So, I’ve been sick lately. Like, really sick, and I just can’t man­age to shake it. Noth­ing I’ve tried has worked. I was so med­icated all week­end that I totally missed what a rot­ten time Holli had, and on Mon­day I couldn’t feel my teeth. Well, no more. With only two pills remain­ing, I con­vinced myself that on Tues­day I would be all bet­ter so that I could have a sick-free Valentine’s Day.

I’m kind of an idiot. I don’t know why I thought that would work.

I woke ear­lier than my alarm, as per usual dur­ing this ill­ness bought. I imme­di­ately got to work on two unfin­ished parts of Holli’s Valentine’s Day presents: Songs to Lis­ten to Upside­Down. It was a mix CD in two parts. It was going to be eclec­tic. I’ve been grad­u­ally intro­duc­ing her to the var­i­ous artists I favor, and this was going to be a way I could push the “weird” enve­lope (like I don’t already).

As such, my progress on the CDs took such time as I couldn’t make it to my first class, AJAX. As it turned out, Holli had bought for me an lol card (*awwww*), and, based on her under­stand­ing of my sched­ule, that was the best time to send it. Well, I missed my greeting.

I’d also writ­ten Holli a poem (which is also a wall­pa­per), so I planted the hand­writ­ten part of the poem and the CDs on her door and I went to class. At class I learned that I have to give a lec­ture on Thurs­day to Pro­fes­sor Pauli (Josh)‘s, and I also learned (via email) that I had missed Holli’s lol. But, we made plans to eat lunch. With the ill­ness, I really can’t talk that well, so singing would be a lost cause, which afforded me an open lunch hour.

At lunch I gave her her next present, some choco­lates that I bought in front of her in Big Stone. Then we got some lunch. There was this African drum band play­ing, and they were nice, but they were kinda loud. We had to leave at around 1 so she could change into her Drama Club shirt and deliver lol cards. It was there that she dis­cov­ered presents one, two, and three. Man, I’m am really damn good at this sweet boyfriend stuff. Seri­ously, I got the poetry thing down, and music, and I lis­ten to girls and under­stand emo­tions. A tiny voice in the back of my head won­dered how Bryce’s pink ele­phant gift went. Last I knew, when he gave it to her, he was going to have it say, “You’re my favorite Repub­li­can!”

From there I went to class, she deliv­ered lols and I got my first sur­prise of the day when they showed up to deliver two lol cards to me in my class. The first was read by David and was writ­ten by David. The next was read by Ben Fox and was writ­ten by Holli. Holli was there, mind you, but she played gui­tar and winked. After hug­ging Ben and David, the lol­ers left and the class resumed work­ing on our assign­ment. I ate the choco­late almost immediately.

After class I went to the library to tutor with Tom. I recounted for Tom the story of the lols, and then Holli showed up. She had a present for me. I unwrapped it and dis­cov­ered Arrested Devel­op­ment Sea­son 2! I have wanted this for weeks. After I bought Sea­son 1, I was just going to copy Sea­son 2 from John Lar­son. Then I thought, why do that? I love this show. I’ll just buy it. So, I announced my plans to pur­chase Sea­son 2, but Holli would say, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” At first I would mis­un­der­stand this, think­ing that she was lec­tur­ing me on the value of money. Then I would come to under­stand that she really meant that I shouldn’t buy it because she had plans to buy it for me. Unfor­tu­nately, I kept for­get­ting that she had plans to buy it for me, so this sit­u­a­tion repeated itself three or four times until it stuck, and I quit mak­ing resolves to buy Sea­son 2.

Feel­ing no bet­ter time, I read aloud (and loudly) my lol card to Holli in the library. It inspired Tom to pen a Valentine’s Day poem for Kris­ten Grimm, full of inside jokes and crude ref­er­ences to grisly mur­ders. No, I made that last part up.

From there I hit up Lewis quick to buy more med­i­cine. It had become appar­ent in the hours since I was last under the umbrella of med­ica­tion that I wasn’t going to out will this ill­ness. At work I dis­cov­ered a mes­sage from Mor­gan on my board, started to pre­pare my lec­ture, and left a mes­sage for both Mor­gan and John.

I stopped by Holli’s to pick her up for sup­per. We decided on Com­mon Grounds, but it was less than stel­lar. I think, in switch­ing loca­tions, they lost a lot of the cof­fee house charm that they had. They seem more “Mid­west” instead of “artsy”. They used to have art-for-sale on the walls, but no more. And the food is expen­sive. I was dis­ap­pointed. I think the next time I go there, it’ll just be for the Jet Tea Smoothies.

From here Holli went to work, I worked on some stuff at home, and when she came over later, we hit the store, she bought us ice cream at DQ, and we watched Arrested Devel­op­ment Sea­son 2. All-in-all, it was a pretty good Valentine’s Day. Appar­ently, part of my V-Day present is still com­ing, so this might be an extended hol­i­day for me. How did you guys do? Oh, yeah. I had to beat Holli sense­less at DQ.