Happy VD!

I’m sure that last year was my oddest Valentine’s Day. I met a bunch of AIDS orphans, wandered an African casino drooling over Indian girls, culminating in a romantic devil’s threesome dinner at a restaurant decorated with pinups and meat hooks. Hard to beat.

This year was an odd mix of appropriate and inappropriate activities, along with appropriate activities done out of context.

On Friday I participated in a Battle of the Sexes. As I have thrown a couple BotS before, I offered the use of my trivia bank. But as I knew all the answers to the gender trivia, I couldn’t participate on the men’s team. So I was appropriated into the activities committee for the evening and became a judge/scorekeeper. I got bored and started writing jokes on the scoreboard, which eventually resulted in the girl’s protesting my credentials. Evidently they didn’t like it when I vandalized Ladies, changing it to Rabies, and when I posted the comment “Haven’t scored in a while” after they hadn’t scored for 15 minutes. So half the girls in my ward don’t like me anymore, but realistically they wouldn’t have liked me if they knew me better anyway. And the other half gave me some compliments on my shirt and some beard rubs so it all evens out in the end.

Saturday, well I may have drunk myself into a stupor because I don’t really know what I did on Saturday. But I know I did decide to watch a movie and it happened to be Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And only afterwards did I realize I’d selected a movie about a painful breakup for my Valentine’s weekend. Apropos. As always, a fine film.

Sunday, I had intended to throw a Pal-antine’s Day movie night. Unfortunately due to roommates’ illness, absence and disinterest, my little movie night became a very little one as it was just The Historian and myself. But since I like The Historian more than most people, it all worked out fine. We watched (500) Days of Summer, which was an intentional choice of a movie about a painful breakup, so was again appropriate. In addition to our bittersweet movie, we made some bittersweet Frozen Lemon Cream, which I hadn’t had in a decade or two. It is as good as I remembered.

On Valentine’s Day itself, I had pre-arranged to have a girlfriend. Months ago I had been discussing my Love Sucks Party tradition with the Dirty Lunchlady (before she protests, it’s only a temporary pseudonym) and we decided we’d be a couple for Valentine’s Day. So after I presented her with a lovely bouquet of pickles, we went to get some Thai food. Partially this was in preparation for my trip to Thailand, and partially to try to satisfy her insatiable lust for spicy food. It was a pleasant evening with fine conversation, far too many old white Scottsdalians for an ethnic restaurant and an overly loud jazz band. After some discussion of our mutual love for NPH we ended up watching Dr. Horrible. Turns out I had selected yet another movie about a painful breakup, proving that my subconscious and/or my movie collection is highly fatalistic. But despite this, it was great evening, made even better because I didn’t have to go to work until noon today.

I’m not saying that there won’t be a Love Sucks VII next year, but turns out there are lots of other ways to celebrate the birth/death/existence of Saint Valentine.