Pardon the blog eruption

While my dearth of entries during blog down periods is usually attributable to not having anything I want to say or worth saying (there's an argument there about the blog as a whole, of course, but shut up), sometimes it's just because I don't really get around to it. So here comes a blast of entries - both here and a couple in the theme blogs - that I've been mulling over recently. We'll start here with a brief Valentine's Day recap.

Following my tuxedo-clad adventures at the "Dance for Diabetes," Alma and I had talked idly about having another dinner out while dressed nicely. So for Valentine's Day, I put on a dress shirt and blazer and drove up to get her. At the last second, it occurred to me that maybe I should mention that I was dressed nicely, in case she was going to come down in sweatpants or something (we don't take Valentine's Day all that seriously, blazer notwithstanding), which resulted in my hearing one of those "...o-kay" responses on the other end of the phone that always make me feel bad. But then that's what happens when you've just sprung on someone "Hey, we're getting dressed up!" and you leave them ten minutes or so to put on makeup and do other things that only women do. She looked great despite the rush, though.

We went for Indian food, but our Lake County hotspot of choice - basically because it's the only classy Indian joint within 30 miles (seriously, if you do a search on the online yellow pages, you get two or three hits up north, and the next two dozen are all on Devon, not exactly a short trip) - had a "special Valentine's Day menu," which basically means "rather than ordering the way you usually would, we're going to force you to get theme dinners which cost twice what you might usually expect to pay." The choices were listed in "platter" form, which had the prices right there - the cheapest was 25 bucks, and the most expensive was 40. Now, you got an appetizer, drink, and dessert with that, but you can see how at those prices, with the number of entrees (three to four) listed under each, and the fact that oh hey, this is a Valentine's Day - i.e. couples? - theme, Alma and I might have assumed that each platter was intended for two people to share. But oh no. One person! Even with the appetizer and dessert, 25-40 bucks for one person's dinner? I am not, by nature, a cheap person, but I'm more or less of the opinion that there's no reason ever to spend more than about 20 bucks on a single person's meal. It's food, for crying out loud. Let's face, Valentine's Day to a restaurant means "guys will be trying to impress women and aren't going to complain about prices, so let's jack them as high as we can without seeming preposterous."

Anyway. The food was good, though I honestly think you could legitimately claim to have gotten less for your buck than on a normal day. (Note to self: Next year, it's Valentine's Day at White Castle.) We went back to Alma's apartment where she had prepared chocolate-dipped strawberries - one of each of them was iced with "I," a heart, "Y," "O," "U," and "Rob." Which was really, really sweet of her. They were hard to eat because she had kept them in the freezer, though - I ate the chocolate off one, then got stymied by the freezing strawberry and eventually gave up because my teeth got cold. But it was a very nice thought. She also cracked me up when, after we had started by eating the heart and the U, she said that if we ate the I we could pretend that the remainder were strawberries from my dad.

So that was Valentine's Day in a nutshell. Alma is amazing, of course - but we all know this. I'll spare you the sappy displays of emotion for one post.