A Post Valentine's Post

Sunday night I went to Walgreens to pick up a few prescriptions and see what cheap candy I could score.

While I was searching the mangled remains of the candy I heard something behind me. On the toy side of the aisle someone had started up a musical toy. The toy was a stuffed wolf on top of a lamb and played Hungry Like the Wolf, and the lamb would periodically baah.

So the wolf was on top of the lamb like it was going to kill and eat the poor thing and the lamb seemed to be crying for help. Not very romantic. Sorta creepy. In fact if I had received this as a gift for Valentine's day I think I would have to break up with the person who gave it to me. I mean really. What the fuck?

VD is for everybody!

You've seen that right? This. I'm so old. I saw this originally on Nick at Night, not YouTube. Anyway...

Not that kind of VD.

Our Valentine's Day was very nice as it always is. This morning I was catching up on my blogs and read a Consumerist post about how spending on diamonds is down, how guys were lined up at the Godiva store and how the best way to have a nice, cheaper, Valentines was to avoid manufactured sentiment and do something that was meaningful for you. Shocking, I know.

Josh and I have been doing this for years. This is the third year in a row we've gone to Cracker Barrel for dinner and it's now a tradition. We had to wait for a table, but that was ok. It wasn't terribly cold and we laughed our asses off at the hoarse girl on the intercom calling for tables and complained about the terrible country music.

Instead of traditional Valentine's gifts Josh gave me a cross stitch kit (above), a book on needle tatting, and a pair of inexpensive earrings from my Amazon wishlist. I gave him a book of H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe, and Zombie Ninja Pro Am. No super expensive flowers. No cheap diamonds from Kmart. Just stuff we both really liked that showed how much we care for and get each other. I'm not seeing what's so hard or revolutionary about that.

Anyway it was lovely. And geeky. Nothing says love like H.P. Lovecraft.

I'm Easy, No, I'm Simple, No, I'm Low Maintenance. Yeah, That's the Ticket!

So tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Now i'm not one of those assholes who spends the first half of February kvetching about how Valentine's is a made up Hallmark holiday, but i'm not a fancy restaraunt, long-stemmed roses required type either.

I like Valentine's Day. I like the idea of having a day set aside to show those you care about how much you do care about them. Now I do think that somethings take this way too far. I've seen more Pajama Gram commercials in the last two weeks than I can count. While perusing the classifieds last week looking for a hedgie in need of a good home I came across an ad for AKC registered Yorkies for $800. "Perfect for Valentine's Day" it said. Yikes. That's more than Josh spent on me for Christmas!

I told Josh about the ad and asked him if he wasn't glad to be married to me who set a $50 limit and tells him every year that he doesn't have to buy me roses, if he does buy me roses they dont have to be red, long-stemmed or a dozen of them. (I never got the long-stemmed thing. Who has a three foot high vase? I end up cutting most of the stems off.) He of course said he was.

I think a lot of the Valentine's backlash comes from an all or nothing attitude. As if you can't have a nice low-key Valentine's Day. It's crappy all around in that case.

Tomorrow i'll get Josh a card and a cute bag to put his presents in, he'll get me grocery store flowers (totally fine by me) and we'll go out to eat at Cracker Barrel since it's the only place to eat in town that doesn't have an hour wait that night. A lovely, low-maintenance Valentine's day.

Long Weekends are Looooooong.

Well this one was anyway.

We got snow! SNOW! Beautiful, white, fluffy snow! Like, four inches of it! Enough that classes here were cancelled Tuesday and Wednesday.

So my three day weekend turned into a five day weekend. Oh, it was niiiiiice.

I made a snowman, but he didn't send me any snowman themed furniture. Bastard.

I dyed Josh's hoodie since the black was fading.

I did laundry.

I washed dishes and cleaned up my kitchen.

I moved some things into the attic and others into the laundry room to be closer to the attic. (These things are Christmas decorations that still need to make the big move into the attic for another year.)

I watched the inauguration which is notable because I never watch that sort of thing.

I started work on getting my office into order.

I reorganized my cross stitch things.

I finished a UFO (unfinished object) from two years ago. (A small kit of Eeyore and a butterfly.)

I read The Worst Jobs in History and finished The Ghost Map. I picked back up The Subversive Stitch.

I watched a lot of stuff on my Tifaux and then deleted it which makes me very happy. I love to see my available time increase when I delete something.

Basically a whole lot of nothing. Or rather a whole lot of little things that I never seem to get around to doing. That being said I am glad to be back at work. I get stir crazy at home after a while. But it was very nice to relax when I needed to and not have to worry about when the things that needed to be done were going to get done.

Long weekends are loooooong. They're also very nice.

New Year Blahs.

We lost the Liberty Bowl. Damn. Oh well, we're still Conference USA Champs. Not that that's much to crow about.

It's raining here.

I have no energy to take down the Christmas stuff.

I'm so sick of candy. And I have so much of it left.

Back at work. Nuff said.

House is still a wreck. I should really just learn to accept that.

House still needs repairs.

I never did make that ginger bread house. I guess it will be ok in the package until next year.

My only bright spots right now are the new Intervention on my Tifaux and the new Real Housewives of Orange County airing tonight. And my new ring. Which is still really sweet.

But mostly i'm looking forward to going home and getting back in the bed. Only four hours to go.

Santa Biggzy was good to me.