Shouldn't the holidays bring out the nicer side of people?

Living in a city where corporate shops are practically (sometimes literally) chased out of town by angry, hemp-wearing, patchouli-smelling hippies, cheery Christmas window displays are few and far between. It was pretty easy for me to (almost) forget it is the holiday season. Not to mention I'm a member of a student population for whom shopping ranks on their list of Important Things To Do just above shaving their armpits. And if you've seen any of the girls around here, you'd understand that's a pretty low-priority activity.

Unlike my hirsute peers, shopping (and shaving, for that matter) ranks pretty high on my list of Important Things To Do. Especially Christmas shopping. Since there is almost no shopping to speak of on this side of the Bay (thanks, hippies), my sister and I ventured to the Big City for a weekend shopping adventure.

It's a good thing I'm an intrinsically positive person, because otherwise the holiday spirit might have gotten sucked right out of me by all the genuinely impolite and irritated people we encountered. Working retail during the holiday rush is trying--I know, I had a mall job once. But it's really not that hard to be nice, and if that's too much work it's certainly not that hard to be benign. And doesn't it seem like it would be more work to be angry and unpleasant than base-line benign?

Load up the Botox--after all the frowns I saw I have a feeling the salespeople at Macy's are gonna need a lot of it. BART attendants, too. (Though maybe we can give them something else. Maybe a something that increases [or creates] helpfulness. Or a shot of intelligence. . .)

Nasty people aside, the City, all lit up for Christmas, was absolutely beautiful and made the shopping trip completely worth it. I forget that I live just a few miles from one of my favorite cities. I kind of forget how city it is, too. Big throngs of people milled around brightly-lit downtown, exhaling clouds of warm breath into the crisp (and boy do I mean crisp) air. It was more New York (or Big City) than it has ever seemed to me. Maybe it was being bundled up in the cold, or maybe it was the beautiful Christmas tree all lit up, but something about being there really put me in the Christmas mood. It was just what Sally and I needed.

And what I need now is time to make progress on Orangina. I'm counting down the days until December 10th, the day my last final paper is due. Of course I've got one final after that, but it's no biggie. According to just about every blogger ever, this is a super quick knit. But with all the trouble I've been having with just the first few inches, I'm worried. All I can say is come Monday, I'm gonna be hustling. I just hope the rest of it goes better than the first few rows.