D'awww she's adorable.
I need to finish mine tonight I've just been busy.

Oh, Lillian... I am in love! She is beautiful!

d'aww, thanks you two. I had a dickens of a time finding an image I liked, ask Igraine! But I found just the face I could see in my mind's eye this morning. Then pieced together her brief bio.

Yup, she is cute, and yup, I got all the previous possible incarnations to review! I'm only just thanking heaven, Lil didn't go with the bleach blonde!

She was not a bleach blonde! And she had a cute smile, just not as cute as this one is.

She was too! She had near-to-white hair with dark, dark eyes! But no, you've found the perfect picture for Penny, and she looks wonderful! :)

*knock-knock* Penny *knock-knock* Penny *knock-knock* Penny

(Right! Scrapping the other Secondary character and trying again! So in the fine tradition of Scruffy, Rimmer and Lister, Mike and Darby, and Adam Quark, I give you...)



Name: Jack Pumphrey

Gender: Male

Age: 26

Eyes: Hazel Green

Hair: Reddish-Brown

Occupation/Position: Handyman / General Custodian

Background: Originally born in Petty Cove, Newfoundland, Jack’s family moved to Wyoming when he was seventeen… by which point it was too late to get the Newfie out of him. He was raised on a mental diet of hockey, Stompin’ Tom Connors, and The Red Green Show, none of which were actually bad although it had made him (again like his forefathers) a rather easy going fellow. Jack has never been one to worry. His father and uncle and grandfather were all fix it men and Jack was raised to the same vocation. Lawn mower not working? Take it to the Pumphreys! Need a cheap plumbing fix done right? Call one of the Pumphreys! Got an antique radio that needs new vacuum tubes? Check with old man Pumphrey! Need someone to scrub down the boat? Pass a few bucks to that Pumphrey kid! They were a family made up almost entirely of jacks-of-all-trades and maids-of-all-work. It suited their personalities, their lifestyles, and them. Not a perfect family, but at least it was one that functioned and you knew where you stood.

Only with the fisheries coming back to strength after decades of restrictions and heavy limits, people were buying new and more complicated gadgets. Jack and his family couldn’t fix these new fangled flat screen televisions with their circuits and processors and all that, and trying to figure out a kludge to repair a busted GPS locator… signal… beacon… thing… Well, that was right out! They had their loyal customers, but there simply wasn’t enough work to support the family.

The move to Wyoming was prompted by a second cousin who was starting an antique restoration business and was looking to expand. Nepotism the fine thing that it is, he hired Jack, his father, and his uncle to come down and help out. And they made a pretty good deal off of it. They settled down and only seemed a trifle odd to their new neighbors; Petty Cove had been more or less a bastion of stereotypical Newfoundlanders. Americans trying to follow the Pumphrey’s convoluted logic and grammar were often exasperated as they were charmed at the same time.

Then came the Change. Things kept getting more and more desperate until one night everyone in town was rounded by the military and taken to some secret place up in the mountains. People from all around the countryside were being brought in and processed as quickly as possible by a small army of clerks before being shown to emergency shelters. “Do you have any medical conditions or injuries?” “What’s your age?” “Are you married?” and (seemingly most important) “Do you have any special skills, certifications, or licenses?”

Jack remembers standing there at that table, yes, sir, staring the young woman full in the face and thinking his answer through before saying, “Well, miss? I can try just about anything you tell me to. Can’t promise I’ll do it well, but there’s some things I might do better than most only I won’t know what they are until you have me do them, b’y. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, you see, it’s that duct tape is the handyman’s friend. So you can ask me about robots and computers and astro-whatnots if you’d like, and I’m more than willing to take ‘em apart and have a look at their guts. But if were me asking you? I’d want to know if you can clean a toilet or mop a floor. Because theren’t no certifications or licenses for that, and it don’t take no special skill, and so I doubt it appears on that there list in front of you.”

The result? General Custodian, Third Shift. His father, mother, uncle, and aunt were all designated sleepers because of their age, while his second cousin (Sam) was made a Custodian on First Shift.

It’s simple but honest work, Jack found. Cleaning, mopping, doing basic maintenance that the Engineers wouldn’t bother with, helping with laundry, sorting recyclables… He’s not overly depressed about the Earth being lost. In his laid back manner, Jack realizes it was just another home. And now humanity was going to have a new one.

On shift, Jack can usually be seen strolling from one job to another, pushing a cart or carrying a toolbox. A short briarwood pipe (his grandfather’s) is usually clenched between his teeth, unlit of course due to regulations. Since waking, he has seemed a little preoccupied with hunting down spare tubing and sugar. At the moment, however, he's received notification that he has to go clean vomit out of one of the holographic projector circuit panels before Engineering will even touch it...

That is lovely Justric, just lovely. Especially the last bit.

A Newfie, I love it.

And Penny already wants to put some meat on his bones doesn't she?

Ha! Exactly so.

(I'm sorry, I can't resist)

Careful, or she might end up with a bun in the oven.

That was just awful. Simply awful.

Ha loved that throw back to the throw up Justric XD

Thank you, thank you. (Bows). There were a great many more baking related puns that I could have explored, but it was the yeast I could do not to rise to the occasion.

Delightfully cringe-worthy, Justric.

I can't wait until after 3pm tomorrow. I'm so ready for the weekend.

Lillian - I blame my one high school teacher. You see, our school district's budget was severely strained when I was in school, so they hired this British educator who handle both the advanced literature classes and the home economics classes. She loved to teach the cooking part of the latter, especially how to make sauces and cremes. So you could say that I get my love of baking puns from my anglaise teacher...

Justric said So you could say that I get my love of baking puns from my anglaise teacher...

You need to use this skill in the story.