, so here she was.

She had never had an office before.

It was weird. But also exciting! She'd barely gotten in the door, but already she was considering the possibilities in how to re-decorate it. She wanted to make it a little more inviting – something that students wouldn't find, like, intimidating or anything like that. A place where you could just drop in without it being a big deal, because she knew from personal experience how hard it was sometimes to approach adults who were Obligated to Care about your crap. She wanted to fight that, and make her office a place where you could --

-- admire a drawing of Nyan Cat in a corner on the wall?

Huh.

Okay, it was kind of a weird thing, but Karolina found that she actually liked it. She was definitely going to bring something in a rainbow print into the office, anyway. And nothing else already in the room seemed very inspiring to her eye. As she went around the desk and took a seat behind it and started opening the drawers, all she found was piles of old paperwork (some of which looked like it had been at some point folded up into paper planes) and... a 1000-piece puzzle in a box?

So guess now she knew what guidance counselors did when they were bored. And on that note, she also looked into the mini fridge by the desk. It was empty, except for a single bottle of something called Green Lamp Ale. A post-it was stuck to the side of it. All it said was Good luck.

Karolina was going to take that at face value.

She leaned back in her chair some, and snapped a picture of the room on her phone - and promptly texted that off to Jim:

OH MY GOD I have an OFFICE!!

[ooc: Open! Yay Karolina!]

There was no party for Karolina's birthday. Even the all-important paperwork declaring her a legal adult and a free person hadn't come in yet, which was a bit of an anticlimax, but what could you do? She still knew it was coming. It was about the only thing that was. The other paperwork concerning her parents' money had already shown up, and she wasn't really expecting any other presents. Or hadn't really thought about it.

And so, the birthday girl herself was sitting cross-legged on her bed, watching Youtube clips of meta for Rebel Without A Cause on her phone.

Wiiiild party.

[ooc: Door/post open! Feel free to mod having heard it's her birthday, it's no secret. A slight SP warning is in effect because I am all over the place today, but I couldn't just not post on her big birthday, omg.]