I really don’t like February that much, it seems that bad things happen in February. That’s probably just because I pay more attention during the month. This time around it was particularly bad, but not for the usual reasons.

The start of the problems goes back a few years, but probably further still. Being the loveless loner that I am, I probably always disliked valentines day. But one February several years back I experienced quite the heartache. I have generally let go of that, but I still mark the day in my head. Sitting here, I can’t actually remember the specific day, but the month is known. One day maybe I’ll let the month go unremarked.

I had it happen again years later, again in a February (not that I really paid attention to the month at the time, but some time later I realized that it all happened in That Month Again). That one, if anything, was worse than the first time. It’s hard to know what to say.

So this February was probably one of the first Februaries that I actually entered feeling a sense of dread, what could happen this time? I had no personal life to speak of, so could it be one of those again?

Rather unfortunately, this time it was alllll about work. I don’t want to go into details, but work went basically about as bad as I could expect without actually being asked to resign or something (which is probably a failure of imagination on my part). It just seemed to keep coming and coming, and that took out most of the first half of the month. Valentines day came and went and didn’t improve things. The snow in Toronto made things particularly trying, having slept at work one night after staying until 2am hoping a storm would dissipate. I also failed to have a zero-fall winter.

Of course, it had to be a leap year, making the month a day longer than the common year. Things were calming down, no snow for a while, the last week was nearly done, and then found out that a co-worker, Cynthia, was leaving the company. It’s pretty sad really, she was part of what we unashamedly call the lunch-posse (but not to other people, and not to each other), and she was very nice to work with, and most importantly, patient with us QA.

And to top it off, one of my other dev friends is off on a month long vacation, I’m going to run out of people at work I can talk to… but that starts in March so I guess that doesn’t count as a Feb complaint.

And of course, the ride home was kind of sucky, as it snowed once more.

My dislike of February is in no danger of stopping.