non-single V-day

my very first.

memory fades to feelings but blog entries retain their details. details :

i scheduled the day off to spend it with W. i hadn't planned to skip work on v-day, but i had had so much fun with W on her b-day that when she asked me to spend v-day with her, i was sorry i hadn't suggested it. i had only planned what to do for the evening (planning to work during the day) so i left the daytime festivities to W.

unbeknownst to W, but knownst to me and a select few others, the day before the day before (saturday) was spent gathering cards and (kinda lame) gifts and ingredients, and the day before (sunday) was spent doing laundry and running and roasting and watching part of ROTJ and running to the store for more sugar while leaving food cooking on the stove and partially preparing a valentine's day dinner of sausage risotto, slightly undercooked (though the sauces were all fully cooked, no food poisoning risk) valentine's lasagna (really undercooked and only slightly undercooked) (the hearts were a last second inspired addition - not part of the recipe!), and a gajar ka halwa for dessert (the office indians liked it, which was good, because i don't need to eat it and W didn't like it, so there was plenty left. we both thought there was way too much sugar, but the office indians said that's the way it should be ;)

in the morn after breakfast she got my card, which was more of the standard hallmark schlocky lovey stuff. i've got to stop it with those cards: i gave her basically the same card for xmas, birthday, and v-day. blah blah blah love you blah blah blah. i can do better myself without lining hallmark's pockets (not to mention the city of burlingame).

attached to the card was the material stuff : non-digestible, non-temporal gifts of matter: heart shaped temporary tattoos. i took 2 for me and left the rest for W.

talked a bit to the mom and the bro to wish them a happy v-day and get some musical info.

after that it was off to Tar-jay for some socks to protect W's tender ankles from her new ankle-high boots. she lucked out and didn't have to borrow some of my socks for the voyage because i had a pair of her flip-flops at my place. i checked for some mounting brackets for the PID (double sided tape is melting) but failed to find any good ones.

after that, it was off to pleasanton. we made decent time and headed toward downtown for some lunch. on the way i took a detour to drive by an old departed friend's house. house was still there, in good shape.

stopped at a pretty good italian-ish restaurant in downtown pleasanton. i got a little worried that W would order the lasagna or fill up at lunch or something, but i lucked out and she did neither. i'm not sure what i would have said had she ordered the lasagna. why did i risk it and go to an italian-ish place anyways? nothing much to choose from, and it was starting to rain.

after lunch, we made our way to the mall. by then it was really starting to rain pretty good. fortunately, W knew where to find covered parking. the entrance was through sears so i did a cursory and unproductive search for a mounting bracket. a couple hours later, having visited all of W's favorite stores, having at last found a couple gifts for her brother, having consumed a coffee-flavored-beverage, having found pocky but not pocky for men, having explained that i used to play lots of video games back when i was a single loser, having resisted the urge to buy some action figures and manga, having laughed at people less cool than us, having admired myself in multiple mirrors, having explained that i'm not the one of whom to ask "how do i look in this?" and having talked to some VIPs, we found ourselves again at sears, where a more thorough search turned up the same absence of a suitable mounting bracket.

after that, off to W's mom's house a couple minutes from the mall. her brother was there to happily receive his gifts, and W's mom had left W some b-day and some v-day gifts. she cracked open one of the romantic fortune cookies and we agreed that the fortune wasn't terribly romantic. the mylar balloon didn't join us for the trip back to SM, presumably because it didn't want to join W on her bart trip back to OAK.

speaking of trips back, after a bit of teevee and a bit of talking, our very own trip back drew near. W commented that I was acting as if i was bored and not enjoying my visit. not bored, i replied, just a bit labored of lung by the cig smoke in the apt. so we departed, out into the rain. W pulled her coat up over her head and looked very much like that monster from the bugs bunny cartoons. ho ho ho, so cute!

by then it was about 4:30 or 5, and the roads were slick and crowded. while i took care not to kill anybody on the road, W drew some landscapes in the journal her mom gave her for b/v-day. we also entertained ourselves with some silly-putty.

arriving at the west side of the SM bridge. W had announced that she'd completed what she wanted to do for the day and surrendered planning responsiblities to me. it was a bit early for dinner and home depot was more or less on the way home and i still didn't have a mounting bracket for my PID assembly, so we stopped there.

dodging raindrops, i ran in alone (sigh) for what should have been a quick stop. i located some suitable components, though nothing that absolutely tickled my fancy, and tried to self-checkout. the card reader's OS crashed and i had to get manual assistance from a guy that needed his own special kind of assistance. i emerged from the store to find two things: a very nice note on my carseat from W, and W's astonishing discovery that silly putty adheres quite solidly and messily to lance armstrong livestrong bracelets. ugh. and i think the bracelet is out of warranty, too.

i decided against common sense and took the freeway instead of facing stoplights on the city-street route back to my apt. i should have chosen the stoplights, the freeway was packed. after what seemed like hours, we finally arrived back home. W popped into the john, giving me my chance to take a quick refresher peek at the risotto recipe. when she returned, i announced ceremoniously that i would be cooking dinner, and we agreed that she would humor me and act surprised. i brought my dining table out from storage. it was the first time W had seen it, though the experience -- exciting as it must have been -- elicited no special reaction.

so i cooked up the risotto, which took about 30-40 minutes. i'd never made this recipe before but all went quite smoothly. toward the end, i popped the lasagna in the oven and put the halwa on very very low heat. somewhere in there i took breaks from stirring to set the table and put out the candles and wine glasses and such. finally, everything was done and i brought out the rice and the lasagna. i had spent much time trying to assemble a "valentine's day soundtrack" of mp3s for the dinner, but had never gotten very far due to the fact that i tend not to have a lot of "romantic" music. i had a couple albums in mind, but they were less than ideal. so i asked W if she wanted music or if i should just leave "family guy" playing on the TV that was next to the dinner table. we had a family guy valentine's dinner. W commented that she was glad to finally learn i could cook something other than eggs and oatmeal.

i explained the dishes and how i made them and what was in them and why risotto is harder to make than steamed rice or even fried rice. we finished off the bottle of cheapy wine that i had used to make the lasagna and risotto. it wasn't bad, but -- althouth i am a beer and coffee expert -- i have no expertise in the area of wine and am thus capable of enjoying crap wine in the same way that most people are capable of enjoying starbucks. the lasagna was still a bit under-warm. i had prepared it 90% the day before, leaving only the final bake for v-day. what the recipe didn't mention was that when you refrigerate it overnight, you need to bake it much longer than if you prepare it the same day you make the sauce and layer the pasta. i should have known that, but in my defense, i'm sorely out of practice in the kitchen.

W said she liked the rice and the lasagna, and said she'd never had lasagna like mine. i commented that that was because mine had a secret ingredient: not -- as she guessed at first -- semen, but looooove. heh. i offered to add the other next time, or even this time if she wished, but she decliend. i dropped a forkful of risotto when i tried to eat it a little too slick-ly. smoooooooove.

i cleared away some of the dishes and brought out the carrot dessert. W didn't like it -- too much sugar. i agree, but still ate all of mine ;) i suggested that we retreat to the couch, and after clearing away some more dishes and doing some minimal kitchen cleanup (leaving the bulk of the work for later (later when?)) i took my place on the leather.

she suggested that we watch a kung-fu movie, but first, she needed to put in some laundry so she'd have clean work clothes for tomorrow (i.e. today). my crown started hurting pretty good at this point, so i stopped by the kitchen for some advil to chase my allegra. then it was up the stairs to the laundry room, back down for some additional quarters, back up, and once more back down. we may have done that more than once, i'm not sure. the evening got a little hazy at that point. i fell asleep -- more or less. less, i guess, bess -- on her lap because the particular movie we watched takes too long to get up to speed. at some point i think i explained that the reason the lips were out of sync in ALL the languages the dvd had was that the actors all spoke different chinese dialects, so at filming time everyone just moved their lips however they liked and then the words were dubbed in at editing time. maybe i dreamt that instead of saying it, i dunno. i was tired and full of antihistamines, painkillers, alcohol, and lasagna, in addition to the crap that i'm normally full of.

later, her laundry finished (i guess!) and she woke me to go to bed (heh). i brushed my teeth, plugged her ipod mini into my computer to charge (argh, the next morning it wouldn't turn on. wtf? we haven't had time yet to diagnose it), changed into my PJ's, and that's where this narrative ends, except perhaps to mention that before falling to sleep again i uttered both of the following phrases: "let's try something different" and "well, that's not precisely what i had in mind, but i'm not complaining!". there followed a discussion -- using fingers as models of the human figure -- of whether what i had actually had in mind was physically possible, and we concluded that it was not.

perhaps the declaration of the narrative's end was slightly premature.

i dreamt of having my car impounded by corrupt police officers while visiting my parents. i had to fight them with knives down at the impound lot, which was located on a very narrow peninsula, because they had taken my car illegally and were framing me for something. much like the movie, things took quite a while to get up to speed, and i think i awoke before anything really interesting happend.

yesterday i didn't even have to use my AK
i gotta say it was a good day.