There's a FAKE Valentine's Day I didn't know about?!

Someone needs to tell my mother that I don't need to be lectured like a kid about how "all rides are favors and people are going out of their way all the time because not everyone can live next door to you!" Believe me, I KNOW THAT and am properly thankful for each ride I get... especially if it's a "crunch time situation" like Sam driving me to Fellowship when my rides are already in Vancouver. (or HWM picking me up to go all the way downtown again) Aiya! Then she asked me whether Wednesday was the "real" Valentine's Day... yeah, unless there's a fake one I didn't know about! (of course I didn't tell her that!)

Speaking of HWM, I had zero interaction with him today since he left right after service, but it's all good since I broke my trend and sat next to the Bearded Man instead. Ah, it's usually one of those two anyhow these weeks, so you know where I'll be on Sundays in service! (like anyone reading this would GO to the service, but you know what I mean...) Jeremy, Nathan, and I had some laughs over the sermon and such while I was (as ever) fighting the temptation to fall asleep for more than a moment. Afterwards, we all stood around in the rain for a few minutes since service ended late: I talked about that with Karen Lew, then got drawn into the discussion of tonight's plans. At first, I found it amusing that Tony was going to give in to conflict and call in sick at Wal-Mart just so he could eat SLB with us, but then I don't think he should! (sister doesn't think so either) A bunch of us yelled goodbye to Chrystal and Emily, then Eric and I talked to Tim and baby Joshua for a while. Maxine's surviving with the two kids, and Tim convinced his son to keep his hat on. Then Joshua recognized Anita coming down the ramp, so Eric and I wandered over to Jon and Nathan. Steph was surprised that Fabian was going, but he DOES seem to have potential for SLB nights!

Then it was off to Sunday School... little Rachel's grandma gave me a package of nougat candy for Chinese New Year, so of course I thanked her. Little Sean seemed improved today: if you leave him alone to do his thing, he'll eventually sit down for a bit. He even took my hand when he was getting down off the bench once he saw his mom, who genuinely thanked me for looking after him. Then he said "thank you" and "bye bye" to me at his mom's prompting... aww, so cute! After that, I talked to Adam and Andrew for a bit about school and science projects: you bet I'm done school, dudes! I saw a bunch of kids with PSP systems today: Julie C., Jonathan Chan, and some other boy who I've seen before - I'm just not sure of his name! Spoiled kids, for sure!

By that time, my brother and sister were done too. Went outside to talk to them, Phil, Dylan, Citrus, Cordia, Danielle, Tony, Christon, Sam, Jen, Karen Lew, Jeremy, and Eric about lunch plans and SLB. Jon wanted to go to the Foundation which is a vegetarian restaurant: it made sense since we'd be loading up on protein for dinner! Sam told us that he was a hypocrite since he also slept in the study carrels at the library, yet gets annoyed at people who do that when HE needs to study there - not that he gets much done! Citrus just needs the 3 AM pressure of "man, this thing is due in four hours!" to get things finished. Somehow, the conversation got around to computers crashing and such: Jeremy thought the iCrash could be marketable, so I challenged him: "How?" "Oh, it can be marketed as a feature... auto-reboot!" Jon suggested typing essays and such out in Gmail, which autosaves stuff every minute or so... that way, you don't have to worry about losing your stuff! We yelled bye to Adam, Andrew, Mike, Margaret, and a bunch of others. We hashed out ride plans, and thought it funny that Jeremy had to be picked up at 4:45, OR Nathan had to drive illegally because of Tony. ("I think I'll go home now just so I can be there to be picked up later!")

Ultimately, our family went to the HAPPY KING in the T&T plaza - Jon was there at Christmas with Harmony's family. There were so many people from church at that restaurant: Joey, Emily, Winnie, John, Auntie Maggie and Uncle Alfred (who have moved back here to Abbotsford now), and more. We told Joey about our grandma's nicknames for Jeremy and Eric and others: Bearded Man, White Kid, etc. Hilarious stuff! After lunch, we went to this OUT OF AFRICA place: the guy there reminded me of Tim's dad. For all I know, he IS Tim's dad... how many Chinese people from South Africa can there be in this area? Sweet stuff, though!