Work is kind of sucking up my free time this week, so I'll make this snappy.

First off, Valentine's Day sucked the big wazoo. It started off with my daughter in tears and my wife mad at me. But, I turned on the ol' Mike charm and resurrected their love with a flurry of apologies, stammering, and some roses. Me smooooooooooth. The day ended with my wife and I sitting in the living room together, both working on our laptops. It is, as one of my coworkers put it, intimacy in the 21st century.

One of my acquaintances had a slightly less crappy, but slightly more amusing Valentine's Day. Each year, on Valentine's Eve, his wife lays out gifts for him and their kids on the kitchen table. Thus, when they all come down for breakfast, Valentine's Day prezzies sit in front of everyone's chair, except the wife's. It is a conspicuous absence and the cause of annual shame for my friend, who tends to react to Valentine's Day on the day itself, and not in advance.

This year the wife took pity on herself/him and, in an effort to not make her husband look like an insensitive clod in front of his children, placed a teddy bear in front of her own plate. It was a gift he had given her years before. The teddy bear apparently sings some cheesy song about love when a button is pressed ("L is for the way you LOOK at me....O is no ORDINARY blah blah blah").

The family assembled at the table and admired the gifts. My friend's son leaned over and pressed the song button and the bear merely sputtered out the first measure of the song, in a robot-winding-down-voice, a victim of years-old batteries.

My friend couldn't help but laugh out loud. The symbolism was appropriately ignored.

On one final note, I found a new use for my kid. Today, I'm sore all over from doing some strength exercises. I get sore from this kind of crap because I do these exercises so infrequently. It's my body's own personal method of reminding me that I'm a programmer and not a construction worker. Mostly my butt gets sore. That's my body's own personal sense of humor.

Anyway, I was complaining to my daughter about my sore butt, (because all my conversations with her that I document must implicate me as an inappropriate parent,) and my daughter asked me if I'd like her to walk on my butt. You know, it kind of sounded like it might help. So I plopped onto my stomach and she walked around on my ass. And it helped!

This is just the type of career that will not get outsourced to India, so I'm going to encourage her to continue in this endeavor.