Two Lessons of the week

Apart from the unprecendented fickleness of telly programmers*, this week I've learnt:

1. If you're going to avoid the opportunism of restaurants' "Valentine's Day Specials" (where all the tables for four, six or eight are split up and separated by 10 cm and you can't help hearing other people's domestics and the menu is limited to "romantic" food involving champagne and heart-shaped desserts) by staying home and sharing the cooking of a gourmet extravangza, don't be surprised if there's an awful lot of washing up.

2. If you've laughed out loud when a colleague said they're moving house on an odd day, say Wednesday, because they reckon the stars are in a particularly favourable alignment (even though it turned out to rain and rain that day for the first time in months), expect to lose some credibility when you later blame the Mercury retrograde for the computers not working.

*Why suck us into another bad day in the life of Jack Bauer with four hours one week only to continue the story at 10:30 the following week? Why fill prime time with rubbish (I mean "Bones"???) and then put "Stargate Atlantis" on at 11:30 at night? Why waste the last series of "The West Wing" by putting episodes back to back over 11 weeks rather than one each for 22 weeks? Aargh, even with HD I'm going to be reading a lot!