Valentine's Day

If you're going to get your sweetheart anything this Valentine's Day, treat it like any other holiday with gifts and give them something they'll love. No half-assed efforts with just chocolate and roses this year (although if that's what I end up getting today, I won't complain becuase I almost never, ever get either one, so that makes them a rare treat for me). But, most of you have been giving chocolate and roses for years and you can do better. Here's a list of 10 suggested gifts for your nerd girl sweetheart this year. As a nerd girl, I endorse this list.

The only three gifts I remember getting from Phil for Valentine's Day over the past 10 years (8 of them married) are ...

• Allie the dog in 2000:
  
  A great gift! She's still kicking and acts like she's two months old instead of six years old, although she has a head cold at the moment, which is really weird.
  
  
  

• An iPod mini in 2004 (my first iPod, which Phil traded me for his 10 GB 2nd generation regular iPod about two months later because I had 8 GB of music at the time and the iPod mini was only 4GB, I think).

• My dream car, a new Volkswagen Jetta TDI, also in 2004 at the end of February:

  Best car we've ever owned. The German engineering is amazing. She has almost 90,000 miles on her three years later and she runs great. And, she's a blast to drive with the turbo. We've decided to only get Volkswagens in the future. Our next car, the Touareg. Well, maybe not the next one because they're so expensive, but it's a lovely dream.