February 14th. A day that will forever be controversial in the battle of the sexes. Of course, most moralists would argue that the celebration of love should occur every day instead of once a year, but come on. This is the real world.
To me, there’s a more important holiday around this time and that’s February 10th – that’s the date (in 2000) when my wife and I went on our first date. For the record, it was a fairly traditional journey to the movie theater in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA to see The Hurricane, the story of incarcerated boxer Ruben Carter (Denzel Washington), which both of us enjoyed. After the movie we went to a pizza joint in the square and each had a slice, then got on our respective subway trains and went home. I wore green painter-style pants and a beige long sleeved shirt. It might have been my best set of clothes at the time, though I can’t recall for sure. So seven years later, here we are.
To celebrate our 7th year, we went and saw a movie, The Queen, which was surprisingly very good – Helen Mirren is very much deserving of all the accolades she’s getting for it and it was a hell of an interesting story. Then we came home and I whipped up some dinner crepes and stuffed them with chicken, ricotta, jack cheese, red pepper and corn. Yummy! Given the circumstances (twins coming in June), Steph was in bed by 8:30!
My point? I was thinking that February 10th is as important as our wedding anniversary in some ways. Both days are pivotal, of course, but the latter doesn’t happen if the former doesn’t occur first, so to me they’re of equal impact. Question for the married among us: do you still celebrate the anniversary of your first date and is it held in almost the same regard as your actual wedding anniversary?
Other: One of the nice things about digitizing your music library is that you can just type in a single keyword into ITunes and come up with a theme. I just typed in “Valentine” and got these two songs, both of which are awesome songs and deserve a listen. So give it a listen. Now. Right now! You can stream them by just clicking the little blue “play” button or you can save them by right-clicking and “saving as.” My Valentine’s Day gift for you. Enjoy:
Valentine – Bobby Bare, Jr.
This Is A Valentine – The Model Rockets