Happy Valentine's Day!

I've always enjoyed Valentine's Day, for no other reason than that it never fails to makes me smile. Yes, I'm well aware that it's a day-long cliché that was more or less invented by Hallmark, and from which florists, chocolatiers, high-end restaurants and jewelers make a killing, along with the zillion other reasons people use to hate it. But in my mind, a day that's all about love can't be that bad. (I know, my hippy side is showing again.)

I didn't actually do anything valentines-y today since Metro, in all their wisdom, decided to make it extremely difficult for anyone to use the blue and yellow lines to get into the city this weekend. But two of my girlfriends and I had a girls' night yesterday, and I had a blast.

We met up for happy hour - at Ella's, for those of you in D.C. - and I brought them both roses, just to be cliché. (I had intended to bring yellow ones, for friendship and as a throwback to the "Happy Just Because Day!" that I created in college - a random day when I ran around taping single yellow roses to my friends' doors, usually when we were all stressed out about midterms or finals. But no one was selling anything but red roses, so I made do with those.) After a carafe or two of (delicious!) sangria, we made our way to a table for dinner, and caught up on work and love lives over spinach salad and a couple of pizzas.

Two of us decided to make a night of it, grabbed some popcorn and went to see He's Just Not That Into You (I know, I know, could we be anymore a portrait of the stereotypical single girl?), which I thought was very cute, and had some hilarious moments and great lines. I don't care how much the critics hate it, it hits so many aspects of life for both couples and singles dead-on that you can't help but laugh and nod in agreement with the characters. Ginnifer Goodwin's Gigi was my favorite overall, although Drew Barrymore's Mary had my favorite line, and Jennifer Aniston's Beth and Ben Affleck's Neil were my favorite couple.

I spent the Metro ride home talking politics with another single 20-something, and considered the evening pretty perfect.

I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day, too! Any highlights, or valentine suggestions for singles or couples in the future?