I feel less than kosher leaving one of my "venting" posts up for so long when I'm actually no longer pissed off about anything at all. My apologies: you have them.

There's no snow on the ground and I have yet to go shopping (or, and this thought comes embarassingly late, to church) but, nevertheless, it feels like Xmas.

Mostly, I have Sophia to thank.

A sentence for my list of incredibly unlikely sentences: My Swedish flatmate has decorated our Wohngemeinschaft.

She's lit the Christmas lights. She's started to play Christmas music, the same mix of Mannheim Steamroller and generic covers by anynomous experts that I'm used to from home. She's baked cookies and hung some of those cookies, gingerbread with white frosting that spells out all of our names, on the wall in the kitchen.

Hot chocolate from home (Swiss Miss) helps too. I'm hoping to get one of those electric water kettles so I can make hot chocolate in our dormroom whenever I want.

Or tea, but (as my brother Matt always says when you offer him gum) I'm trying to quit. I'm already up until three most nights even without caffeine. I've decided that there's no caffeine in hot chocolate.

But where was I? (A phrase found only in the best nonfiction writing, for the record).

Ah, Christmas. Even though I'm still annoyed with many (perhaps most, several shining examples are in the room right now) of my fellow IES students, I now feel actual tolerance for the people I wanted to kill with my mind last week, instead of just "restraint".

They're just annoying, those annoying ones; they don't mean any ill will. And now that "it" feels like Christmas, I feel a strange goodwill towards all mankind. I can be petty later.

Also putting me in an unsually good mood: The tour of the Ganter Brewery we took earlier this week (probably the last time I'll ever have a beer right before class), the trip to Paris which The Politician and I have in the works, and the "It Feels Like Christmas" song from The Muppet Christmas Carol, which seems to be permantely stuck in my head. Later.