I do wish I owned stock in Hallmark...

I'm not going to go off on some long rant about Valentines day. 'It's not a real holiday, it was made up by greeting card companies to make money', blah, blah, blah. It's all been said. The truth is, I don't have any strong opinions about it one way or the other. (Full disclosure: I say this as an Anti-Valentines Day cake bakes away in my oven.) In fact, I rather selfishly enjoy it for the wide variety of candy available.

I've had good Valentine's Days and bad. Single and coupled. One of the best VD's I ever experienced, was when I was a junior in high school. My fellow rebellious, anti-everything, goth-punk boyfriend at the time, who I'd been dating for a month or so, presented me with a beautiful black rose with a chain wrapped around the stem, after school that day. (We were so hardcore.) It was the most amazing gift I'd ever received from a boy, and I floated off to detention in a state of bliss. How simple things were back then... After high school, my girlfriends and I, who were perpetually single, took to holding annual Anti-VD parties. If memory serves, these soirees typically included condom balloons, cake, copious amounts of tequila and a whole lotta' bitchin' about not getting laid enough. Those were good times...

When you work in the restaurant industry, it's pretty much mandatory that you work holidays--understandably so. They are the busiest days of the year, particularly VD. Last February 14th, I was employed at a low-end, corporate Italian eatery, where I found myself scheduled for a double-shift. At any other restaurant, this would have meant big bucks, however in my experience, the cheaper the food, the cheaper the customers. Over the course of the night, at one of my tables, I actually had a guy propose to his girlfriend. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but if I were dating a fella and he chose to propose marriage to me in the middle of a loud, crowded, crappy restaurant, over $8.00 bowls of mediocre spaghetti and jug wine, I likely would have walked out the door and hitch-hiked home. But bless her heart, she said yes! (We comped their tirimisu.) I'm sure they'll have a wonderful life together and ultimately, they happily went home with each other that night, whereas I went home with sore feet and cold chicken cannelloni.

More than anything, I think the reason people (singles especially) tend to hate this holiday, is because it gets them thinking about whether or not the right person is out there. Lately, I feel as though I've been wasting so much time hung up on the wrong ones, I wouldn't know the right one if he smacked me upside the head with a box of chocolates. When you're single, this day does nothing except make you more aware of that fact. Everywhere you turn, there is a giant, heart-shaped something in your face and couples as far as the eye can see. It can be both overwhelming and nauseating. So, I will go to work tomorrow and face the inevitable. I can only hope the night goes by quickly and I make enough money to buy myself a decent bottle of wine with which to celebrate February 15th or "50% off candy day".

Plenty of stinking, rotten, emotionally stunted fish...

Ah, internet dating. Technology has brought us so far--we needn't even leave the comfort of our homes to find a date anymore. Though, isn't it really just a step up from arranged marriages? A modern version thereof? I personally have not delved into this realm, nor do I have any immediate plans to. I get enough stories from friends to both terrify me to my core and keep me laughing hysterically for days.

One of my main concerns involving internet dating is people misrepresenting themselves. Obviously that can be done in person too, but at least when you are face to face with someone, you can get a first impression or a gut feeling. Imagine what horrors can be hidden behind the safety and relative anonymity of a computer profile. My friend once met a guy online who seemed quite nice and appeared perfectly normal in his profile picture (Note: the picture was essentially a torso/head shot). She agreed to meet him for dinner and when he arrived at the restaurant, she was shocked to see he had one normal arm and one strange sort of stump with a mini-hand attached. (I swear this is true... you cannot make this shit up.) Now let's be honest, bodily deformities are going to be a deal-breaker for some people. If you had such a deformity, wouldn't you want to weed those people out from the beginning, rather than go on date after awkward date with horrified looking girls who spend two hours nervously trying not to stare? In my friend's case, she wouldn't have minded the gimpy arm if his personality had been anywhere above a 5, which unfortunately it was not. She gave the .coms a break for awhile after that. Only recently did she get back into it, though now when she looks at pictures, she is understandably suspicious. As we scanned through some potential guys' profiles at dinner the other night, we came across one who had taken a strange, side-view picture of himself so that only the right side of his face was visible. He was very attractive, but we had to assume the left side of his face was horribly disfigured. She will not be contacting him to find out.

Physical defects aside, my most recent favorite story has to be the guy who she messaged back and forth for a day or two--he seemed cool--they were going to get together for a drink sometime. Then, out of the blue, he asks if she is a Christian. Kind of a heavy question for a 2-day text relationship, but regardless, she answered "No, but I assume you are since you're asking?" Turns out he belonged to New Life Church (made famous by the Ted Haggard scandal a few years back). At this point, she stopped texting and assumed their short-lived "relationship" was over, which it was.... until the next night when he sent her one of those super-classy cell phone pictures taken while looking in the mirror, of himself wearing nothing but a towel. My friends and I agreed this was not very Christ-like.

Another thing that bothers me about online dating is making a profile in the first place. I enjoy top-five lists as much as the next person, but there is nothing I hate more than having to list a bunch of my favorite: movies, books, bands, etc., so someone can form an opinion of me based on my taste in pop culture. Since no one likes being defined by any one trivial characteristic, a lot of thought tends to go into these lists. Girls always try to sound cool with their picks, like saying their favorite movie is Fight Club, when really it's Pretty Woman. Guys always try to sound smart and cultured... they might list the last 5 books they read, but they won't mention they read them over a 15-year span and that the only reading material currently in their possession is Maxim. Plus, I guarantee 90% of the population has at least one Britney Spears/Black-Eyed Peas/Taylor Swift song on their Ipod, but would never admit to it in a profile. I find it difficult to describe who I am, along with my hopes and dreams, in 3 paragraphs or fewer. Nor do I think I could choose someone who would be good for me, based on their 3 paragraphs. So I guess online dating is not the thing for me. I suppose if I ever figure out what it is I want, I can type it up and try my luck, but for right now, I just don't care. I come across enough disappointing weirdos in my daily life, I certainly don't need a computer program matching me up with any more.