As a man, there's not much to like about it.

As a man who treats his girlfriend so well all year that I don't need to make up for it on February 14th, I also find little reason to pay attention to it.

My girlfriend, thankfully, feels the same way.

Happy Tuesday!

1) Donate every last piece of me to science that would be useful, and
2) Cremate me, and... well I don't care what you do with my ashes. I won't need them!

IMO, when I die, I want to be the absolute least burden on those taking care of my funeral expenses as possible.

As someone whose mother has been months away from death for the last few years, we've looked into the prices of funerals. Dying is not cheap. And I see no reason to make my future family pay top dollar for a casket, burial and services when they can just cremate me. I'm dead either way, you know?

I can share three different "kinda but not really" answers to this.

1) I met my first love via LiveJournal. Unfortunately we were two incompatible people on two divergent paths (she was in Boston University and spent summers in Jersey), and it never had a realistic chance of working.

2) I didn't meet a great RL friend on LiveJournal, but even better -- that friend is responsible for me being here. April (since this is public I'm not giving her username) got me started on an LJ back in January, 2003. My old entries are a footprint of a man I no longer am, and I can't even stand to look at them, but having an LJ gave me an emotional outlet I didn't realize I needed.

BTW we met playing the worst online game ever: The Sims Online. Calling us RL friends is probably an overstatement since we haven't seen each other in years. ;)

3) I did not meet my current girlfriend on LJ, but we did meet on an online dating site, eHarmony. We didn't pay for membership though -- we had our profiles filled out and took advantage of a 3-day free communication weekend.

So yeah, close but not quite?

Absolutely.

It's supply and demand. If someone actually wants to read an inmate's memoirs, then the person who created that content should get the money, even if they're ex-cons.

At my old one-hour photo job, our store was supposed to be converted into being open 24-hours -- so we had to hire a night manager.

For some reason, my drugstore thought it was an awesome idea to hire this late-20s guy who recently spent two years as a bar bouncer. Kind of a burly guy too, maybe 230lbs (but a healthy dose of muscle) and a light scar across his right cheek.

When the store cancelled its plans to go 24-hour, he was put on day shifts as an Assistant Manager and immediately power-tripped, trying to change every department's hours, favoring people he liked and what not.

I was perhaps the only person he wasn't horrible to. No, sorry, I was the only male.

Karma eventually bit him in the ass when he got let go under a 16 year old girl's threat of sexual harassment. Lesson: Don't stare at the ass end of (especially) jailbait.

While I hated the guy, I've always had a knack for being diplomatic and being on good terms with people I wasn't fond of. This job helped sharpen those skills.

Before bed most nights, I spend between 5-10 minutes sitting and meditating... letting any thoughts swimming around my head come to the surface. I give those thoughts the attention they need, then they go away.

I used to have a huge problem with my mind always running as soon as I went to bed, so I'd have a very hard time falling asleep. It was happening because I didn't give those thoughts the proper attention when I was awake.

Sometimes they're thoughts about what I have to do. Maybe I forgot to do something. Maybe I have a fear or worry I've been suppressing. I let those thoughts come, let them breathe, then they calm down. It took me a while to get comfortable with doing this, with being honest with my own feelings.

Honda.

Because I own a Honda Fit, and giving my car a human name is silly. I'll refer to it as my Honda, thankyouverymuch.

Never.

Relationships are built on trust. When that trust has broken down to the point that you have to get the truth by snooping, then your relationship is already in serious trouble.

It's a slippery slope, too. Most people only snoop because they believe their partner is guilty already, and they're trying to find evidence. Do you really think the snooper will look thru someone's phone, find nothing, and stop? Of course not.

That snooper will find nothing in their partner's phone... then will snoop through email. Will listen intently on conversations. Check their Facebook accounts. The snooper will get paranoid, as suddenly everything their partner says is mistrusted. Even harmless texts can suddenly be mistaken for something "serious" at that point.

If you think your partner is cheating on you, absolutely so convinced that you think you've got to snoop... then just break up already, because you already lost all sense of trust.

Trust is built from communication, but what's the point if you don't trust what comes out of their mouth?

Seeing a lot of violence will desensitize you towards violence in general, but it doesn't promote violence unless you're already an unstable human being.

The only media that helps promotes violence is TV News, and that's less about showing violence than about glorifying it for ratings.

Memories involve past experiences -- which form the basis of our judgment of situations in the future. Keeping those memories is vital to make sure we learn from both our mistakes and our successes.

Past relationships are great examples. You may hate your exes, but the experience is part of who you are now.