Yeah For Being Single (and Saving Money)!!

Ahhhh... Valentine's Day. The dumbest holiday of the year. We waste 13.7 BILLION DOLLARS every Valentine's day in the US. What the hell? If everyone just waited to celebrate a week afterwards when all the flowers go on sale, it'd only be 6.8 BILLION DOLLARS!! And how many people resort to the cliche flowers and chocolate when you can buy your loved one a snow shovel? Half price at Home Depot if it's the same as last year! You can splurge that way and get the really nice one and not feel guilty.

Interesting facts I found regarding Valentine's Day:

• Women purchase approximately 85% of all valentines
• Greeting Card Association (what do they do!?!?) estimates that 1 Billion Valentines are sent each year worldwide.
• Today is also "Singles Awareness Day" (SAD).... whatever that means. "A common greeting on this day is Happy SAD".
  
• Ancient Greeks celebrated between mid-January to mid-February in honor of the sacred marriage of Zues and Hera.
• The Pope declared in 496 that the feast of St. Valentine would be February 14. Don't think it was Pope Hallmark IV but I could be wrong.
• Chaucer (poet) wrote a poem referring to "Volantynys day" being a romantic occasion back in 1382. Again, Hallmark wasn't quite on board with the holiday yet.
• Earliest surviving valentine dates from 1415 - a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife. It read "Roses are read, Violets are blue, I'm the Duke of Orleans, Who the hell are you?".... or so I'm told. It also had "SWAK" on the back of the envelope.
• Japan and Korea now celebrate actively - mainly with women - who give candy, chocolate, or flowers to people they like.
• I also point out that Valentine's is probably the coldest holiday. You can explain that in more than one definition of the word "cold":)

I'd also like to note that Valentine's Day candy is by far my favorite. Jube Jells (cherry flavored gummy hearts) and Cherry Sours are what I long for... but not this year. It was hard to find them last year as Brachs Candy wasn't as easily found in stores. I didn't look too hard as candy is bad to have around.

Class in NY is going well. We spent a lot of time discussing "Coaching" yesterday. We split into groups of three that had the "Coaches" (like a manager), the "Observers" to the conversation, and the "Coachees" (like the employee). For some reason I was the only one that found the verbal use of the word "Coachees" way too similar to the Apache Chief "Chochise". Yes, I find humor in just about anything but that one was way too easy to confuse;)

And speaking of a day known for disappointment..... the anticipation of "up to a foot" of snow last night turned into a light dusting and now sleet/rain on top of it making it not pretty whatsoever. Not sure what happened with the dump we were supposed to get. I did witness the first snow flakes as I walked back to my room last night. Too bad that was the bulk of it right there!

Good luck with the holiday for those that are celebrating!

Haiku of the Day
V-Day? Bah Humbug!!
What a waste of a good day
Groundhog Day's better

Entertainment of the Day - gotta go with the favorite song for today.... Love Stinks (yeah, yeah). It's quite appropriate today in my mind. I couldn't find a song very easily about a shovel but I'll keep looking.

Weblink of the Day - Celebrating Valumtime's Day wouldn't be complete without a contribution from Homestarrunner and his friends TEEN GIRL SQUAD. Kahn's favorite, I know... I usually struggle with them, but this one is just random enough for me to find enjoyment out of it!