Call it overcommercialized, call it cheesy, but I think Valentine’s Day is a day where you should be celebrating all kinds of love: familial, platonic, romantic, etc. I think it doesn’t matter what you do as long as it shows that you care about your friends! One of my good friends gave me a Valentine’s M&M rice krispie treat (and an extra “for the road,” they said), and that might be the most scrumptious rice krispie treat I have had in my life.
So how exactly does one overworked, executively dysfunctional, and perpetually sleepy Caltech student celebrate this day? Come along and find out!
Friday, February 14th:
8:40am: Turn off my alarm because it was bothering me 😭
9:40am: Turn it off again
10:40am: …
12pm: Wow! What a great time to wake up and do the half-baked set that is due in 12 hours!
3pm: Time for class!
4pm: Time to make a Trader Joe’s run!
Every Valentine’s Day, Dabney House hosts an event called “Meetman at Meatman,” a play on an inside joke where we call Hameetman Center (where the Red Door Cafe is open almost every day during the school year until 2am) “Meetman,” and we go to “meat” during the late hours of the day to replenish our fuel stocks as we churn out our sets. As this year’s host of the Dabney House’s established “meat-based speed dating event,” I had to make sure to get a wide array of assorted meats (salami, prosciutto, capoccolo), some pepper jack cheese (my personal favorite), and some vegan treats for the meeters who aren’t into meat.
Then came my favorite part: the flowers!
Since last year, I’ve gotten into the habit of getting my closest friends flowers. No matter their gender, they get a sweet bloom as a reminder of how awesome they are and how much I cherish them 🥰 (also that I have eyes everywhere and I’m watching their every move).
I’ve been getting into DIY bouquet making and flower arrangements lately, so with a little creativity and 25 bucks, I got the first batch of flowers ready to make little bouquets for some of my friends; I prepped the flowers, trimmed them, and wrangled them around until it Looked Right™. The recipe was: light purple mums, yellow carnations, and baby’s breath. I wrapped each bouquet all up in brown craft paper, tied with a yarn bow, and it was ready for delivery!
6:30pm: [Insert your imagination here to visualize the flowers because I forgot to take a picture of them.]
7pm: Back to my set that was due concerningly soon. 🙁 It was a set for ESE 103, and it was the homework related to photosynthesis. Even my homework was thinking about leaves and flowers on Valentine’s Day!
10:30pm: LITERALLY turning in my set as I was en route to Hameetman Center 😭
10:30 + ϵpm: Meetman at Meatman started! We ate the snacks and fresh bread that one of my friends kindly baked for the event. It was a good time, but the party game of the night was lost in Shipping Afterlife (so I had to improvise with icebreakers that I instantly regretted asking ☹️).
Saturday, February 15th (because there is indeed a Part 2 to Valentine’s!):
I went to Trader Joe’s again to get MORE flowers… and they were all sold out. I had to go to a Trader Joe’s farther away to get more flowers, but it was so, so, so worth it. This time, I arranged a gerbera daisy in a glass bottle to give to my friends (pro tip: never throw away glass bottles!) and went around campus delivering them. They were indeed a hit 😀
6:30pm: [Insert your imagination here AGAIN to visualize the flowers because I forgot to take a picture of them.]
I also made myself an arrangement:
Happy Valentine’s!
