The Postal Snail.

Everything's coming a bit later than I planned - the Valentines I'd sent out to arrive early are off-kilter, and only one person's gotten any Cucumber Soda - the little Hearts are there fine and dandy, though, and some of them are international. I really hope nothing's exploded in its box and is on its way back to me as a, "Sorry, we blew up your package". I've gotten one, maybe two of those. They were both pretty small, too - Soap and Clothing.

Valentine's Day was pretty uneventful - I puffed myself up and got ready to deliver this pretty-unrehearsed speech full of Randian values and "I'm proud to know you"s, and it was promptly put to a halt with a witty reply of "That's pretty gay".
Hilarious - I laughed for three minutes solid.
You're a witty bastard, Valentine - I wouldn't have it any other way.

Gears of change are turning, and I hope nothing catches on them - Charles is supposed to be getting out of the house when his taxes come in - we're essentially booting him out the door with seven-hundred dollars or so; I don't know if he's staying here or heading back to Oklahoma, but he's not coming to New York with us. I'll be glad we're short a negative do-nothing who drinks my coffee - today, I double-brewed yesterday's coffee with a spoonful of Instant, with the hopes that it would be so bitter that he'd be grossed-out and would stop stealing my coffee in the morning. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.

In slightly less-positive changes, we've got to put the family dog down. She's not too old, but she's a pretty large breed, and she's begun to get tumors, anxiety issues, and if we ship her to New York, we're worried we'll aggravate the notorious hip dysplasia the breed's infamous for. My father said he won't go in to see her put down: that kind of bothers me, because me and my mother were the only people who legitimately cared for her. My father was not above slapping her around when her anxiety issues frustrated him, and my sister was quick to sign the death warrant after the dog spent an evening crying to get into her room...

I guess it bothers me to see people be so woe-struck when they didn't make a difference in that Dog's existence. I'm going to see her euthanasia - I feel like I owe it to her or something. Some sort of Old Yeller thing kind of boiled up out of all that fake-sad for me.

The Academics for today were canceled over the inter-com so I won't be here much longer; there's a mild flu-epidemic or something swimming around, so it's kind of a victim of it. I'll keep you posted when I can.