on the not-quite-first day of Christmas the cosmic wossnames gave to me...

[freckles_and_doubt]

So, totally buggered at the moment, but in fact surprisingly upbeat despite all the orientation panic, student angst and what have you. An anti-rant-list is apparently called for. Today, the following things are making me happy:

1. Holidays. Yesterday was a public holiday, for which I thank the saints fasting. I'm in that stage of mental shut-down which says that energy-wise I'm pretty much at the end of my tether - I did sweet bugger-all all day yesterday, it was luvverly. I have two weeks off from Friday, which is a half day owing to the staff party. I figure I'll just about survive, having carefully paced myself to this point.
   
2. Chocolate brownies. For my birthday this year sven&tanya gave me this incredible book called Chocolate Chocolate, full of recipes which require untold and unlikely quantities of the eponymous ingredient, and which are uniformly and unashamedly decadent and bad for you. (Eighteen different chocolate brownie recipes! good grief!) As a result of this I've actually learned to make decent brownies, which has mostly been a matter of subtracting 50^o from the temperature, fifteen minutes from the cooking time, and flinging into the recipe whatever the hell happens to occur to me in the way of extra chocolate, extra Lindt dark chocolate, extra cocoa, extra chocolate chips, extra vanilla, or extra random nuts or flavourings. The last batch was exceptionally edible, and I have three of them in a tin on my desk. The morning will be somewhat sugar-powered in addition to its usual Earl Grey fuel.
   
3. Recession. Yes, really. No-one has any money, everyone is doing the "ooh let's not do big presents this year!" thing, the shops are comparatively empty, and consequently Christmas is not bringing out my inner homicidal misanthrope quite as much as it usually does.
   
4. Supernatural. Season three is both darker and goofier (rabbit's-foot physical humour ftw), angsty!boys are angstier, but mostly I'm happy because last night's episode about fairy tale got the fairy tale bit absolutely right. Bonus accurate "Grimms' fairy tales were dark, twisty, violent and sexy" references from Sam, my current favourite geek in the whole wide world. Also, pleasingly perverse Christmas episode featuring caricatured 50s-style cheery suburban couples with a charnel house in the cellar.
   
5. My mother. She's in town. Life is better.
   
6. Cthulhoid wossnames. My Tor.com mailing list signup just gave me a totally unexpected early gift of the new Charlie Stross Laundry story, also with additional Cthulhoid Christmas perversion (the Filler of Stockings!). It'll go up on Tor.com next week, but if anyone really wants to read it earlier, mail me!
   
7. First trailer for Iron Man 2. 'Nuff said.

Now I go to herd academics, hand-hold devastated students and wrangle orientation photocopying. I wave a chocolate brownie mystically at them all.