Why Valentine's Day Bites (But at least there's hope)

Most people who bitch about Valentine's day are people without dates, or people with high-maintenance dates.

I can happily report that I don't fall into either category. I have a great (perfect for me) wife, and she isn't at all high-maintainence.

So why does Valentine's day bite? I am one of those lucky people who was born within a day of Valentine's day. It probably isn't as bad as those people who are born near Christmas, who get one big lump-sum present (cuz hey, to kids, that's what Christmas is about, right!). But on V-day, every restaurant with a modicum of class (which usually means 'takes reservations') is completely booked on the days around my birthday. So, if my wife (or in my earlier years, my girlfriend) wanted to take me out for a nice brithday dinner, that dinner would either be 1) a Valentine's day special menu deal, 2) Be a week before or after my actual birthday or 3) the grand event would happen at someplace on the KFC or Subway caliber.

Of course, since I have a wife that can cook (and she can cook real well!), we don't have to go out for nice food. But sometimes, you just need to hit a nice restaurant, and a birthday is a good excuse to splurge.

As I said earler, there is hope. Since Valentine's day isn't such a big thing here in Germany (and few, if any, relationships here are ruined due to poor Valentine's day performance scores), the nice restaurants are not jam-packed for days before and after this regular, ordinary day. In fact, the only special thing I noticed here was that "google.de" used hearts instead of O's on their web page.

So cool. Maybe I'll actually be able to celebrate my birthday out of the shadow of Valentine's day this year.