Hello dear friends. I would like to start off the Christmas season with the heartwarming tale of:

How Lara Saved Christmas (or How Lara crushed the hopes and dreams of all the Starbucks employees)

From the desk of Lara
November 24^th 3:30pm
I have made contact with circulation supervisor Gail, regarding Christmas. The great hunt for the Christmas decorations is on.

November 24^th 3:45
Have asked around about location of Christmas decorations. Have been informed by Amy that they are held in the mystical place called “The Shared Storage Room”. Upon further investigation I have found that this space is cohabitated with the great Starbucks Stock.

November 25^th 1:30pm
Have decided to begin my journey to retrieve the Christmas decorations from their holding location. I have also procured a travel companion, an odd duck by the name of Amy. She seems flighty but is fully confident that she knows where the Christmas things lay.

November 25^th 2:00pm
There is no sign of the Christmas decorations. My companion and I have moved numerous things around in the strange yet bountiful land of “The Shared Storage Room”, and yet to no avail.

November 25^th 2:15

Still have had no luck finding our treasure. We have traveled far and wide since I’ve last logged my adventures. We visited the waste land “Book Drop”, but it was bare. We have come up with numerous other places to search but have yet to take action. Will keep posted on news.

November 25^th 2:30
Alas there has been a breakthrough in our struggles! My grand companion was on her own interrogating a local by the name of If-Hat, when from a distance she spotted what appeared to be the tree that we have been looking for all along. It was far off in the distance in a place called Starbucks.

November 25^th 2:45
My companion and I have come up with several game plans to extract our stolen goods, ranging from going under cover as a local, to a covert operation involving smoke and mirrors. In the end we have decided to keep it simple. We will slowly approach the locals and try kindness. If this does not work, however, we are prepared to use snark and/or force.

From the desk of Amy
November 25^th 2:47pm
What have I gotten myself into? Lara will not stop until she has the decorations back or blood is drawn. I fear for the worst. I have encouraged the group called “ILL” to review the security footage for Starbucks on their cellular devices so that should we die fighting, it will not have been in vain.

If I should not come back from this adventure with Lara, I would like the following to be known. I did not take all of the forks from the silverware drawer, and no, I don’t know who stole and/or lost the exacto knife from the mailing station.

From the desk of Lara
November 25^th 3:15pm
We have returned victorious from our quest! As decided upon, we approached the people of Starbucks with kindness and perceived their primitive gestures to be a return of said kindness. It seems that the people believed the tree to be theirs, and so proceeded to decorate it with trinkets and other waste that they have scourged from their land.

My companion Amy insists that this is their barbaric way of trying to emulate our traditions and customs, and that we should show respect for their efforts. I must baulk at this notion, and cannot fathom how such a distasteful thing can be allowed to continue.

We rescued the tree and its remaining ornaments and deposited it back in its proper resting place upon The Desk of the Check Out. I immediately tore off the primitive decorations and disposed of them.

Though not a drop of blood was shed, I believe that I did manage to crush the soul of at least two people of Starbucks. And so, upon our return, I have insisted that my companion and I wear the proof of our victory around our necks. Our trophies are the cut-off ears of our foes, peppered with the bitter taste of their sorrow and defeat.

From the desk of Amy
November 25th 3:16pm
I don’t care what she says; they’re just the dried up limes that we took off of the tree and I’m not wearing them around my neck.