Dinner reservations made. Check. Hair appointment booked. Check. Outfit bought and legs shaved. Check, check.

Looks like my Valentine’s Day plans are coming together nicely.

Wait a minute. Something is missing…..

Where the heck is my date? Blasted. Looks like Cupid took another lengthy coffee break. Again.

Now that my checklist has been rendered useless, I did what most people would do before Valentine’s Day: Google search what’s out there for us lonely folk on February 14.

Unfortunately, I found limited results. Meaning one result. It seems like the only thing happening in this city is The Cellar’s anti-Valentine’s Day after work party and it’s being held two days earlier than the big V-Day.

The other results proved even more useless. They were pratically Valentine’s Day survival guides. Here are some of their tips:

• Go out with your single friends.
• Do not turn on the T.V.
• Go somewhere where they don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, like a convent.
• Celebrate you.

And here’s the icing on the cake:

• Don’t focus on why you can’t find a relationship but on the reasons why you’re not in a relationship and what you need to do to find a healthy one.

Wow. I completely agree with the going out with your single friends and the pampering bit, but I in no way agree with sitting around your house trying to decipher why you’re single and how to change it. I also disagree with visiting a convent and/or converting into a nun.

So, for you happy spinsters (or not) I suggest you ignore the above tips and take a look at some of mine:

• Go out with your single friends, but go out Sex and the City style. Dress-up to the nines and cash in on some of those “dinner for two” specials.
• Celebrate you- but don’t just stop at the pedicure. Go get the manicure, body massage, facial, and seaweed wrap too.
• Feeling adventurous? Step out of your comfort zone and do something that you would normally never do, whether it be bungee jumping, wearing leather, or taking belly dancing lessons.
• Write down ten reasons why you love being single while eating a giant piece of New York cheesecake.
• Invite your girlfriends over for a night of fondue, wine, and a good old game of pin the tail on the “ex.”

In any case, instead of giving the stink-eye express to the cute couples that will be walking hand-in-hand and eating dinner by candlelight, slap that frown upside down and remember that on February 14, you’ll be partying like it’s 1999.

Feel free to add any of your great Valentine’s Day ideas below.

I love celebrity gossip. Most of the time.

While many of you were following the Super Bowl this past weekend, I was glued to CNN’s weekend long debate over singer Jessica Simpson’s weight gain. Apparently, she is now a size eight.

However, as much as I love celebrity gossip, the who’s fat and who’s thin headlines can sometimes be ridiculous. Since when is a size eight considered fat?

No wonder people criticize the media for the distorted body images of many young girls today.

I mean, the “thin is in” trend has been around long before my time but it seems girls today are bombarded by media outlets depicting beauty as a size 00 and publicly scrutinizing high-profile women who are not that size.

Needless to say, society’s obsession with thinness is at its height and may be wreaking havoc on more than our country’s impressionable young teens.

Canadian doctors are now seeing symptoms of eating disorders like bulimia nervosa, binging and purging, in kids as young as five. Investigation into the sudden increase of eating disorders in young children has now been initiated by the Canadian Pediatric Surveillance Program.

Although current research is limited, many specialists believe that young children are not oblivious to society’s social messages.

Dr. Leora Pinhas, the psychiatric director of the eating disorders program at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, warns that youngsters are social sponges and even though they cannot see through social messages, they do get the sense that being overweight is wrong.

So, as I am able to laugh off the news coverage of Jessica Simpson’s weight gain as insane, a five-year-old child watching the same program with his/her parents wouldn’t interpret it in the same way. It’s the exact same as how some teens don’t realize that the pictures in their fashion magazines are digitally retouched and that the model they see doesn’t really exist.

Now, I realize that the media and celebrities cannot be entirely blamed for our society’s obsession with perfection, but they continue to add fuel to the fire with useless debates-like whether or not Jessica Simpson is fat.

In the end, the present pressures on young girls to be rail thin is enough to make your stomach turn. However, even the thought of a five-year-old suffering from an eating disorder because of society’s social messages makes me want to ban buying or viewing celebrity gossip for anyone under the age of 19.

I growl under my breath because today is grocery day and I hate grocery shopping in the rain.

So I trudge out into the wetness and decide to call a friend en route. We chat, and I mostly grumble about how much I hate walking in the freezing rain.

Then it

happens.

The mother of all heat waves. Yes, it was raining and cold, yet I was experiencing a hot flash that many middle-aged women would recognize. And I’m only 26.

Now, let’s fast forward.

It’s Tuesday, and as usual I’m reading the news, Nanaimo Daily News. What’s this? Health Canada is recalling LG 150 model cellphones because they exceed the radio-frequency exposure limit.

And to my surprise, excessive exposure can cause an increase in body temperature.

I have an LG mobile phone and had just experienced a massive hot flash. I hysterically checked the back battery. Phew, it’s okay, mine is an LG 8700. Nevertheless, the experience threw my brain into overdrive.

This makes me question: do landlines even exist anymore? How healthy are cellphones?

In 2005, Consumer Affairs ran an article that had British researchers warning that heavy cellphone use can cause brain and ear tumors and children under the age of eight shouldn’t be using them.

Like some women, my cellphone is a permanent fixture on my ear. I guess you could say that I am a heavy user.

In 2007, an annual poll done by AT&T in the U.S showed that on average, men talked for 458 minutes per month and women averaged 453 minutes.

After the initial shock that men actually talk more than women, I realized an overarching theme: like Americans, Canadians are becoming more and more cellphone dependent.

With one tiny gadget you can talk, text, e-mail, listen to music, create videos and take pictures. I would have never thought to add “soak-up radio-frequency waves” to the list.

Dr. Ronald B. Herberman of the University of Pittsburg Cancer Institute told CTV in an interview that even though there is no clear evidence linking cellphones to cancer, future research could prove otherwise.

I’m sold. I agree with Dr. Herberman. Cellphones haven’t been around long enough to know if they can cause any long-term health problems.

And I’m not willing to find out either. I’ve come to a decision.

I’m resurrecting the landline.

Oh, how you wanted to be friends with Suzie. Or one-up her.

Have you ever wondered that maybe, if you had gotten your hands on that new Coach purse and those black Manolo pumps, you would’ve knocked Suzie from her popularity pedestal and reigned in as the new supreme queen?

Think again.

Manolo pumps or not, it seems Suzie was genetically programmed to be the life of the party.

An article in the Vancouver Sun yesterday said that James Fowler, a professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego, has been researching how genetics play a role in party animal behaviour.

He compared over 1,000 identical and fraternal teen twins, looking specifically at how many times someone was considered to be a friend and whether that person tended to sit at the edge of a social group or right smack in the middle.

The results are shocking-identical twins share similarities.

It seems our genes not only determine our height but they may also play a role in our social lives.

In an interview with the News Daily

, one of the researchers said that there may be evolutionary reasons as to why some people tend to stick to the edges of the group while others need to be in the middle.

He argues that people in the middle of a social group are more likely to get useful information but if there was a flu outbreak in the group, they would be more likely to catch the germ from all sides. Although the people on the edges are less likely to hear the information, they are also less likely to catch the flu.

Granted the research is still preliminary, it seems to focus too much on genetics and evolution as the explanation for outgoing behaviour and neglects other factors like nurture.

For example, what if Suzie was raised on an isolated farm and was homeschooled, only to move to a big city later in life? Would her party animal genes suddenly transform her into an instant party queen?

Probably not.

Popularity genes or not, you cannot ignore the importance of environment and upbringing.

I find it hard to believe that my genes will influence whether I sit at the edge or in the middle of my social group.

I was always under the impression that the main reason why I sat at the edge of my group was because it was much easier to get to the bathroom.

Why?

Not only would I pay less tuition and be able to stuff my face with as much sauerkraut as humanly possible, but I would also gain a credit for learning the inherent human behaviour known as flirting.

An article in the National Post last week found that the German university has enrolled its socially awkward, soon-to-be engineers into a “flirting course.” The course is supposed to boost their social skills professionally as well as privately.

When Canadian math and science professors were asked whether they think their students would benefit from a flirting course the majority of their answers were less than enthusiastic. Basically, they said let’s keep it professional in the classroom.

Personally, I like the idea. I think, if done tastefully, that a course aimed at improving social skills beyond public speaking would help a lot of socially uncomfortable Canadians.

Out of all the skills we learn in school, mingling with the opposite sex is not one of them. And let’s face it, IT engineering students aren’t the only ones wasting away hours on the computer.

The Press-Enterprise posted one scientist’s concerns over the digital age’s affects on human interaction. Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatrist at UCLA, argues that the longer teens spend glued online means the less time they spend with other people, affecting simple social skills like reading facial expressions and non-verbal communication.

In other word, in sixty years, the timeless wink, smile, or double glance will be forever forgotten.

This is a scary notion, especially since an article in the BBC said that it takes roughly between ninety seconds and four minutes to decide whether or not we like somebody. 55% is based on body language, 38% is based on the tone and speed of our voice, and a whopping 7% is based on what we say.

Point taken.

Well, I am one person that would love to see Canadian universities follow in the steps of Berlin’s “flirting course.” Quite frankly, I hope it’s offered next semester before we’re all expressing ourselves through dreaded emoticons:)

Everybody knows the trials and tribulations of being in a relationship. When they’re going good, they’re utterly amazing. When they’re going bad, they’re nauseating.

While leafing through the Globe and Mail , my attention was grabbed by this headline: “Commitment serum.” After laughing hysterically for a few minutes thinking it was a total joke, I realized that it was sort of tempting.

Could it be that they’ve finally found a cure for commitment phobia? A harmless chemically altering pill that will have every man bending down on one knee?

While tampering with the hormones in voles, Dr. Larry Young who is a neuroscientist at the Emory University in Atlanta, was able to turn the rowdy rodents into monogamous pairs. The hormone oxytocin, which was used in the voles, is the same hormone that helps women bond with their babies during delivery.

Dr. Young believes that this hormone, or “love potion” if you will, could be the answer to marital woes. One squirt of oxytocin in your nose-the test drug is in nasal spray form, by the way-and presto! You’ll be a Stepford wife. Or husband.

After reading about this, I daydreamed over which Vera Wang wedding dress I would wear down the aisle once I got my hands on some of this love juice. But then something squirmed in my stomach. Was it the tuna sandwich I just ate? No. It was guilt.

No matter how tempting it would be to simply “drug” my potential partner into walking down the aisle, I just wouldn’t be able to do it. Even if I was married for forty years and things went wrong, I wouldn’t let my husband take a pill so that he would stay in love with me.

In a society that has altering pills for almost everything, from depression to anxiety, love is one emotion that I think should be left alone.

Besides, what ever happened to trying to work out your problems-you know, the way that involves yelling matches and the resulting box of “I’m sorry chocolates?”

Yeah, I don’t think I would trade those post-squabble, Bernard Callebaut goodies for anything.

Grasp fork. Try to balance every food group onto fork. Place fork into mouth. Repeat.

Yes, the holidays were a blissful three weeks of overindulgence resulting in my skinny jeans finding a new home in the back of my closet. However, I felt no guilt because I had the master plan. A plan no one else had.

My New Year’s resolution was to lose the holiday poundage and get fit.

Motivated and energetic, I slipped into my black Pumas and bolted for the gym. My smugness immediately vanished after peering into the gym window. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who chose to get fit as a New Year’s resolution. The gym was packed with strange new faces and not one treadmill was vacant.

Defeated, I slowly walked home racking my brain for a different game plan. Drawing only blanks, I decided to consult with the expert-Cosmo Magazine.

Cosmo pointed towards the Banana Bags. According to the magazine, the popular diet trend in New York during 2008 was hooking yourself up to an IV drip (also referred to as the Banana Bag) so that you could get the nutrients you needed to survive without actually eating the food. I have to admit that I remain skeptical.

I’ve heard of starvation diets before, but this one gives deprivation a whole new meaning. It even beats the infamous Master Cleanse: A liquid cleanse that has you only drinking an odd concoction of water, lemon juice, grade B maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and herbal laxatives for ten days.

I can honestly say that I strain to recognize health benefits (if any) in today’s diet fads.

An article in the Vancouver Sun today noted that people often kick-start their New Year’s resolutions by opting for extreme detox diet cleanses in order to rid themselves of holiday bulge. According to the article, health experts warn that trendy detox diets can lead to low blood pressure and in extreme cases can cause heart or kidney failure.

I say thanks, but no thanks, to the Banana Bags. I think I’ve come up with a new master plan.

Firstly, I will start my New Year’s resolution to work out on January 21st when everybody else has forgotten about theirs. Until then, I think I will stick with the good old-fashioned diet known as healthy living and portion control.