Now THAT is what you call Valentine's Day!

If you've watched the right channels on TV lately (and by "right", I mean sports-themed) you have seen the commercial featuring "The Girlfriend".  If you haven't seen it and are too lazy to click on the link to watch it, it features a scantily clad young woman--The Girlfriend--describing her ideal man with her foreign accent.  "I like guys...a little bit fat.  A little bit...hairy back.  Who watch a lotta football."  (She is, of course, simply outlining the target demographic of the bourbon-making Jim Beam company.)  She is, in essence, billed as the quintessential girlfriend.  

I bring this up, not for the purpose of getting more people to drink their Jim Beam bourbon, but rather to illustrate that I had my very own "The Girlfriend" moment, and it went something like this:

Hollie (my wife): "I don't really feel like going out for Valentine's Day."

Me: "You don't?  What do you feel like doing?"

Hollie:  "I don't know.  Honestly, I feel like just making something at home and watching NBA All-Star weekend."

???????

There aren't too many of these moments in a man's life, so I was honestly taken aback.  If this were an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, it would be Deborah setting some sort of trap for Ray to fall into.  But my followup questions revealed that it was one-hundred percent genuine; my wife just wanted to sit back on the couch and watch the slam dunk competition.

And so we did.  

To be sure, there is something to be said for the high-maintenance gal, who carries herself high and proud in her designer jeans and perfectly coifed hairstyle.  

But nothing is sexier than a hottie who ALSO is interested in your ball games.  On Valentine's Day.  

So, while you other guys enjoyed your fancy-pants 5-course dinner with hard-to-pronounce foods and finished off the evening with some sort of predictable chick-flick, Hollie and I were kicking it in sunny St. George on the couch with two monster steaks, watching Nate Robinson dethrone Superman for the 2009 slam dunk title.

I wish I could say I felt your pain this Valentine's Day.

P.S.  Did you see those dunks by Nate?  He is generously listed at 5'9", and in one of his dunks, his head was just inches from the rim, which means his running vertical leap is somewhere around the 48-inch range.  Insane.  I'm working on mine, and will let you know how the intramural ball game goes down tonight!