Valentine weekend

John and I had a lovely weekend. Quiet, nothing fancy, just the two of us, dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, chocolate, sweet cards. My favorite moment of the weekend? When I pulled into his garage on Friday. John has a two-car garage, and there is a lot of stuff piled up in there (it is a garage, after all), so in order to help guide me into my spot and let me know when to stop the car, he hung a brightly colored tennis ball on a string. I know exactly where the ball is supposed to tap on my windshield when I drive in.

Anyway, on Friday, this is what I saw instead of the tennis ball:

He'd saved an old candy box from last year and hung it there. That's my John.

I wore John's favorite red dress on Saturday night. Didn't take any pictures of it, but you might remember I wore it a couple of years ago and took pictures then:

We went after dinner to our favorite café in hopes of getting our traditional German chocolate cake, but they were out. Booo! They did, however, have a German chocolate cupcake, complete with Valentine decoration.

Back at home we exchanged cards, and John had written in his to me:

You are my best, my favorite, my joy.

I love you too. ♥

And of course, this weekend was the opening of That Movie. So John and I spent a fair amount reading copious quantities of reviews and discussing the pros and cons. Here's my overall take, and I think (I hope) I'm done talking about the damn thing:

• The reviews, whether good, bad or in between, appeared to agree on two points: 1. the books were terrible, and 2. the movie improved on the books. However, considering just how badly written the books were, the movie had a very low bar to rise above.
• Apparently, the movie did away with Anastasia's insipid monologues rambling to her Inner Goddess. This is huge, since that nonsense was about a third of the book.
• Sounds like they made Ana a bit stronger and feistier than her book counterpart. Also good. But still, not enough.
• According to the reviews, the sex and kink is greatly toned down from the book, because they had to keep it to an R rating. And the kink is more suggested than shown, although I guess they keep a belt spanking (for which Dakota Johnson used a body double, FYI). I'm sure Chross will have this available for us as soon as possible.
• The movie took in over $81 million at the box office this weekend. I suspect the audience was divided into two general camps: The Missionary Mommies giggling and squirming their way through it, and the kinksters who wanted to laugh at it. Several friends on FetLife said they went to see it just for fun.
• Let's recap: the conservatives hate it because it's sinful; the feminists hate it because it's demeaning to women; the PC folks hate it because it "glorifies abuse"; and the BDSMers hate it because it represents what we do with a bunch of clichés and misinformation. And yet, look how many people flocked to see it. I give up.

In short, for the sake of cultural literacy, I will probably watch the thing on Netflix eventually. But pay for it in the theater? No way.

I'm still coughing and sniffling. Worst cold ever. But slowly feeling better, and at least I'm sleeping through the night now without waking up coughing my spleen out. Should be quite fine for my belated Valentine's Day spanking tomorrow. :-)

Final thought: Did anyone else watch the Saturday Night Live 40-Year special last night? I did, all 3 1/2 hours of it. As a baby boomer, I have watched the show in real time since its inception. What did you guys think of it? I had my opinions (no surprise there), but I think I'll withhold them until I hear from others.