'Tis the season to be inexplicably cheerful. Snow is on the ground (my wish was granted), temperatures are plummeting (an excuse to conserve body heat), and a not wholly-commercialized holiday season is upon us (the spirit is still there).
No doubt the glooms and grays are always there in one form or another. Even worse, they're easy to focus on. If I had a nickel for every time someone felt they deserved to skip the line by entering the rear exit door of the bus, I'd be able to afford presents people actually deserve. I don't mean deserve in a bad way, like a mafia hit, but more along the lines of houses and small countries.
It's ironic that my being at Madison keeps my mood warm since it's the wind off Mendota that tries to make it cold. After brief contemplation in the free time I don't have, I have realized a few things that are keeping me strangely jovial.
Madison is nothing if not about the people, who make up this campus/city hybrid and embody everything from the pursuit of knowledge to a good conversation. It's these people, the 'everyone else' factor, with whom you can always find an endearing nuance.
'Everyone else' can come in many forms. It can be Laura-Claire, my past editor, who forced me to slaughter some of my columns only for them to turn out better than I could have hoped, or Sarah and Sarah, my future editors, who have sworn to make sure I never get to [expletive deleted] swear, no matter how [expletive deleted] much I [expletive deleted] want to. Or it could be my friends, from those I barely get to talk with to those that support my strange urges'like building an arcade machine'to those that express interest in hanging out years from now.
But what makes you happy doesn't have to be all deep. When the percent grade on a test is about as high as I can count (I just reached 23 yesterday), sometimes it's the interesting, random things that make it all better.
For instance, the word X-mas. Until today, it didn't make sense to me. No one could explain it either. 'The X stands for extreme' or 'Christmas sounds like cross-mass, and an 'X' is like a cross' just didn't cut it. So, I was left to treat it like global warming and Britney Spears: I just blamed it on the South.
Then during a 'studying is driving me crazy' web surf, the truth was found. It's not an 'X' but the greek 'chi', which is the first letter in the word (pronounced 'christos') and is Greek for Christ. And if you weren't aware either, now you are and you're better for it. 'Cause knowledge is power (cue: 'School House Rock' theme).
Another random tidbit to help make life better (aside from the fact that the word tidbit is its own mirror image'in certain fonts, of course) is that the dog genome has been sequenced. This brings us one step closer to Spot glowing in the dark. Furthermore, it opens the door for the X-men to get a pet, because, let's be honest, some of them are close, but a dog using teleportation to play fetch would just be entertaining.
When it comes down to it, I don't really have a definitive reason to be in a good mood, but that might be the best part. I hope everyone can finish off the semester and year well and has a good time doing it, even if you can't explain why you're happy.
