Valentimes 2013

When I was a kid my dad used to call it Valentimes Day, and I just know he knew it was wrong, since he's something of a pedant regarding grammar and pronunciation and the Mother Tongue (I blame him for my own current pedantry), and he must have just thought it was funny, but he occasionally insisted that's how it's pronounced.  Silly Dad.

Anyway, it's high time I bump that SMASH post down and post about the latest goings-on, especially as regards the romantic events surrounding the most blessed Valentine's Day.  I always think it's funny when people go on and on about Singles Awareness Day.  I didn't make a big fuss of being all anti-Valentine's Day before I had a valentine myself, that's just silly.  It's a holiday, and people can celebrate romance in their own way, even if they're single.

So, first things first, we went to the annual Hale Freezes Over race in Orem.  I decided to stick with the 5K this time around, and Julie opted (for obvious reasons) to sit this one out.  She thought about doing the 1-mile run/walk, but it cost as much as the regular races, and we thought that was kind of ridiculous, so she just waited for me and then we thought we could just take a walk later if we wanted to FOR FREE.  So it was a pretty good run, VERY cold, I think colder than the previous years, and for once the course was actually pretty frozen over in parts.  They warned us not to run for a PR this race, but to be really careful and watch our step and not slip and die on the icy streets.  It WAS pretty tricky in some parts, but I still tried to run my fastest without slipping and cracking my head on the ground.  At first I was amazed at how many runners there were (they said something about 300+ this year?), and how I couldn't catch up with any of them, but then most of them turned off when the 10K and 5K routes split, and then I couldn't believe that the 10K runners were going SO fast right at the start...  I hope they knew they had a couple of hills coming up.  Yikes.  Anyway, I had a hill myself, as usual, and it was really hard, but I was determined not to walk up it, and I didn't!  Woot.  In the end, I was 3rd in men overall (4th in everyone overall, there was one super speedy girl who came in before me) at about 21:32 (about 7:03/mile, though it wasn't quite a 5K...  Would it kill race directors to plot out an exact 5K?  Just at .05 mile at the start, for heaven's sake, it's like a block).  It's interesting to note that I was more than a minute slower than last year, but I placed higher.  I was quite satisfied, and mostly just wanted to be done with it by the time I crossed the finish line.  Of course we didn't win any of the prizes in the raffle, and then we finally had just had enough of the cold and took off.

Award ceremony.  Vry srs.

3rd!

They had pretty cool medals this year!

She's so cute.

Since it was the Saturday before Valentine's Day, they kind of put a heart or two in the logo and acted like it was also a Valentine's Day kind of race.  I like their shirts, but they're always the same (but in different colors), and the artwork was fun at first but now it's kind of repetitive, and SOOO in your face.  I feel awkward wearing it because people will be like, YIKES, what?!?

Must we?

It's better than the Highway To Hale one though, because that's a Halloween race so it's the same character in the same pose but wearing a skeleton mask which makes it even more spooky.  New art, please!  I get that your golden boy illustrator designed it, but no one wants the same old shirt every year, or at least make it not cover the entire front of the shirt.

SO then that was fun, and for Valentine's Day proper, The Wife and I went to work like everyone else, but at some point someone had some flowers delivered to her workplace, and also produced some See's candy and sour cherry ball candies, and also posted this:

Any notable Photoshop skills I may possess I owe entirely to watching The Wife work

And then we had a really nice time having sushi and sticky rice and egg rolls and various other Asian foods at Amber's, as per usual.  (We were expecting my dear friend Seethong, visiting from Wisconsin to do some translating work for the Church, to join us for dinner, but he was all worn out from a long day of work.)  It's great to have a new fun tradition for Valentine's Day dinner so we don't have to fight crowds at restaurants and go out to eat on another night instead.  Then, instead of actually going out (ha ha), we stayed home and had Velveeta (The Wife's oft-chosen favorite) in bed as we continued our tradition of watching a Disney movie for Valentine's Day, and this year's selection featured this little guy:

Yes.  It's a great little movie.  I always thought Baby Mine was a very lovely and emotional scene, but this time, what with The Speck on his way, it made me cry like a human hosepipe.

And then The wife gave me this!

!!!!!

So much peanut butter!  It's humongous.

We thought it best if it were to be consumed like a pie, by the slice.

So that was Valentine's Day this year!  I don't think we took a single picture of dinner, OH, except for this one of the delicious cake that Julie prepared for us all to eat:

And there you have it!  It was a nice and cold and cozy Valentine's Day this year, and our last one as a childless couple, so next year's will definitely be different, but I shall never forget to love my valentine.