Valentine’s Day is hard for many of us. The ideal of two people being together, locking in each other’s gaze while dining at a fabulous restaurant is the exception, not the rule. So what is a person to do on this holiday, when that mold doesn’t fit?

For Singles

Many singles turn Valentine’s Day into a boycott of love, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Take this time to capitalize on all the wonderful things that are forgotten this day, like pizza. Order a pizza and take the time to enjoy all those old CDs that lost their place when you made the iPod switch. Spoil yourself; this is a day about love so treat yourself to a great bath or an indulgent desert. Go to bed happy that you had this time to pamper yourself.

For Parted Lovers

When you have multiple miles between you and your sweetie, it can feel like you’re losing what you once had. Do away with that and take time to remind your sweetie everyday that you love them

• Love Box: Procure a jar or box or some container large enough to hold multiple pieces of paper. Place inside multiple slips of paper, on each write something about your partner that you cherish. You can fill the box with as many slips as you want, and then instruct your partner to take one or two a day. Reading these sentiments everyday will keep you up front in their mind and make you feel more included in their daily lives.

• Covert Present: Make your present a real surprise by enlisting the help of a friend in the same city as your significant other. Have your friend hide the present away from your honey’s immediate view, then when it’s time to unveil the present, leave them in wonder when of how it got there. Or if you prefer, leave the present in plain sight, so when you partner comes home it is mysteriously waiting for them.

• Trail of Notes: Before you leave for a trip to see your honey, prepare a batch of short love notes and bring some tape. As the trip ends, tape and hide the notes in unexpected places (between folded clothes, the back of a closet door, etc) and wait for their surprise when they find them.

For Students

Valentine’s Day can quickly become an expensive ordeal if you’re not careful. Now your sweetie will most likely understand that you cannot bring down the moon for Valentine’s, but that doesn’t mean that it cannot be a special day.

• Recreate Your First Date: Something brought the two of you together; recreating your first date can bring back the old feelings of apprehension and excitement. Try to replicate things as closely as possible, and surprise your partner with how much that first date meant to you.

• Cook Dinner: As a student, you are probably not accustomed to having great meals every night. Make up for it by making a great meal for you and your honey. Follow up this meal with a sunset walk or an ice cream treat to make the night extremely sweet and memorable.

• Give Your Attention: How much time do you actually spend with your partner? An hour a day? Two or three? How much of that time do they actually have your full attention? Give your partner the gift of your attention, listen to them fully and really get what is going on with them. What makes them as great as they are? Find out and both of you will appreciate it.

Good luck to all of you this Valentine’s Day. Hopefully these ideas will help you this Valentine’s.

On Wednesday, two undersea cables carrying internet cables were broken by a boat anchor. The cables stretched from Italy to Alexandria, Egypt and affected telephone and internet access throughout the Middle East. India was also affected, with its bandwidth being reduced by half, and Sri Lanka was also affected.

A third undersea cable was cut today, this time off the shores of Dubai. This cable has affected internet signal to Dubai, but officials stress that this cable could be rerouted more easily than the Italy-Egypt cables. Residents of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent have felt a major change in how they do their business and carry on their daily lives. India’s wealth of call centers will most likely be the hardest hit by this change.

This just goes to show you how hardwired we are to the internet. Without it, many of us are rendered helpless. How long will it be until we stop using land lines completely and make the final transition over to all internet all the time? Consider that most people in the United States and abroad rely more on the internet for their daily news than newspapers. If a major internet outage like this hit North America (which most experts say is unlikely due to our abundance of internet cables both on land and branching out through the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) most of us would be completely crippled.

Every year, soldiers in the armed forces face unspeakable horrors in dangerous locations. The stress of wake up day after day to the same destruction and oblivion causes many soldiers to come home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and some do not come home at all.

The U.S. Army began tracking the suicides and self injury rate of soldiers in conflicts in 1980. In 2007 there were 89 confirmed suicides and 32 deaths still until investigation. 34 of these solders died while serving tours in Iraq, and over 2,000 additional soldiers were targeted as either attempting suicide or purposely injuring themselves. The self-injury numbers are a major jump from last year where 1,500 soldiers attempted suicide or injured themselves. When compared to the number from 2001, where suicides only amounted to 52 soldiers, the ratios dwarf previous years, with 2007’s rates translating as 17.5 deaths per every 100,000 soldiers. The lowest number the past 27 years as was 9.1 deaths per every 100,000.

These results and statistics are nowhere near surprising. There has always been a stigma about needing therapy—any episode of M.A.S.H. will show you that—and the Army is just beginning to recognize that human beings need more than just a sense of duty to live, and that getting through a war unscathed is nearly impossible. If you or someone you know is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, please consult the National Center for PSTD for health care providers in your area.