While it may be an artificially created holiday...

...i am grateful for one thing about Valentine's Day, and that's the opportunity to make a little much needed money from it.

Yes, i am once again planning to be out and about as a flower delivery person today and tomorrow.

Now if you are one of those who orders flowers, please do your delivery person a couple of favors.

Remember that we are paid by the delivery, so speed is of the essence to us.

This means, first, give us the full address. We can't read your mind and figure out which apartment, room number at the nursing home, office number, etc., if you do not specify. Just because you know how to get there and where your sweetheart is doesn't mean we do.

If we are delivering to a work place, please be sure to tell us what time your sweetheart gets off work so the delivery can be scheduled early in the day. It's disappointing to all of us for us to get there and find out the person got off work half an hour ago, and you didn't tell us to be sure to deliver before 3pm.

Mark your home or office well. If we can't find the address, we can't find you.

If you and your sweetheart are both at work all day, and the house is going to be empty, let us know that and tell us where we can safely leave the flowers outdoors. We don't mind doing that at all, we just need to know.

When you give us a phone number, give us one that will be answered. Your sweetheart expects flowers, so better to be surprised when we call and say "I'm at the door and no one is home, may i leave them on the porch" than to be unpleasantly surprised with no flowers at all.

Finally, if you are sending us to a limited access work place, where you need a badge to get in and have to be escorted, or a gated community where we need to ask someone to let us in, tell us and give us a good contact number to call when we get there so we can get in. There have been occasions where i couldn't get flowers to someone because no one was home all day and it was a gated community, and no one answered the phones.

Thank you, and enjoy your flowers.



Today is:

Blessing of the Salmon Nets -- Norham, Northumberland, England (just before midnight)

Clean Out Your Computer Day

Dream of Your Sweetheart Day -- a reminder that if you aren't ready for Valentine's Day tomorrow, you'd better get cracking

Get a Different Name Day -- for those who hate their name; sponsored by Wellcat Holidays

Ides of February -- Ancient Roman Calendar; also
Parentalia begins -- through the 21st (honoring divi parentes -- the deified ancestors)
Lupercalia begins -- through the 15th (to rid the city of evil spirits)
Orgiastic festival of Juno Februa begins -- through tomorrow

Employee Legal Awareness Day -- Australia

Madly in Love With Me Day -- because you have to love "me" before you can love "we"

Man Day -- always the Sunday before Valentine's Day, sponsored by C. Daniel Rhodes

National Tortellini Day

Random Acts of Kindness Week -- always Valentine's Week

Royal Hobart Regatta Day -- Tasmania, Australia (through the 15th)

St. Catherine dei Ricci's Day (Patron of the ill)

Ta-asobi -- Akatsuka Suwa Shrine, Itabashi-ku, Japan (ceremony to pray for a good harvest)

Trndez or Tearnandarach -- Armenian Christian Church (fire celebration, begins in the evening and goes through tomorrow; originally a pagan sun worship celebration)

Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show (through the tomorrow)



Birthdays Today:

Mena Suvari, 1979
Robbie Williams, 1974
Kelly Hu, 1968
Peter Gabriel, 1950
Stockard Channing, 1944
Jerry Springer, 1944
Peter Tork, 1942
George Segal, 1934
Kim Novak, 1933
Chuck Yeager, 1923
Eileen Farrell, 1920
Tennessee Ernie Ford, 1919
Grant Wood, 1892
Alvin York, 1887
Bess Truman, 1885
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, 1754


Today in History:

Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed, 1258
Jews are expelled from Burgsordf, Switzerland, 1349
The Disfida di Barletta (Challenge of Barletta); Frenchman Charles de la Motte accused Italians of cowardice, and thirteen Italians proceeded to rout 13 Frenchmen in a chivalrous horseback tourney, 1503
St. Augustine, Florida, is founded, becoming the oldest continuously occupied European established city, and the oldest port, in the continental United States, 1566
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for trial before the Inquisition for professing belief that the Earth revolves around the sun, 1633
Treaty of Lisbon: Spain recognizes Portugal, 1668
The Massacre of Glencoe: 78 members of the clan Macdonald are murdered for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange (William III), 1692
Cholera appears in London, 1832
Work begins on the covering of the Zenne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards, 1867
The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris by the activist Hubertine Auclert, 1881
Painter Thomas Eakins resigns from Philadelphia Academy of Art after controversial over use of male nudes in a coed art class, 1886
Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector, 1894
English suffragettes storm British Parliament and 60 women are arrested, 1907
The Negro National League is formed, 1920
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, 1935
France tests its first atomic bomb, 1960
Black Sabbath, arguably the very first heavy metal album, is released, 1970
A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky, 1981
An agreement is reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany, 1990
The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies, 2000
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", 2004
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the Stolen Generations, 2008
At 23:31:30 UTC the Unix system time (time_t) number reaches 1234567890 seconds, 2009
For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, were able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855, 2011