Galentine's, Valentine's, and Actual Valentine's

Ahoy there, people who like people. And people who don't like people. Apparently, today is the day of the imaginary St. Valentine, who basically gives us all a reason to have chocolates on sale on 15 February. As the daughter of a florist, I have grown to associate Valentine's day with evil and lots of thorns making my fingers bleed. To this day I find the smell of roses rather awful and disgusting, though it seems I like a bit of rosehip in my tea from time to time. Huh. I don't really get it, either. Here's something I picked up from my awesome Ate Maoi: "Let's all remember that romance isn't about obligation, and that love is a decision you make willingly every day." She's a pretty smart lady, so I have no trouble in following her advice.

The one thing I love about Valentine's day is that any day of the week of V-Day can be claimed as "Galentine's Day", which I had trouble reading at first (I thought it was some combination of Gallifrey and Valentine's day, which caused an extremely delayed reaction on my part). What does one DO on Galentine's day? For Ren, Hilda, and I, it involves a lot of food, a lot of books, and a lot of movie feels. I was stuck in traffic so I didn't get to participate in the cooking, but it was a glorious symphony of fried rice, snap peas, bean sprouts, and perfectly cooked chicken. They didn't seem pleased with their work, and I'll be honest - I was stark ravin' mad with hunger that I polished off two plates without blinking an eye, and I don't even like bean sprouts, so who knows what actually went down? I brought a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, as my task was to bring dessert, and I wasn't about to get another pie from Shari's again (Note: No, okay, I really was, but being stuck in traffic means I get doughnuts, since it's on the way and I'm already late, due to things like traffic), so we ate the confections swiftly and happily. Purposefully equipped with an adequate amount of sugar, we ran upstairs to see Ren's loot.

Allow me to explain. I used to work at an independent bookshop, where I managed the kids and young adult section along with Ren. Part of the responsibility meant that we got to attend ridiculously awesome meetings, where we basically sat around, talked about cool books, ate free food, and would be subject to a buffet of free ARCs (see: advanced readers' copy - books that will be coming out soon, but here, have a look at them, read them, LOVE THEM, so you can spread the word, book seller, SPREAD IT). We run a book blog called den-oh-mwah, so it helps to have some content on there, I guess. I have the stupid excuse of being "too busy" to read/write reviews now, but seriously, I need to get on that immediately, because have a look at Ren's haul:

I mean, WAT, SRSLY? The squeals of joy could not be contained in that room that evening as we perused through the back of the books, trying to figure out which ones we wanted to read first. Some tug-of-war definitely happened, regardless of the fact that we all share the books anyway, but it was well-worth it. That is what books should make a person do, honestly. Once we'd finally calmed down enough, we watched Austenland, because it is the greatest treasure Keri Russell could give to the world. I swear, I will never get tired of that movie. Or Pacific Rim. Yeah, that's right. Current top three movies? Pacific Rim, Austenland, and either Ikiru or Frozen. That's the sort of classy I am.

Today is Valentine's day. Scott sent me a doge meme'd version of the first picture we'd taken together, and it was pretty amazing. I have drawn my reaction.

Can't get any better than that. Now, since Scott is highly against going out on Valentine's day proper, we've reserved the evening for pizza, pajamas, and Python (ala Monty Python, which may be a candidate for one of my top movies, but I can't say yet as I've never seen it before) after getting some Costco time out of the way.

Mysteriously, Saturday has become "actual Valentine's", and he refuses to give me any detail as to what will be happening on that day. He knows I hate surprises, so I'm sure it can't possibly be something like that...yeah...