First up on my "assorted news" post is to make sure all you pokemon-fans check out  munesol's page and give him lots of love.
He's just unveiled his team, Team Nightmare, and byeond that, he's a fantastic artist and there's sure to be a few other images for everyone to fave in his gallery.

Next up, I remembered today that Valentine's Day is comming up, which means an influx of "I HATE VALENTINE'S DAY!" posts.

Of course, I've no authority at all to say they can't express their opinions, or that they're wrong; but it gives me something else to have to sift through (just like the current slew of After-Con reports).
Either way it's not a big issue. I was alone for a long time as well(if you don't count my cat) and though I generally enjoy being alone and have never actively searched for a consort, I am nevertheless familiar with that empty, painful feeling of having no one (one other side effect of my self-enforced solitude was that I also had no friends to coddle me through such moments).

I'm mostly ambivalent toward V-Day - not so much because I now have a fiance (who I will be marrying in Febuary oddly enough), but because it's a holiday for which I never felt any rapport or great excitment.
As I mentioned, I never spent my time "searching the meat rack" (so to speak) for a consort. All my relationships (inculding the current one) came about by natural circumstances. Well...maybe not with Nancy...but she was a special case...
Even as a child Valentine's Day seemed uncessecery. It celebrated something that I felt should be shown everyday - affection. Christmas was reckognizing the birth of Christ, Easter his ressurection, St. Patrick's Day was fun because of my Irish heritage, Halloween honored the dead and so forth, but V-Day celebrated nothing (or so it seemed to me).

For me, the greatest part of the holiday is the day after, which I call "Half-Price Chocolate Day" and of course those little heart-shaped candies....Mmmmmm....

D.O.P.R