Observations on Valentine's Day

I blogged about it last year, but I thought I would revisit the topic. Valentine's Day has gone and it was, as usual, a quiet one. I noticed a few things about the Valentine's Days I experienced:

-When one tries to celebrate it too much, it fails miserably. Everything can and will go wrong if one takes such a course of actions. Go to a restaurant? The service will be dreadful (because too many customers), they will push you to get a set menue that does not taste that good and is overpriced and to top it up there is a good chance that the food will be burned (it happened to my wife in 2006). That is, if you manage to find place in a restaurant, as it is ridiculously crammed on the 14th of February.
-If Valentine's Day in the middle of the week, better take it even easier. Back in my year in Liverpool, my then fiancée and I spent Valentine's Day at home, me preparing classes and her watching TV. We had pizza for a meal, nothing fancy. We were both too tired for cooking or enjoying high gastronomy anyway. The best thing was the fact that we were together that evening, and not miles apart. Oh, and the chocolate.
-No matter what, something will spoil the enjoyment. Usually it is a bad cold (this year my wife's). I guess it is better than being single on that day.
-However, single people might actually be the lucky ones: they don't have the pressure and they can always buy chocolates cheaper on the 15th (although I guess buying them for yourself might feel pretty pathetic).
-It appears that, while Valentine's Day is never that great, my wife and I always end up enjoying tremendously a special, impromptu occasion a few days later. It is never planned, but it always happens. In Liverpool, we had a lovely dinner in a Greek restaurant the Saturday after. I can't even remember which one and I don't even think the food was that great. Maybe it was our mood and the atmosphere, but it was just nice.
-No matter how I cut it, I hate romantic movies and romantic comedies in general. I try to avoid watching them in all time, including on the 14th. I watch other kinds of movies around that time of year. Last year it was a French psychological thriller, which I quite liked, this year it was A Mighty Heart, which I really liked. They are still movies about love.

Well, we are off the hook for a year now. Maybe next year I will muse about the holy martyr who gave his name to this very profane, very secular day.