Work crews were still in the mansion today repairing the damage Jean did when she went all Dark Phoenix on us a couple of days ago. Since Leech is still out and about most of the time, I'm trying to make sure the human carpenters and masons don't see anything they aren't suppose to. Normally, I'd just manipulate their minds telepathically.

Jean had actually locked Leech in a closet, if you can believe that. A poor little mute orphan boy and what does she do? Lock him in a closet. And I'd just like to say that is totally different than when I have Beast lock him into the power nullification chamber. Because then I'm not doing it myself, Beast is doing it. Completely different.

After I had checked on the worker's progress this afternoon I headed for the library. To my surprise, Storm was there, standing behind the wet bar. We hadn't really had a talk since the X-Men and I eliminated the Shadow King who had been dominating her mind. While she was under his influence, Storm and I had, well, that is we . . well, you know.

Anyway, we hadn't really talked about that. I didn't particularly want to talk about it, mind you, but she was there and I supposed it would just be easier to get it over with.

"Can I get you something to drink, Professor?" she asked in a perfectly friendly voice.

"Oh, thank you, yes. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."

As she got to fixing a pot of tea, I wondered to myself why I had asked for that. I don't drink tea. I'm a coffee man. An Irish Coffee man.

"Professor, there was a rather unusual item for you in the mail today," she said as she set the water to boiling. Storm walked over and handed me an envelope.

I looked at the back and saw the letter's U.F.P. under a blue snow globe with two blue holly leafs around it. The envelope had a shiny coloring, like someone had sprinkled glitter on it. I opened it and pulled out a little metal rectangle with a clear plastic square set in it. There were two buttons. One red, one green. I pressed the green one.

An image appeared in the plastic square. It was a devilishly handsome bald man with some kind of weird red shirt on. He spoke with an English accent. "Greetings. I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. I would like to cordially invite you to the annual Christmas party being held aboard our ship this coming Monday, Stardate 52157.3. I hope to see you there!" And then the screen was filled with that same blue snow globe with the surrounding leafs.

"What do you make of that, Professor?" Storm asked.

"I'm not quite sure. What could that Stardate possibly mean?"

"Perhaps Hank will have an idea," she suggested as she handed me my tea.

"Excellent idea, Ororo. I will check with him." I took a sip and was rather pleasantly surprised. "So that's Earl Grey, eh? I think I could get use to that."