Valentine's Day In the Jungle

Started the first sunny, warm Valentine's Day we've had in at least two or three years with a spinach and Colby cheese omelet, grapefruit, and the two Winnie the Pooh Valentine's videos. I left a little earlier than I have recently so I could actually make it to work on time, which I did, thankfully.

Good thing, too. We were on-and-off busy all day, though never really swamped. I think most people did their Valentine's shopping over the weekend. The holiday and lovely weather must have put people in a good mood. The only trouble I had at all today was with my very first customers. They insisted that the 6-pack of chocolate-covered strawberries they bought were 2 for $5 when they were really $6.99. I called the produce department and had a manager and a bagger check the price, and they all said the same thing. They threw a fit and didn't take the strawberries.

(The irony of all that fussing was...as good as the Acme's strawberries were, they might have been better off making their own. I saw many customers buying containers of chocolate to melt and fruit to dip.)

Went straight home after my relief arrived. Though it still wasn't cold, the wind had picked up and it had gotten cloudy. It was so warm, I changed to a short-sleeved T-shirt and my heavy Cape May sweatshirt hoody and went for a walk right after I got in. I went to WaWa for a fountain Coke Zero with chocolate syrup, then strolled around the neighborhood a bit.

Thanks to the warm weather, most of the snow we got last month is finally disappearing. The ice is completely gone from the path to my apartment and most sidewalks and is slowly melting from the front yard. Even the largest piles of snow on the curbs are rapidly shrinking. By the end of the week, I wouldn't be surprised if all but the largest piles of snow and ice had melted.

When I got home, I restocked my cookie tin with Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Bar Cookies and ran two romantic action movies with jungle settings. The first, Romancing the Stone, was a childhood favorite of mine. A shy romance novelist sets off to Columbia to rescue her sister and winds up searching for the jewel of the title with a good-natured mercenary.

The African Queen is a somewhat similar story in a different jungle. A missionary and a half-sozzled riverboat driver take the broken-down vessel of the title downriver to attack the Germans in the Belgian Congo during World War I.

In both cases, it's the lovers who make the story. Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart had so much fun sparring, they inadvertently turned John Huston's intended drama into a romantic action/comedy. And Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas have an equally good time running around the jungles of Mexico (Columbia being a bit too politically hot to film in during the mid-80s).

Here's hoping everyone had an equally hot Valentine's Day, whether they have a sparring partner of their own or not!