Valentine's itself was kind of wimpy, as it was one of my 12-hour days at the Penny Saver (actually we left early, around 6 or 7 or so, but still). Tom bought me a box of yummy chocolates, but my main gift was going to see U2-3D the next day...only it turns out it was only opening in Toronto the 15th, not in Rochester 'til the 22nd. grrrrrrr. He loved the shirt I got him though, and, oh! the other thing:

Over at The Paper Factory, we'd just gotten in an order of life-size cardboard cut-outs. Elvis, Wizard of Oz, Marilyn, Jack Sparrow, Hannah Montana...and Darth Vader. So I mentioned this to him when he picked me up that day, just in passing, and half-joking he said I should so get him that. But he said it in such a way that, while it was clear he wasn't exactly serious, he wouldn't think it stupid either.

So.

Wednesday night, the 13th, I was working. All night, I was looking up at the Darth Vader, and considering.

And then I got the fantastic image of Darth Vader with a GIANT red ribbony bow around his neck. That pretty much settled it.

As I was working Penny Saver the next two days, had to get it that night - and there was obviously going to be no way I could sneak THAT home. So, between crazy amounts of customers, and when we finally slowed down at like 8:15, I got out the big ladder and Mary helped me get Vader down from the.. oh there's this grid-thing hanging from the reallyhighceiling over the stairwell, we'd put a lot of the cut-outs up there. And then I bought a giant burgandy pull-bow, and a whole roll of red curling ribbon, and went to town.

Biggest freaking ribbony red bow EVER.

As we were closing up, I moved Vader over toward the door to the store. When Tom pulled in, I ran outside, and asked him to come in for just a minute, I needed a hand with something..

And his face was freaking priceless.

"Happy Valentine's Day."
"Are you serious?"
"Why else would he have a giant red bow?"

Oh it was great. Interesting trying to get him into the car, and we still haven't found a good home for him yet - currently he's by the kitchen table, and keeps freaking us out in the dim light of late night/early mornings, but y'know.

Actually there's a picture of Tom and I with him, Mary took one at work, I'll have to cross-post it when she puts it up on facebook. XD


Work has been going well at both places, incidentally. Paper Factory's been a little rough, just being so short-handed, but business is really slow this time of year (apart from Valentine's which was nuts), so we're making it work. I have a key! I'm all official now. I've only had one night so far where I was in charge, happily it was a quiet one, but it's still cool. Makes me nervous, but proud too, that they trust me with the store and all. :) Webkinz keep flying off the shelves, and somehow I wound up taking charge of keeping track of them all the time, which is fun.

Penny Saver is SO much calmer and reasonable and, really, fun, now that Dolores and Mary are back. Dolores is much less crazy now that she's back there all the time, and not doing Tim Hortons any more. She's still a little nuts but she's such a sweet older lady that it's alright. Mary is just awesome, she's one of those women who wears hiking boots and no make-up and sells antiques on ebay and does art and searches out scifi by female authors. She's the one driving me back and forth from Silver Creek most of the time now, so we've had all sorts of interesting discussions. Incredibly enough, she actually has a stash of antique occult books - she's promised to scrounge up a few for me to help with my novel! \0/ So freaking cool.

And we've had COMPLIMENTS! on how the paper looks, which is awesome. I think it actually works out pretty well, all three of us working on it, because we add such different things in there. Also having some down-time now and again means we can find new things to fill in around the ads, I've been making all sorts of fun little blurbs on local history and food and such random trivia. I did a little spot on the history of 3D movies last week. XD


I need to grab some breakfast, lemme post about my anniversary in a bit. :)