[b][center][h2]Joel Nicolosi[/h2][/center][/b]

Eyes blinked open. Groggy, Joel for a moment stared straight up at the tile, drop-ceiling of his upstairs “living room”. Somewhere during the night his curiosity had pulled him from his bed to the couch where he wanted to get a look at just what level of panic was setting in on the local newscast. The TV displayed quietly where he’d left it with some mid-morning national talk show that danced shadows all over the room and a news ticker ran across the bottom of the screen with alerts about power outages and other chaos across the city that he squinted at briefly with some amusement. Joel’s upstairs could be near pitch-black any time of day which was how he liked it and made it easy to fall back asleep. The kerosene heater roared downstairs in the shop, but that wasn’t what woke him. The vibrating hum of a call sent his phone crawling across the table and he swatted at it to make it stop, grumbling to himself as did so. He wasn’t expecting any calls with the weather.

Sure enough, there was an unread message from Sio to go along with an incoming call [i]from the University[/i]. He stared blankly for a bit as his drowsy mind considered who in the hell would be calling him. [i]This better be good…[/i] He thought to himself contemplating just letting it ring out, but then remembering Sio saying something about going over there for some reason… He hadn’t really been paying that much attention. She was probably pissed about the message he sent about her car, which would in turn be hysterical. He shifted a little back under the warm blanket that he tossed over the couch as he grabbed the phone. WIth the kerosene heater running, he had the heat-pump turned down significantly to save on the power bill. Even with all his winnings from the race and other promotions, he still couldn’t bring himself not to be frugal. He yawned and stretched a bit as the call continued to vibrate in his hand, knowing it would soon cut to voicemail. 

Swiping his thumb over the screen he switched it over to speaker phone. “Joe’s bar and grill.” He answered. 

[@Almalthia]