Do you believe in miracles? YES!...

So I've noted my dislike for Valentine's Day, mildly on the blog and more emphatically to friends and family. So much so, apparently, that any V-Day cards I do receive come with a disclaimer from the sender - I know you don't like the holiday, but I'm sending it anyway...

Then I suppose it's a minor miracle that I'm doing not one but two Valentine's Day-themed posts. While I guess I shouldn't be surprised at what can make the Guinness Book of World Records, I was intrigued by a story in the Boston Globe about setting a world record in hugs. Jeff Ondash set the WR for most hugs in a day with 7,777 hugs in 24 hours. The 51 year-old native apparently stood on a street corner in Las Vegas and collected hugs under the pseudonym Teddy McHuggin, in support of the American Heart Association. I'm a little surprised you can do that these days and not get hauled off to jail, so well done, Jeff...

And the San Diego Zoo has a new little bundle of joy to love, according to the Globe. A male African baby elephant was born around 2 a.m. on Valentine's Day. The other elephants in the enclosure announced the bouncing baby pachyderm by trumpeting awake campers in the area. He has not been named yet and is the sixth calf to be born to this pack since it was imported from Swaziland in 2003.

...

In honor of the US men's ice hockey team's first win of the Olympics last night, I decided to post the following feature from NBC's online Olympic coverage. We're all familiar with the "Miracle on Ice" (as a former employee of the university that produced Mike Eruzioni and Jim Craig, who featured prominently in a certain Disney flick, and was thus forced to answer phone calls from a lot of stupid people, I am more aware than most). But what I, and I'm betting a lot of other people, don't know of is the "Team of Destiny" from the 1960 games in Squaw Valley. This US men's ice hockey team had an eerily similar story to that of the Lake Placid team but seems to have been completely forgotten by history.

(Photo courtesy of NBC)

A little of this and that...

So I couldn't decide on a theme for today - Olympics or Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day or Olympics? I decided to do both. I'm such a multi-tasker. : )

(PS - I have emerged from my technical difficulties with an entirely new power cord, so sorry about my absence yesterday...)

Author Debbie Robbins, who may have the most creative self-help book title I've seen, posted an article on Huffington Post listing 14 tips to surviving Valentine's Day. These tips are aimed at single and coupled people alike, which is nice, because usually these articles are for "lonely hearts." Robbins has a refreshingly upbeat and no-nonsense tone, and she's kinda funny to boot.

Robbins points out in her article that one way to get through V-Day is to be kind to people who you are not in a relationship with - coworkers, mailmen, dog walkers, etc. Well, that is the entire point of one article at reliableplant.com. If you work in an office building, I defy you to read this article and not recognize your own company in some of her examples. There's a reason whole films and books have sprung up over office angst. Liz Jazwiec provides some solutions to those problems in this story.

USA Today made an attempt to tie its article about the US Olympic figure skating team to everyone's favorite Hallmark holiday (hint: the effort is smack in the middle of the story). Nevertheless, this is a neat little article examining the backstory to the pairs teams. Each of them have a unique rise to where they are today.

And finally, the Baltimore Sun provides an Olympics crib sheet for anyone who has some last minute cramming to do. The story lists notable movies and books either about the various Olympic Games or by Olympic athletes. Gratifyingly (to me), the first movie listed is "Cool Runnings," which holds a near-and-dear place in my heart as referenced here.