Tuesday, February 17, 2009
My "First" Valentine's Day
And I actually sort of enjoyed Valentine's Day. I haven't said that since the 8th grade.
(It was a four day weekend for me so, of course, Philip had to work on Friday and Monday.)
Friday morning started out blissfully lazy. (Except for waking up at 4:30am for no apparent reason other than force of habit.) I puttered around the house, getting a few things organized but not accomplishing a whole lot before deciding to walk to Target.
(Target is one of my very favorite stores, and I LOVE having one so close to my house.)
The goal for my shopping trip was to find a couple of picture frames and to get a...Valentine's Day...card for Philip. I found some decent frames easily enough, wandered the store for a bit and tried to avoid the madness that was the greeting card aisle. When it was clear that I couldn't put it off any longer, I ventured over and wormed my way through the crowds, and literally spent the next thirty minutes trying to pick out just the right card from the array of super cheesy/really annoying/completely stupid/not quite right/too suggestive display. I was completely out of my element. Choosing a card for a birthday? No problem! Need a card for an anniversary/wedding/baby shower/baby? Call me for help! But for Valentine's Day? I was totally lost. I decided I was making the whole thing a lot harder than it needed to be, and as soon as I relaxed and stopped stressing about it, the perfect card practically jumped off the shelf and into my hand.
What a relief.
Saturday morning I had a Job's Daughters meeting and wasn't able to head down to Escondido until the early afternoon. We still hadn't completely decided on a plan, but were still leaning toward Sea World, especially since the Storm of the Century had decided to hold off for a day or two.
I got to Philip's place around 2:30, he finished up a couple of things and then we ran off to Sea World, getting there just in time to see the Shamu show at 4:30. The sun started to set during the show and it got really, really cold. I thought I'd be fine in my wool sweater, but sometimes I forget that I'm me and often require a little more than a thin layer of wool.
(Yes, it is still a mystery how I survived a winter in Canada and six winters in Utah.)
In my defense, though, by the time the Shamu show was over even Philip was feeling the chill, just a little bit. We walked around some, checked out the sea turtles and bat rays, and I was starving, so we decided to leave.
(The great thing about having an annual pass is that you can show up for 2 hours and not feel like you wasted your time or your money.)
It was only 6, but the idea of eating out was a little daunting. I knew the restaurants would be packed, of course, and we had no reservations anywhere. We talked about Bronx Pizza, which Philip has been swearing for a year is the best pizza he's had and where I had never been. But then we tossed around BJ's, which has amazing burgers and pizookie. What to do? We called BJ's to see what their wait time looked like. Thirty-ish minutes wasn't bad at all, and they offered call-ahead seating. Philip put our name in, hung up the phone and said he'd rather go to Bronx. That was my preference too, so we blew off our "reservation," picked up a HEAVENLY sausage and mushroom pizza and drove out to the harbor to eat while the boats cruised by. The economy has hit people hard, it seems, and most boats stayed put. But it was a beautiful view of downtown San Diego, so we didn't mind.
We drove around downtown for a bit because I asked Philip to show me where he'd been doing some work in recent weeks, but the traffic was awful and I just got completely stressed about it, even though he was the one driving. I can handle freeway traffic easily enough, but major-city-downtown-gridlock where you are forced to sit through eight consecutive green lights because the stupid moron a few blocks up refuses to MOVE...yeah, don't really handle that as well. The tour continued up to the far less populated Balboa Park, where Philip showed me the exteriors of the awesome museums.
(One of these days I'd like to see the inside of at least one of them.)
Suddenly, we were pulling into the car wash back in Escondido and I was thoroughly confused. I had fallen asleep and was completely confused. I knew I was tired, but not enough to sleep through the entire drive back to town!
All-in-all, it was a very nice way to spend the day. I was glad that it wasn't all super romantic/cheesy. I mean, I am all about romance. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE romance and stuff. It's just Valentine's Day that I've always had a hard time with. So I was glad that it wasn't an overly romantic day. It was just nice.
Oh, and SHOCKING REVELATION: apparently the roses from Philip were for Valentine's Day and NOT Friday the 13th. That just came out of NOWHERE. I had NO idea about that. What a tricky guy...
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SOunds like a relaxing day, overall!
ReplyDeleteI am glad you had a nice day...sounds perfect to me! By the way, you need to go spend the day at Balboa Park the museums are really nice. Brad and I have only been there with the kids and have talked about needing to go on a date down there for the day.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on surviving your first Valentine's Day. Sounds like you had a fun day and your post made me want to go to Sea World. I haven't been there in FOREVER!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a wonderful V-Day!!!! I'm a huge Target fan myself!!
ReplyDeleteI like how your day went and not one cheese-factor in sight!
ReplyDeleteYou are my hero! A Target in walking distance?
L-U-C-K-Y!!
Hey, everyone! Thanks for stopping by! I hope y'all had a good Saturday too.
ReplyDeleteKristina--got my Snuggie and LOVE it! I guess I'm going to have to blog about it, though I'll never be the Snuggie-blogging genius that you are!
Candace--one of these days I definitely do want to go down there and actually spend some time. One of these days...
Em--next time you come down (when Belle's a bit older, of course) we'll have to go! It's awesome!
Helene and Akilah--Target is one of the best stores ever, is it not?? And yes, I am so LUCKY to have one within walking distance. I don't get there nearly often enough.
Valentine's Day or not, I'm incredibly jealous that you can WALK to Target. My closest Target is almost an hour's drive away.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I'm off to google pizookie, because I don't know what that is. It sounds like a wonderful combination of pizza and cookies. And if it is, then I must have one.