Valentine’s Gas

Valentine's Day approaches and everyone will want to do something very special for that extra special person in their lives. The day will be more hectic than usual this year because it falls squarely on a Saturday. This means very few people will have to work or be in school, and everyone will be together to share their love for each other at home.

Then, of course, there will be the special Valentine’s Day dinner. So many people will want it to be just right for the special someone, and there will also be many marriage proposals. (I don’t mean to ruin the mood, but I may puke if I use the word “special” one more time in this entry.)

However, despite the best laid plans of many people, some things will go wrong. For example, you wait until the last minute to get flowers at your grocery store. Unfortunately, the selection has been picked through and there are no more “Mid-Winter Blues Pick Me Up Collection” for $9.99, and you end up getting the most expensive bouquet (“The Diamond and Pearls Dozen Roses” for market price) because that’s all that’s left.

Ditto for the chocolates – all the cheap Hershey’s and Whitman’s samplers have been snapped up and you tell yourself that the overpriced Godiva bon bons are a good investment. (Right, like you were going to get some action anyway...)

Then the romantic evening begins...badly. The baby sitter will be late, or won’t show up at all, and you end up dragging the kids along on what was going to be a nice, quiet cozy evening alone with your significant someone. Then you get to the restaurant where your reservations was lost, which means there could be an hour’s wait for a table, which means the kids will get bored and rammy. Finally, you order and your food arrives but your salad is wilted, your steak is overcooked, the fries are soggy, and the harried wait staff may snarl as they try to accommodate everyone and their mother who thought it would be a nifty idea to eat out on Valentine’s Day.

Ain’t romance grand? Honestly, you couldn’t even offer me Ryan Howard’s annual salary (FYI, $18 million) to work as a waiter this weekend. It’s not going to be pretty, wherever you go.

Anne Marie and I beat the rush by having our Valentine’s dinner LAST Sunday! We went to Legal Seafood in King of Prussia. The service was excellent and, except for the Maryland cream of crab soup being tepid, we had a memorable Valentine’s meal. Yep, that’s my restaurant review — short and sweet like the tangy calamari appetizer we had.

Well, there was just one slight problem. My dear wife did suffer a number of gaseous events later in the afternoon. I don’t want to intentionally embarrass her publicly, but for the sake of a good belly laugh I hope she’ll forgive me. Let me put it this way: she single-handedly re-enacted the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles. For those of you who are not familiar with that scene, let me just briefly explain that it involved a group of cowboys consuming and enjoying the aromatic after effects of a baked bean supper. Know what I mean? I think you do!

The problem is we didn’t have the musical fruit as part of our dining experience. We suspect that it was the Thai flavored calamari. Oh, the calamari...with its delicious sweet/sour tangyness tossed with peanuts, pineapple wedges and scallions. (Okay, so my restaurant review wasn’t finished!) In many ways it has spoiled us for other preparations of calamari forever. We probably won’t even think about eating calamari with marinara sauce ever again. We’d be hard pressed to get such entertainment with just calamari and marinara sauce. It just made our Valentine’s dinner all the more special...

Okay, I’m suddenly feeling nauseous...