Valentine's Day

So I heard on the radio that men spend on average $136 on gifts for Valentine's day. Women? They spend $69. This reinforces my belief that Valentine's Day isn't really a day for people to celebrate their love. It's really a day for women to find out how much their men love them. I lucked out this year. Because we're saving money for the wedding, we agreed not to do gifts. Her idea actually. Works for me. So we just did the whole dinner and a movie thing.


Dinner was at Headwaters, the restaurant we're considering for our rehersal dinner. Nice place actually. We get there, and I say "we have a reservation for Lasselle." The guy looks around and says "we don't have a table under that name....we do have one under "Assatale." Really? Assatale? I even spelled my name over the phone to the girl who took my reservation. I can see missing an S or an L or something, but adding a T? C'mon now. Anyways, we decided that must be our table. Imagine the surprise on our faces when Mr. Assatale showed up! I'm just kidding, there wasn't a Mr. Assatale.

Anyways, I ordered the special...elk steak with potatoes au gratin. Rachel go the salmon and red potatoes. It was a pretty good meal. Those au gratin potatos were awesome. The elk steak was pretty good too. The only thing I didn't understand is that there was a piece of fried chicken on my plate. I have no clue if that was on the menu or if it fell off someone else's plate onto mine, but I was not down with a piece of fried chicken. I didn't even touch it. Ok, I take that back. I did, only to figure out what it was. There was way more fried than chicken. It was awful. I'm willing to chalk that one up as a mistake and let it go though, cause I'm cool like that.

After dinner, we headed over to the movie theater to see Firewall. The movie really should've been called Air Force Two. Same plot, only Harrison Ford isn't the president. Before I saw the movie, I talked to Joel, who said when he saw the preview the first thing he thought was "GET OFF MY PLANE!" Dead on. It was a pretty predictable movie, but enjoyable. I'd give it a B-. At one point a blender is used as a weapon....prompting Rachel to lean over and say "that's why I put a blender on our wedding registry." That made me laugh.

And now a Valentines Day flashback.......

Back in 2002, I get a call from the house mom at Chi Omega. She says she's planning a "singles dinner" for some of the girls without dates, and wondered if I'd like to go. She was inviting some of the girls male friends in an attempt to make the girls not feel alone on V-Day. Made sense to me, and I liked most of the girls in the house, so I said sure. Well I show up at the restaurant, and I'm the only guy. 14 Chi Omegas and me. So I sit down, feeling a little less than comfortable. About halfway through the meal, my friend Sue just starts cracking up. I ask her what's so funny, and she says "the couple at the table behind you has been staring at you all night. The guy just leaned over to the girl and said "he's got to be gay." Yup.......some people see a guy with 14 girls and say "PIMP." This guy sees me and says "HOMO." Glad to know I give off such a masculine vibe.