"Was it a black guy? That's George!"

Valentine's Day happenings in the O'Connor household:

Jill wakes up at 5:30, learns that the Portland Public Library has canceled their tax assistance program due to inclement weather, and promptly cancels the CA$H program for the day. Minutes later, she turns my alarm clock off, silently telling me that the UW offices are closed for the day. Not half bad.

I get out of bed around 10:30 to tend to a few payroll-related items and make breakfast (egg sandwiches for me and a half grapefruit for Jill). Jill stays in bed until I drag her out sometime after 11:30.

When UW payroll is taken care of, we watch the rest of "The Shining," during which I'd fallen asleep last night. Stanley Kubrick's take on Stephen King's horror, which I'd improbably never seen in full. A solid A-.

Just before 1, I decide to shovel the walkway and sidewalk, just to be sure the mailman can bring us a day's supply of Netflix. Sure enough, "The Departed" is here, a day after it's debut on DVD. Is there anything Netflix can't do?

Lunch is leftover taco pie from the previous night. A delicious 'tween-movie snack. And to answer the question I'd asked 2 1/2 hours earlier, Netflix can't make a decent flick out of "The Departed," a gratuitously violent stroking of Martin Scorsese's ego, with utter disrespect to human life and thought, the passing of time, and the Boston accent.

After way too much bloody tripe, we take a break at the Great Lost Bear, downing a tower of Harpoon Hibernian (or was it "Valentine Red Ale?"), some Irish nachos, and a game of "who would play each member of our respective families in a film?", all of which would have been free if Jill hadn't tracked down our reclusive waitress on our way out of the building.

Once outside, we ran into a flustered gentlemen, who asked us if we lived nearby, and when we said yes, assumed that we could drive him home. Our driveway still lost under most of a foot of snow, we couldn't, so we walked on, only to find his Grand Am stuck in a very manageable amount of snow on the corner of Ashmont and Forest. Our senses of philanthropy heightened by a few Valentine Reds, I kicked the snow out from around his tires and we went back to the Bear to find him. We asked the happy host, who said he hadn't seen anybody, until something clicked in his brain:

"Was it a black guy?

"Yeah."

"That's George!"

Why didn't we mention that it was Maine's African American whose car we wanted to rescue? George was summoned from the Black VIP section and told us that his car wasn't stuck, but that he'd locked his keys in his car. Enough said. We went home, satisfied with our meager attempt at philanthropy and ready to chow down on a delicious crockpot-cooked pork and watch "Flashdance". Hey, it can't be worse than "The Departed".