Chris and I are not huge fans of Valentine’s Day. Neither of us gets giddy or excited when anyone mentions it. I do like doing something special for him on that day, but I don’t hype it up in my head the way most women do. I love card making. I love giving chocolate. I do not love stressing out about this overly commercialized holiday. So I don’t.

I don’t even really think about what we could eat on that day very much because I get mad at the restaurant industry when I think of all these hyper overpriced prix fixe menus just for that special night’s dinner. What usually tends to be the case (as I learned from reading Waiter Rant, a book based off of a highly successful personal blog of a man who has made a living out of waiting tables at different low and very high end restaurants over many, many years) is that restaurants, expecting couples to be willing to shell out lots of dough for their significant others (or who they hope will become their significant others soon), will create these fancy-sounding prix fixe menus and increase the price tag on them, yet will use lower quality ingredients but mask this fact by adding more cream and butter to the dishes. The average person who dines out doesn’t know much about food or food preparation, so they won’t even realize this reading the menus. I know a lot about both, and I will not tolerate giving into this nonsense.

I love eating out, but I will not do it on New Year’s Eve (unless I am traveling) or Valentine’s Day, because those are the two nights of the year when restaurants will create these special, crappy menus in an effort to rip you off. We may get delivery, or I may make us a nice meal. No eating out on Valentine’s Day.

So a new Malaysian restaurant opens on West 8th Street in New York a few weeks ago, and my friend suggests we try it out. Four of us went tonight, and I got this odd feeling as I entered the restaurant that I had been here before, but when it was a different restaurant/cuisine type. As we sat there, I realized it had previously been a so-so sushi place I visited once. Apparently, the people who took over this spot and made it Malaysian kept the decor and layout exactly the same and just redid the menu and staff.

This tends to be what happens when you live in New York for a while. You go to restaurants that are just so-so or sub-par (or horrendous), forget you ever really went there because there was nothing worth remembering, and then go back to the same location and get that deja vu feeling you’d been there before but can’t pinpoint when. Turnover here is really high, even when restaurants are tasty or innovative. This replacement was passable, but not worth eating again (the laksa was nothing like the laksa I know, and the Hainanese chicken was completely flavorless, even for a relatively blander dish). These are the places that need to be eliminated to give other places a shot.

Tonight, I went to an arts and crafts Meetup group. I’ve been wanting to meet more people who have similar interests, and since I really enjoy making greeting cards and scrapbooking, I figured it would be nice to find friends who do the same. Everyone who came to the group did something different – scrapbooking, card-making, sewing, calendar-making, embroidery, tatting (like crocheting, but even more intricate). It was fun being around women who had different crafts hobbies, but I’m not sure we quite clicked. They were all from the tri-state area and seemed so surprised when I said I was originally from San Francisco. I thought Meetup (and New York City, at that) welcomed everyone and attracted people from all over the place?

This sounds like such a PC, I-went-to-Wellesley-and-want-to-make-a-difference-in-the-world type thing to say, but I’d love to make friends who are from everywhere – here in the tri-state area, the Midwest, the South, the West Coast, Canada, China, Singapore, Germany, France, whatever. But when I meet them, it would be nice if they all didn’t treat the idea of not being from their native place as odd or surprising. I thought that was what made New York City so great – that it attracts people from around the globe? Or maybe it’s just that the people I met tonight just surround themselves with locals only?

Before moving to New York, waiting in line at the supermarket, or any store for that matter, never seemed like a big deal. The worst line might have 3-4 people in front of me, but I never had to wait more than 5 minutes to get to the cash register.

Now that I have been living here for over five and a half years, waiting in line is basically part of New York life, whether it’s for a restaurant (with or without a reservation, sadly), groceries, or even at freaking Rite Aid just to buy M&Ms for Chris. I’ve actually been at the Rite Aid right around the corner from my apartment on a Saturday, where I was disgusted to see a single-file line of about eight people. All Trader Joe’s locations in Manhattan are notorious for their lines that zig-zag throughout their store (and requires employees to follow the ends of those lines carrying large, bright red “End of Line” signs) and I guess that shouldn’t be surprising since it’s the most affordable place to buy good-quality groceries and produce in this crowded and expensive metropolis.

I went down to the Trader Joe’s during a break midday to drop off baked chocolate pastries I made for one of my best friends who works there, and I thought, hmm, maybe since it’s snowing and slushy outside, there won’t be a line there, and I can get away with grabbing a few things and not dealing with a huge crowd. Wrong. The line went all the way  to the back of the store. Apparently, these New Yorkers all had the same idea I did.

Actually, the best time to go grocery shopping really would have been during the Super Bowl last night as Chris suggested. Oh well. Maybe next year.

For the last four years of my life, I had to work insane hours and long nights and even weekends since my main client was in the automotive vertical and would have commercial spots during the Super Bowl. Most of my Januarys were shot, as every work night was a long one preparing massive search campaigns to capture all the Super Bowl commercial traffic. I remember the last two Januarys never even going to the gym more than once or twice.

It feels strange to not have to work tonight and knowing that I didn’t have to work late hours for all of last month. You always tend to think that when a huge load has been lifted off your chest that you will feel relieved, but I think in this case, it just feels kind of weird. It’s a good weird, but still weird. And I’m also proud to say that I really don’t care about the Super Bowl or who wins since I have never cared for watching sports.

It will be a nice, calm night for Chris and me. I love it.

Today was actually one of the mildest days we have had weather-wise since we’ve been back from the Southern Hemisphere, so we decided to take a long stroll from our apartment in the Upper East Side all the way down to Hakata Tonton for Japanese hot pot in the West Village. Apparently, this place has been around for seven years now, and I just never had any idea it existed. Now that Chris has found it and we have eaten there, we are both in love with it. Everything there was tasty, from the sashimi to the hot pot (made from collagen) to even the strawberry ice cream and individually wrapped mochi we had for dessert at the end.

The hot pot tonight reminded me of my own hot pot set, which I gave away when I moved into this apartment due to a lack of space. I used the set about three times at my Elmhurst apartment, and each time, I only used homemade chicken stock and had a vast assortment of meats and vegetables to serve it with. I remember one of my favorite condiments with hot pot – homemade XO sauce, and how well it flavors everything it seems to touch. Looks like it is time to make my own soon.

Hot pot also reminded me of how drab hot pot was at our house growing up because my aunt always insisted on having the plainest meats and broths possible, so Ed and I always preferred having hot pot outside, even though we knew the broths weren’t homemade. Ed never got to have my homemade hot pot, and he’ll never have the XO sauce I plan on making. But Bart will sit at the table with us the next time we have hot pot so we can remember him.