Wow. This year is already going by quickly...it's already almost Valentine's Day.

I know you're probably expecting some bitter diatribe about how Valentine's Day is a holiday fabricated by greeting card companies for the sole purpose of guilting us into buying things for people we generally take for granted as if one sweeping gesture once a year is an acceptable time frame for telling the people you love that you in fact love them.

I'm one of those crazy ass people who loves people despite some of them doing absolutely horrible things to me. I'm hard to get to know, but once I love you, you're pretty much screwed and unless you light me on fire, there's a good chance I'll love you forever.

Actually, that's not true. My best friend once lit me on fire, and I still consider him my best friend. And he considers me his, even though I kicked him in the face in retaliation.

In the past 6 months (next Saturday), my life has changed pretty dramatically. I refuse to wait once a year to tell the people who are important to me that they are.

However, I've been really sucking it up in the forgiveness department. Valentine's Day always brings up all the old relationships. Usually in the form of people calling me to tell me that they're sorry and they miss me.

After that, I don't hear from them for another 364 days.

Which means one thing: They didn't really miss me, and they weren't really sorry. They were sorry they were alone on Valentine's Day. Or they missed me this one particular day of the year.

I know that I'm not always the easiest to approach. So I decided that this year would be different. All the people who miss me because they are lonely on a stupid holiday contrived by a greeting card company can fuck themselves.

For the people who genuinely do want to rekindle some sort of friendship, but are afraid I will make them bleed out of their faces if they approach me again, I'll talk to them.

It might not be comfortable, it might not be the flowers and candy bullshit that this holiday was created for, and it might not be what people consider normal but I've been trying to be more like Mackenzie. She could forgive anyone for anything, so there's no reason I can't either. If more people acted that way, I think Valentine's Day would suck a lot less for most of us.

That being said: if you're one of my guy friends you better pony up for some flowers or get ready to listen to me bitch for the next year.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know by now that Chicago is buried under 19 feet of snow and it's really damn cold.

Having lived in the Midwest my entire life, I'm somewhat used to my winters being cold, wet and shitty. But this is a new kind of cold, wet and shitty.

I was fine with it, until it came time to dig myself out.

Turns out that the asshole who parked next to me decided a great place to shovel all the snow that was blocking his way was directly behind my car. I walked out to a pile of snow that was about four feet wide and six feet tall.

Which is bad snow etiquette but not the biggest issue if you have a shovel.

Which I don't.

Because I live in an apartment. Why the hell would I need a shovel?!

It took me 2 and a half hours to dig it out, with a hurt rotator cuff. Thank god the maintenance guy took pity on me and stopped to help me dig out. Which he decided was worthless, and reattached the plow to his truck to plow the snow out of the way.

That's how you know you're an asshole. When you pile so much snow behind some one's car that they have to be plowed out.

Chris is always bugging me to go to California. I used to think it was because he wanted to see my boobs. Even if that is the case, he might actually be on to something.