Dreaming Out Loud

It’s Valen-time

2/14/11

When did Valentine’s Day become a holiday just for couples? A day celebrating love should extend far past just your significant other. What about family and friends? My number one Valentine is my mommy. My dad’s not very good with the sentimental, anniversary, Valentine’s, etc stuff. It’s really sad; it makes me wonder if all relationships fade out like that. So for Valentine’s Day I celebrate with Mommy, making an effort to replace that romanticism void in my parents’ relationship.

I‘ve never celebrated VDay with a significant other, even when I was with someone at the time. Maybe I’ve gone so long without celebrating it that it’s a habit to just avoid it. Maybe I’m waiting for just one; one day that will be super special. This year I rejected all my VDay dates to celebrate Single Awareness Day (S.A.D). Going out with someone on VDay makes it seems more serious; I really not looking for something more at the moment. Also even if I was with someone, I don’t believe that there should be a predetermined day for you to express your love for whoever.  Those are what anniversaries are for. A marketing ploy (a successful one) of American industry to get you to spend money on showering your loved ones with flowers, candy, cards, & gifts. I would hope that people would express their love and appreciation for loved ones 365 days a year. 

Who needs men anyway? I can buy myself stuff. Single ladies should not feel insecure that we don’t have a date on VDay. It’s not because we can’t get some but maybe we choose not to. We shouldn’t have to stay in and not do anything because there’s no potential date. This is why I decided to make an event for my single girl friends to go out and have fun. We can get dolled up for ourselves and celebrate that we are independent, young women. Girls Night Out!

I make a facebook event for a GNO for SAD. Dinner’s reserved for 10 at Otaru. It was really hard to find a restaurant that wasn’t booked for VDay, but I’m glad I lucked out. It was also convenient that it was a Monday night so there was a $20 special for unlimited sushi and sake. Worddd. My friend Guy decides to make an event for the single guys just like mine. He’s planning to crash my event, and I’m inviting the challenge. I love challenges and especially pranking. I was curious, and it’ll be fun to see what they’re going to do, so I leave my fb event public. At first the plan was to put fake plans on the fb event and go somewhere else for dinner. The guys show up to crash, but I leave a note with the hostess at that restaurant saying “Haha suckahs. If you still want to see us, we’re at ____”. Then they would go to the real location, and we’ll actually be there. Maybe pwn them good and not even give a location.

In the end, Guy and I decide to team up and scheme this whole S.A.D. event to make it fun for everyone. The plotting goes down. We did all the planning and preparing in two hours the day of VDay. We head to Walmart and buy candles, balloons, VDay cards, roses (fake ones because real ones die and are more expensive, and a big heart balloon (couldn’t find a heart piñata). We head back to my apartment, attached the VDay cards to the roses, and blew up the balloons. On the back of each VDay card, we wrote one word. 12 roses, 12 cards, 12 words. The message to be unscrambled was “Beautiful ladies! Happy Single Awareness Day continues, we will see you tonight.”

The girls get ready at my place. I offer to drive, so they have to come back with me to the apartment. Plus they left stuff in my room. Muahaha. We head to Otaru for dinner at 7:30 pm. The guys, meanwhile, eat at a Hooters nearby. Otaru was pretty awesome; that unlimited sushi deal was the bomb. It was good-quality sushi unlike those sushi buffets. Thumbs up! The place was pretty photogenic too for us females to camera-whore. Yay success on restaurant choice. There was a bossa nova singer who sang me a birthday song. Triple win.

Towards the end of our dinner, I text Guy to start heading over with the guys to hand out roses. Instead of 12 girls, we had 7 girls, so I told him to cut the message down to 7 words. The guys come in, hand each girl one rose, and leave. It makes them so much more suave and gentlemen-like instead of plain-out crashing our dinner. Lol the girls were bummed that they didn’t get to take pictures with the guys before they left. Anyway I pretend to be surprised and aww’ed while secretly aiding the girls. The girls realize that there’s a message to be unscrambled. It took longer than I expected for them to unscramble it, but they do.

Girls: How did they know where we were?
Me: Uhh the facebook event is public.
Girls: Oh yeahhh
Girls: How did they know how many roses to give out?
Me: Oh they probably counted outside and wrote a message real quick.
Girl: Yeah yeah I thought I saw someone familiar outside.

Lol I’m good. Cunning, eh? Guy tells the guys that there’s a party on campus. He doesn’t tell them where exactly besides the fact that they should just head to UTD and wait for his call. He leaves in a hurry to pick up an imaginary friend. He instead heads straight to my apartment to set up the surprise.

I run to the bathroom before we leave the restaurant, making a last call to Guy saying we’re on our way back. Once we got back to my apartment, I park and take off sprinting to my apartment saying I have to pee really badly. I get to the apt, and Guy is not ready! We frantically try to finish setting up. We light the candles and set the mood with some music. The girls get to my apt and are banging on the door and calling me wondering why I locked them out. They thought it was on accident. We stood them up outside until the guys came to join them outside. The guys take forever. I blame poor timing on Guy! But eventually most of the guys and all the girls are outside, so we open the door and welcome them with “Happy Single Awareness Day!” The girls were pretty surprised; the guys were probably just confused. They thought it was cute and sweet. We all then proceeded to play the 7 Deadly Sins game. Each person had one sin to perform. Some of the sins were pretty funny. Then I kicked everyone out around 11 because I needed to study for my test the next day.

I was super tired from the all-nighter, but it was worth it. I made people happy, which makes me happy. And that’s what I’ll remember, definitely not the test. I ended up getting a 97.5% though. What up? Lol. Usually VDay is just between significant others, but Guy and I made it special for more than one person. People had good laughs and met new people. It was fun and memorable. Plus I do love event planning, and I love surprises. In this case, I knew the whole plan, but everyone seems to enjoy the surprise. It’s cool being the puppet master; you know the whole picture while everyone doesn’t. It’s like “Dance, puppet, dance.” Haha. That was my Valentime’s 2011.