Valentine’s day is on Sunday, and although the Daily 49er staff will be busy producing Monday’s issue of the paper in its suffocating, air conditioner-less newsroom, some of its editors will make time to celebrate the occasion with their special someones. The rest will wallow in their loneliness and pretend the vacancy in their hearts does not affect them.
Miranda Andrade-Ceja, Arts & Life Editor
Love is dead.
And no, I’m not just saying that because this Valentine’s Day I will be waking up at 7:45 a.m. to go to my second job and then finish off the day sitting in the newsroom, hunched over a computer. I’m saying it because someone has to. I’m saying it because in another couple of decades, when you’re fishing bleu cheese-stuffed olives out of a briny mason jar and wondering why your dog (who is eternally licking her crotch) is getting more action than you are — you will know that I spoke the truth.
And you will thank me.
(Don’t worry, I’ll be listening).
Ariana Sawyer, News Editor
My wife got really excited about Valentine’s Day and bought me some presents two weeks in advance. I had to look at them there on the nightstand, wrapped in pastel pink with little silver hearts, every night. It was like Valentine’s had transformed into Christmas with a painted blue owl bedside lamp for a tree. I started feeling pressured, so I went to the mall and spent most of the time in that store with all the puppies in fishtanks. Depressed by that point, I spent twice the amount of money I was supposed to. In the end, we exchanged gifts a week early. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing on the fourteenth of February.
Madison D’Ornellas, Managing Editor
This Valentine’s Day, I will remember. I will hold the cat for way too long. I will try to play my mom’s piano. I will make dinner at home. And it won’t be macaroni. I will, begrudgingly, write some poetry. I will most likely sing and dance to Beyonce and Bowie and Oasis in my car all day, super loud with too much gusto. I will sit and happily cry to “Sea of Love” by Cat Power. But mostly, I will spend the fourteenth with friends who are coworkers and coworkers who are friends, whom I love dearly. And, of course, I will be in the newsroom.
Liam Brown, Copy Editor
Wait, Sunday is Valentine’s Day? Don’t blame me for not putting a holiday with central imagery involving a magical flying infant randomly shooting arrows toward people’s bodies at the top of my calendar, but I honestly don’t have any reason to even acknowledge V-Day this year. For one thing, I’ve never had a real Valentine myself (cue somber music), and the classic compulsion to buy flowers and chocolates for the gal or guy you love goes kaput when you’re like me – living on a college budget. My significant other would have to look forward to microwave burritos and Honey Nut Cheerios as a Valentine’s Day gift, and that kind of unpleasantly mismatched present would be the kind of embarrassment neither one of us would want to live up to.
Plus, all communication between me and my Valentine would have to be written in proper AP style, of course. Stylebook by the phone = not too romantic.
Micayla Vermeeren, Opinions Editor
As much as I hate to admit it, I really love Valentine’s Day. I’ve never had a proper Valentine and will be the first to say the barrage of Pepto-Bismol pink decorations get on my nerves, but at the end of the day, I just can’t bring myself to fundamentally disagree with a day dedicated to celebrating love. So, in between my two jobs and the knock-off chocolates, I know I’ll be sneaking all day, I’ll be sending gross texts to my best friends and mom, finding some sort of animal to cuddle and letting the fourteenth serve as a reminder that we are all drowning in the love we usually don’t take the time to appreciate.
I’ll still be wearing all black, though.
Greg Diaz, Editor-in-chief
“I hate to break it to you, but you’ll all be working.”
Trang Le, Photo Editor
“Are we speed dating each other?”