El Burro Volador

This year, just as we do every February 15th, ‘Bekah and I celebrated Valentine’s Day.  We tend to keep a low profile on the actual holiday, emerging afterward to slink over to our local Barnes & Noble and spend any Christmas giftcards we may have received.  Merlyn has made it kind of a habit to bestow $100 gift cards on each of us at Christmas, thereby giving us our Valentine’s Day.

Part of our tradition is to select one book for each other.  This year, I picked out Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran for Rebekah, and she picked out Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes for me.  I know ‘Bekah couldn’t wait to tear into all the birding books she bought, and I am in the middle of The Bourne Supremacy, but we will probably get down to reading each other’s selections soon – after all, Rebekah’s past picks for me have included some terrific books, like Kevin O’Hara’s Last of the Donkey Pilgrims and The War for Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis De Bernieres.

For the last couple of years, the book store romp has been followed by a stop to pick up carryout from the nearby Hunan restaurant, which also happens to be my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world.  Then, our galleon laden with our new treasures, ‘Bekah and I set sail for home, done with another blissfully low-key Valentine’s Day.