Row, row, row your friggin boat, gently down the stream

Weee, it's Monday, also Valentines Day, also Oregon's birthday. Weee. After a tremendous sugar high from the morning full of sweets everyone brought in, I am now crashing and irritable. It's also uncomfortably warm in the office today.

Here is a little history I pass along every year to my co-workers:
The holiday of Valentine's Day probably derives its origins from the ancient Roman feast of Lupercalia. In the early days of Rome, fierce wolves roamed the woods nearby. The Romans called upon one of their gods, Lupercus, to keep the wolves away. A festival held in honor of Lupercus was celebrated February 15th. The festival was celebrated as a spring festival. Their calendar was different at that time, with February falling in early springtime.

One of the customs of the young people was name-drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man drew a slip. The girl whose name was chosen was to be his sweetheart for the year

Legend has it that the holiday became Valentine's Day after a priest named Valentine. Valentine was a priest in Rome at the time Christianity was a new religion. The Emperor at that time, Claudius II, ordered the Roman soldiers NOT to marry or become engaged. Claudius believed that as married men, his soldiers would want to stay home with their families rather than fight his wars. Valentine defied the Emperor's decree and secretly married the young couples. He was eventually arrested, imprisoned, and put to death

Valentine was beheaded on February 14th, the eve of the Roman holiday Lupercalia. After his death, Valentine was named a saint. As Rome became more Christian, the priests moved the spring holiday from the 15th of February to the 14th - Valentine's Day. Now the holiday honored Saint Valentine instead of Lupercus.

The end. Plagiarised for your reading pleasure from some web-site a long time ago.

Word(s) of the day: POST TOASTY-O'S

Why on earth would anyone make a cream filled doughnut filled with icing?!? Yuck! I went to take a bite of what I thought was cream filled doughnut and got a mouthful of super sweet icing! I don't even eat the icing on a cake unless it is the cream kind, and this definitely wasn't. Again, I say Yuck! Val, the purchaser, was also stunned at this. Sunny's doughnuts must have gone nuts! Oh well, didn't need the sugar anyway.

Lexie log: All weekend I thought about one of the reasons I love Lexie at this age she is. There is a certain innocent fearlessness about her that is so fun. If I were to walk down the hall calling for Frank, and he jumped out from behind a door and yelled "BOO", I would probably scream, check for heart attack, and possibly cry. Later, maybe, I would laugh about it, perhaps after a good pummeling. Lexie, on the other hand, lives for such episodes. There is no threat, in her world, that would cause the surprise to be frightening. I just love it. Some days we can spend an hour or more with me finding different places to hide, her trying to seek me out, me surprising her and chasing her back in to the living room, and on and on, again. -- Last Thursday Lexie's little hair twisting habit got the better of her. She was very sleepy, drinking a bottle of milk in the car, and absently twisting away, as usual. She got a pretty good chunk of her hair twisted around her finger, tight. She yelped about it until she got it free, but of course, it didn't deter her. She can create some really superb knots this way.

Today I'm grateful for Frank and Lexie, changing tables, diaper wipes, movies, fresh starts, making Lexie smile, and weekends.