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A very, very Happy Valentine's Day to you all, dear ones, wherever you may be at this moment. Thank you for always keeping me company in my journey, and for sharing your own journeys with me whenever we meet, online or in-person. I send you all my love, today and ever.

If you missed my 2013 desktop calendar, get it here.
Credits: This year, Valentine inspiration was unusually slow in coming. Huge thanks to Mo and Sarah for conversations that led to this card, and to Erik for web support (this makes him sound like a talented spider). I used many of my own photos and artwork here, but I also downloaded free images from imageafter.com (the book background), thecoffeeshopblog.com (photo corners on page 3), and puglypixel.com (washi tape -- hi Tamara!).

As it took me so long to come up with the concept for this year's card, there is also a goofy, last-resort option I prepared in case I couldn't think of anything else. I thought of just deleting it, but maybe it'll make you smile. There's sound, but you can also watch it without.

Page-by-page info, for the very curious:
Page 1. The photos, from top to bottom, are from: Thingvellir in Iceland, Loch Linnhe in Scotland, and Istiklal Caddesi in Istanbul, Turkey; the menu clipping is from a Uighur restaurant in Istanbul, and the coin is Icelandic (its current value is about $0.78). The top portrait was painted just this week, and the bottom one in Edinburgh last July.
Page 2. The photos are all from our current stay on the Big Island, and the painting was done two days ago. Yes, those are our flight confirmations for the next couple of months.
Page 3. The photo was taken a few days ago when we went hiking on the Ala Kahakai Trail; we saw the leaves there too. The star-shaped thing is a cross-section of a star fruit, and the purple button was a fundraiser for a women's shelter in Reykjavík, Iceland. The airmail sticker is mandatory for foreign mail sent from the UK.
Page 4. The leaves were from gardens or parks in Glasgow and Paris, though they're not necessarily native European plants. The shells and rock we found by the sea lochs of Scotland. The sketch on the left is from Akaka Falls on the Big Island, and the one on the right is of Yeni Cami (the so-called "New" Mosque, though it opened in 1665) in Istanbul. The B/W portrait is from a vintage photobooth in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
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