Word on the street is that it's Valentine's Day, and being that I'm just such a festive person, I'm already wearing a red t-shirt with a white long-sleeve shirt because today is the day of love, romance, infatuation, eating chocolate, and doing lovey-dovey things for the person you love the mostest in the world. So, in the spirit of the holiday, I'll be giving little Hobbes an abundance of Pounce throughout the course of the day -- that's pretty much the extent of my Valentine's Day-related excitement. I may help a couple of friends with their plans for the day, but I believe I'll just spend the night doing homework and perhaps watching Undead (though Saw II will also be released, so that's a nice alternative).

I don't even have any particular dislike for Valentine's Day, but I can't very well be held responsible for the person in my life at this general time of every year to having extenuating circumstances; say... another boyfriend or lack of interest in that way (though generally the former). I can be held responsible if I did something to greatly aggravate said person near or on said date, but that's normally not the case. It probably wouldn't be such an issue if I was a far more outgoing kind of guy, but I have my close friends and venturing out beyond that ring is a bit of an issue for me. I'm working on it, sure, but we're talking progress in the hundredths of a percent per year kind of thing.

And speaking of Hobbes Kitty: I feel kind of bad for the little guy, I'm starting to think that he's not all there. That certainly doesn't stop him from being a big time camera whore, though. It also doesn't stop him from waking me up whenever gets the slightest glimmer of consciousness from me in the morning. If my eyes open up even the slightest bit or my leg twitches even a nudge I can always count on the cat moving over to the pillow I always sleep on and either laying on my head, licking my nose, or using his clawless paws to bat at my eyes until I open them again. It's just all sorts of cute, I guess.

One of the great joys of a Michigan winter is snow football (it's football... in the snow. Get it?). Me and five of my good buddies got together to take on another team of five other group of friends-of-friends on Saturday afternoon during the closest thing to a blizzard that we've gotten in the last couple months, and to say it was good fun would be a total understatement. Granted one of the others somehow managed to break his ankle within the first five minutes of play, so that completely stalled the game until the ambulance came and carted him out of the field, but after that it was a good time. The day before that I had bumped up my nightly run on the snow and ice encrusted track near my house to four and a half miles. And then the day after the football game (which, in a decent amount of snow, was kind of a workout) I had a fairly hard three and a half mile run. Now all I can say for my poor, poor little legs is "I'm sorry, I won't treat you so badly again." Though I will. And they know I will. It's kind of our little thing.

I watch The O.C.. This is something of common knowledge for those who commonly read this site (or journal, for those of you reading this from alternate locations), and I say it not to discuss the show, but rather to discuss the show's excellent taste in music. In a recent episode during a certain character's funeral, a fairly amazing song was being played (also being replayed at the end of the episode), which took me a while to track down. The song is "For the Windows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" off of a Sufjan Stevens album titled Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State. I had not originally known that the singer was from Michigan and upon finding this out I was all like: !. It really is a great album though, and if you share any semblance of my loving feelings for Iron and Wine then you should be all sorts of stoked to go check Sufjan Stevens out. Go. Go now. And don't go into the long grass!

Last night I rewrote a nice chunk of the first chapter of Paradise and while I really like everything that's there, I think I'm going to end the chapter where it currently stands. With that said, I'm going to expand the entire chapter a bit in other places to make it a bit more entertaining to read. As it stands now, there's primarily just a lot of description of certain aspects of the fallout shelter (descriptions which I'm actually quite fond of) but not a whole lot more -- though I certainly like the ending. I'm going to do anything possible to have the current ending remain the end of the first chapter, but unless I think of a fairly compelling idea for adding something more to the what's currently there, I'm just not sure that's possible. Anyway, the updated draft of the first chapter, which doesn't have any significant changes until the fourth page (at which point nearly everything after is new), can be found here (and here's a direct link to the DOC file). I could use any support/feedback (or dinner and a movie, that's a possibility too) you're willing to give either in the entry comments or in an e-mail.

And that just about wraps it up. Happy Valentine's Day everyone.