Experience 4: Valentine's Day

As a rule, I hate Valentine's Day. I don't like the cheap commercialization of Love and the blatant disregard for the true meaning of showing someone you care for them. Since when are roses and chocolate a declaration of Love? The answer: They're not. Now, I have nothing against the broader idea that lies behind all of the frills, commercials, and materialism - the importance of reminding someone of your love for them - but it's gone about all wrong. And, if you truly support the idea behind Valentine's day, shouldn't every day be Valentine's Day?

Anyway, I usually spend my Valentine's Days in forced ignorance of the day itself in a sort of roundabout way of consoling myself for my lack of a significant other, if you will. But this Valentine's Day, or at least the day before that continued into the early hours of Valentine's Day, was much better. Again, I spent this weekend with Grace, Noha, and Lara. We cause all sorts of mayhem when we get together.

We started out the evening meeting up with Lara and her two friends, Matt and Zach, at the pizza shop just across the way from Grace's apartment, Pizza 51. The atmosphere was great but I was really surprised when our orders were brought to our table. At Pizza 51, you order by the slice and I was expecting a normal slice of pizza. Oh, no. At Pizza 51, they bring you an entire pizza cut into the shape of a pizza slice. I'm not exaggerating. Well, maybe I am but that's not the point. It was well worth the $4 I spent; it was delicious and filled me up completely. At the restaurant we had a riveting conversation about music and bras and laughed heartily while enjoying our late supper.

Around 8:30 we decided to leave to go the concert Lara had heard about. Grace was going dancing later and since neither Noha nor I had any desire to go swinging, I drove separately so that I could take us back the the apartment after the concert. I followed Grace up Main Street toward the Power and Light District. I didn't know exactly where we were headed but when you reach the P&L District, you know it. People are everywhere, traffic is crazy, and it is lit up like a Christmas tree. We drove around for what felt like hours trying to find a parking spot that wouldn't cost us $10. But the Lara called - she had decided to spend that $10 - to tell us that the concert venue had reach capacity and they were no longer letting people in. It was a bummer but at this point I was just happy to be done driving. So Grace decided to go to the dance studio and Noha and I drove back to the apartment.

Noha and I chatted for a while, ate some chocolate cheesecake and were soon joined by Noha and the guys. They got their own cheesecake and we decided to watch Moulin Rouge. Both Matt and I were thoroughly enjoying it, mostly beacuse of all the music references, when we were interrupted by Allison (Grace's roommate) and her boyfriend coming home. It was an awkward moment because Grace hadn't gotten back yet and there we all were sitting in her apartment without her. But Grace walked in not 5 minutes later and we were rescued. She sent us all to the community room in the apartments to finish the movie so that Allison and her boyfriend could have some alone time. So we amused ourselves with the entertainments in the community room for a while and then settled down and finished our movie. It was really good. Then everyone said goodbye and Grace and I went to bed.

With these girls there is never a dull moment and from this experience I learned the value of having Drama-free friends. I was able to completely disconnect from everything in my life and just have fun. Also, it was a lesson in flexibility; all of our plans went awry but we still had a blast.