So this is Valentine’s Day, huh? Well, I’m not about to let anybody say I lack the proper spirit, even if I’m standing wretchedly on the outside, looking in at the revelers at the party, cold and hungry. In the snow. With the sniffles. And wet feet.

Here’s a link to Gene Edward Veith’s Cranach site—featuring a picture of the original St. Valentine’s relics. You can’t get more romantic than that.

My friend and fellow author Michael Z. Williamson sent me the following joke (can’t imagine why he thought of me):

Every Friday after work, a physicist goes down to the ice cream parlor, sits in the second-to-last seat, turns to the last seat, which is empty, and asks a girl, who isn’t there, if he can buy her an ice cream cone.

The owner, who is used to the weird local university types, always shrugs but keeps quiet. But when Valentine’s Day arrives, and the physicist makes a particularly heart-wrenching plea into empty space, curiosity gets the better of him, and he says, “I apologize for my stupid question, but surely you know there is NEVER a woman sitting in that last stool, man. Why do you persist in offering ice cream to an empty space?”

The physicist replies, “Well, according to quantum physics, empty space is never truly empty. Virtual particles come into existence and vanish all the time. You never know when the proper wave function will collapse and a girl might suddenly appear there.”

The owner raises his eyebrows. “Really? Interesting. But couldn’t you just ask one of the girls who comes here every Friday if you could buy HER a cone? Never know — she might say yes.”

The physicist laughs. “Yeah, right. How likely is THAT to happen?”

So there you go. I’ve done my part. Now go out and show your sweetie how much you care about him/her. Don’t even give a thought to me, alone in a quiet house, paying my bills like I do every other Thursday night. You have a good time. Enjoy yourselves. That’s all that’s important.