I haven’t given a lot of thought to this particular holiday for a long, long time. Mostly Sandra and I wake up in the morning, realize it’s Valentines Day, smile at each other, and get on with what needs to be done on that day. We pay more attention to birthdays, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, and Christmas. Valentines Day is an odd sort of holiday because for the last decade we’ve never needed an excuse to be extra nice to each other.

Oh, certainly there have been days when we’ve needed to be extra nice. We’ve hurt each others’ feelings from time to time, and we take care to patch things up as soon as possible afterwards. Waiting for a special day to do so would be patently absurd. “Happy Anniversary, honey! I’m sorry I made fun of your Mom six months ago, so here’s some chocolate.”

Absurd.

Before getting married, Valentines Day was a holiday I never had someone to celebrate with. Sure, I had girlfriends, some of whom I even dated “with intent,” but through some conspiracy of the calendar, the first Valentines Day that actually fell DURING one of those relationships, as opposed to BETWEEN them, was in 1993. I think I may have proposed marriage to Sandra on or about that time. It’s a blur, really. We got married in August of that year. It’s been over 12 years since I went on a date with anyone other than her (and that last non-Sandra date was pretty pathetic, since I’d just met Sandra, but already had this particular date planned. I probably owe whatever-her-name-was an apology, because we wrapped things up early and I hurried off to see this Other Girl I’d Just Met. How rude!)

I have this memory of a Valentines Day in 1990, or thereabouts. I was walking through University Mall in Orem, Utah, and I bought myself a plant. I decided it would help me be less bitter about a holiday in which to celebrate loneliness if I bought myself a plant EVERY year on Valentines Day. The tradition never got off the ground, and that particular plant died a couple of years later.

The only thing that got me thinking about Valentines Day was an article about how the Saudi Government is taking extreme pains to put down any attempt by its citizens to celebrate the holiday. Ah, theofascism, how unsubtle are thy dictates. As if they don’t have other problems they can be sniffing out. I mean, you have to work really, really hard to make chocolate explode.

Enough with the politics. All I’m saying is that I read that article, and realized that people were trying, under pain of prison, to celebrate a holiday that I couldn’t care less about. I mean, I don’t even know where to put the apostrophe.

–Howard

I heard, through an unlikely channel, that UPN is cancelling “Star Trek: Enterprise.” There are links to the news all over the web (Google “star trek enterprise cancelled”), but I learned it when reading this morning’s Sheldon.

I may need to get out more.

In one of the related articles (Link!) Executive Producer Rick Berman said they’ve done 624 hours of Star Trek in the last 18 years. I’m not sure if he means episodes or actual sixty-minute hours. Depending on that crucial piece of information, you could, in theory, watch Star Trek shows for between 18 and 26 days straight, with no breaks for sleep, snacks, or stool.

By contrast, you can watch the entire Star Wars franchise in about 10 hours. No, I’m not counting the many excellent games, nor am I counting the books set in the Extended Universe. And no, I’m not counting the 1978 Christmas Special, or the made-for-TV Ewok movie, either. Rolling the TV stuff in brings the total to just under 14 hours, and (depending on who you talk to) raises the entertainment value of those 14 hours significantly.

Anyway… no more Star Trek. What can I say? I never watched even a single episode of Enterprise, and missed out on pretty much all of DS9 and Voyager, too. I did watch every last episode of ST:TNG back when Fox ran them in order in 1994/1995, and those evenings were, interestingly enough, capped off with an hour or two of PC gaming — “X-Wing Fighter” and “Tie Fighter” from the fledgling behemoth game company “Lucasarts.”

Me == Geek.

I think maybe I pushed myself too hard yesterday.

I stayed home from church today, and spent most of the day in bed. I think I was up for an hour between 9am and 10am. I know I was out of bed for a couple of hours between 2pm and 4pm. It’s 5:45 now, and I’m in front of the computer, out of bed. That sounds like almost eight hours of daylight spent flat on my back. At 4pm I took three Advil (Vitamin I!) and 8oz of Diet Vanilla Pepsi (25mg of my favorite anti-hemikranial methylxanthine alkaloid) in hopes of perking up a bit. I laid down and waited for it to take hold. 90 minutes later I woke up and realized I’d just had another nap, and the sun was well on its way below the horizon.

I feel like roadkill.

My voice is well and truly gone. I can bark and growl. I can wheeze. I can whisper. None of these are quite the same as “speech,” and four-year-old Gleek put it best when I tried to bellow at her and end up quacking and squeeking: “Daddy, why are you making a different sound?”

The Local Artists Day at Dragon’s Keep was fun. The locals here in Utah Valley include part of the Smallville writing and research team, a DragonLance writer, and a couple of game designers.

Oh, and me.

Sadly, I was sick as a dog today. (I would REALLY like to know the origin of that particular phrase, “sick as a dog.” I mean, dogs don’t act that sick when they’re feeling sick. Sure, when they barf it’s nasty, but people-barf is generally bigger and stinkier.) Trooper that I am, I went on with the show, likely infecting all the local talent as well as the fan community, and I’m glad that I did. (er… I’m glad that I went, but I’m sorry if I infected anyone.) There was one side effect — my voice is gone. Even subvocalizing these words as I type hurts. I’m not kidding. OW. (And again “OW” as I subvocalize the word “OW.”)

(Oddly enough, typing in parentheses hurts less, because these words don’t count.)

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to teach Sunday School. It ain’t gonna happen. I called my co-teacher (we alternate teaching on Sundays) and asked if she could take the class for me. The nice thing about laryngitis (assuming that’s the right medical term for “I swallowed a rhinovirusocerous and then tried to speak”) is that when you call in sick, people BELIEVE you. So she’s taking the class, and I may be staying home from church with sick kids tomorrow. I mean, it’s one thing to infect strangers in a public place. It’s another thing entirely to knowingly infect neighbors and their kids at church.

Ah, hypocrisy. (In the spirit of “rhinovirusocerous” should it be “hyppopotomocrisy?”)

It hurts to laugh.

–Howard