The holiday break is over and the new semester has fired up faster than a two-month old Christmas tree doused with gasoline and tossed at the feet of the smokers’ congregation on the front stairs of the Main Library.

Seemingly, a nice deep freeze has settled over the Athens area and made rolling out of bed for academic purposes no easier. In fact, some students already are wishing for snow to cancel some classes.

And just like almost every other year in the history of organized learning, these wishes probably have little to no chance of coming true.

Just in case though, the grocery stores will likely be packed throughout the cold snap with college students stocking up on essentials such as whiskey, Quaker Oats-pop-tart-replicas and other perishables.

School and studies will carry on and so will the world of newspapers. That said, the variety section in The Red & Black hopes to bring warmth to the student body — or at least a fraction of the warmth that whiskey brings on a regular basis.

So, while other sections of the newspaper are off worrying about rabid raccoons and the fate of spring sporting events, we have our hands full filling the student body in on anything that can be deemed entertainment.

Our job is to let people know what is going on in the University community. We want to show students how to spend their free time (in ways that do not involve flammable liquids) and offer a little advice on the best places for entertainment in this town.

So in order to help fulfill the task, we have beats covering the major hot-spots in addition to the traditional influx of articles.

We won’t miss anything going on in the downtown area. Harry Sawyers is on the job bringing everything from the newest places to go to be generally crazy to the death of downtown businesses.

We have Stacy Moore keeping the student body up to date on the millions of events that surface on campus. She will notify the student body of lectures, art shows, poetry readings, date auctions and basically anything worth removing your butt from the couch.

As it is sometimes said, a bean is a musical fruit, and Athens is a musical town. Therefore, variety writers will attempt to satisfy fans hungry for the town’s music scene and still offer some advice on buying mainstream music.

We want to litter the spring variety section with student interest pieces and plenty of profiles about the assortment of interesting people and all-out freaks who inhabit the University campus.

Over the winter holidays the entertainment world saw some major events, so we have a lot of catching up to do.

There was simply no room to mention the full length film about Michael Jackson that came out on Christmas day (titled “Peter Pan”).

Nor could we fully embrace the fact that there is still hope in the world for guys of all shapes, sizes and abnormal amounts of body hair after Britney Spears married some big-eared guy from the back swamps of Louisiana.

But now we are back and in print once again, determined not to let such jewels of information slip by.

We hope to bring warmth, or at least advice on how to spend the semester wisely, filled with fun through the freezing cold and (so far) snow-less winter.