Thwarted Again.

I so wished to be a rebel on this day, like all the cool, hip folk.. (or whatever the kids are calling those qualities these days) this international day o love.. and boycott it, "celebrate" it in a anti it kind of way, or even an ironic, interesting, alternative way.. ideally ignore it completely but then I'd not get the affirmation of being so cool that I'm not into it by people who care either way, or better still the people who don't..

but I can't. I'm being positively harangued into going to this "dinner" thing, with this "partner" person, and it's going to be like "romantic" and stuff... lame..

in my defense it's.. er.. a not super expensive restaurant, and a vegetarian one, and I won't be buying or receiving (well maybe but I don't know at this point) any generic type pink or heart and flower themed Valentines day stuff.. (puts foot down, though having no money in the bank makes this kind of pointless) and.. er.. there'll probably be some monumental cockup.. which always happens whenever we try to be elegant and grown up and stuff. Obviously a sign that we're way too unconventional for that kind of stuff.. (ie super cool and hip or whatever the parlance is in these times)..

I'm looking forward to going for a drink afterwards.. oh wtf I'm looking forward to it altogether.

Modest is an understatement..

It's well known that my household and swanky celebrations.. ieValentine's day in fine restaurants don't mix.. well there was to be no such attempt this year, for more reasons than one. About a month ago we thought we'd go to a nice but not too swanky Italian restaurant.. then perhaps just go straight to the second place we went last year, where we spent the evening and had stinky cheese. Then it became a nice meal at home.

That's ok. Not so big on the partic holiday anyway.. but it's nice to have a good dinner and wine and stuff. It would be even more good if we could er... listen to music that we choose and watch something afterwards but THAT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

It would be nice to not have a computer that persists in being dead, oh by the way did I tell you the computer died.. and did I tell you the fix that was supposed to help didn't help and now there's another problem? Well, the computer died.. and did I tell you the fix that was supposed to help didn't help and now there's another problem.

Now it won't even start up.. we're aspiring to getting the blue screen of death now.

In other news we went on some nice walks this weekend. Now there's something that not having a working computer makes you do.

Phew!

Well that was a joke. So, me and my valentine went off for a romantic night at Babylon, a somewhat posh restaurant (ie not a pub) that does "Mediterranean" so we were looking forward to perusing the lengthy menu and sampling delicious delicacies that can be scarce in this Central European home of ours. When we got there, we kinda dorked out because it's all nicely done up and there's golden oxen and stuff all over the place so we took lots of pictures, without really looking at the menu or anything. When the waitress came we realized she'd given us only this set Valentine's Day menu, so we asked for the regular one, but it turned out there was no regular one, apparently this imported American holiday is such a big deal that it was due to be too crowded to have more than a few dishes this night.

It was still early, and she tried to be helpful and said she could ask the chef if he'd do some other dishes, so she went off. We pondered about it, then the chef came up to us saying he could do some stuff, but not all up until such time as it got too busy. He stood there explaining it to us for longer than was necessary, and then left. Well.. I thought, and so did Erik, that it wasn't really worth staying, we'd be rushed, and limited in our choices and that was not what we had wanted, but now it seemed like the staff had gone out of their way for us so we felt a bit sheepish. Still, not enough to stay, so we sheepishly slunk out the door. Not really, we apologized in a sappish manner and then went on our way.

Big fail. We wanted to have a romantic dinner in a special place, we even got dressed up and everything! But no, not for us, obvs. This is what happens when we try to act like grownups, all goes awry.

We could either give up on the occasion entirely and go home, or we could be cool and slum it with the little people. So we went to U Pastyrka, or as we like to call it "The Rustic Place" a nice pub, cosy but not in a romantic way. It turned out great. We drank beer, ate pub grub and had pivní sýr, beer cheese, which is where you get the stinkiest, strongest smelling cheese, and mix it up with paprika and onions and other stuff and put it on bread, it's fucking awesome. And as I was sitting there, ingesting the foul smelling delicacy, I thought to myself, "who are we kidding? we are the little people!"

Ok no I didn't, I just wanted to fit the "little people" in there somewhere, but seriously, if you ever get the chance to, try beer cheese, it's fucking awesome. Or fucking awful depending on what you like.

So great night, but most of all it's a relief. There's now no danger of me being normal. Now I can go back to my former ways, wryly observing the conformists while living outside of society, scorning the traditions they slavishly follow, except for the ones I happen to like. I can go back to snarling, stomping and deep conversation, and caring deeply about all the sad followers and their tedious McLives consisting of work, consume, breed, watch tv, work, consume, buy expensive tacky shit on holidays and so on and so on... and be ultimately grateful that I'm above that.

Hey, what can I do. It's who I am.

*looks smug*

UPDATE: The love o' the life has written his own version of events, he has a slightly different slant than mine, but it's a good read as you can expect from someone I condescend to consort with :).

Where I become an official conformist.

It's been a fun life, scowling, marching, rebelling against everything, feeling superior and doing what I want cos I want to, changing the world for the better and making sure everyone knows it. But fuck it, you can only do so much.

Ok so my quasi-anti Valentine's stance has been pretty ineffectual and I've at most not really gone out of my way to celebrate it rather than be actively against it. I mean I've never been into heart shaped chocolate (in particular) or flowers or demanding some man fork out for something particularly expensive and pink or else, like other women (yes, every last one of them, no exceptions) so I guess I was justified in feeling holier than thou. Them, those. Whatever.

Well anyway today I'm doing the dinner thing with the bf and it's quite a swanky place so I guess we're being pretty traditional, though I'm still quite happy about the absence of heart shaped chocolatey pink jewel encrusted things, I have to point out. And I did some themed photos commemorating the day, which to be honest I do almost every year, though a few years ago I brilliantly subverted the concept with this photo, so think of it what you will.

The main reason for the change of heart, is that one year ago, said bf who then lived in Israel, visited at this particular time, so we had only a few days together, one of them coincidentally being Feb 14, so we did the dinner thing, and the romance thing. Now we live together but it's part of our personal history so we're doing it for that reason. I don't know if that redeems me to the cool gods or not, but it's my excuse.

I'm not sure this counts as equiv to rainbows and sparkly ponies. I get the feeling I'm still on a negative kick. Oh well. Deal.

Guess what?

I'm not gonna whine. Not in this section anyway.

Yeah, I'm still probably going to be ruined, still living in this flat under ridiculous circumstances, still doing nothing of note in my life and all the rest of the bullshit.. but right now I don't care.

I'm having a visitor, who is coming in 3 days, the 14th, which is a very fitting date if you are the sort of person who observes the kind of minor capitalist holiday that bombards us with tons of pink plastic heart shapes and tacky underwear, which I'm not usually but this year I'll make an exception. Yes, he's that sort of visitor.

So I'm pretty happy right now.

*flutters off*

Happy minor capitalist holiday.

I love yoo'se all. Honestly. Truly, deeply, unconditionally. Even those of you I've never heard of. I was going to send you some chocolate but I ate it all. Sorry, my declaration of love is going to have to do.

Oh and as you all know, I'm a big dork when it comes to holidays and milestones and such, so make sure you check out my newest themed photos. That's if you've got nothing better to do.