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Sure, it may be March already, but why should the spirit of Valentine's Day be over? After all, we eat Thanksgiving turkey well into December, leave our Halloween jack-o-lanterns out till they look like potatoes and leave our Christmas lights up all year round, so why not enjoy V-Day just a little bit longer?

OK, so I'm just making excuses for taking so long to post my Valentine's road-trip video. But, hey, it was tough work compressing so much weekend into just seven minutes and 47 seconds: my valentine Bethany and I spent the holiday exploring such oddities as the Cathedral of Junk, Smut Putt Heaven, Greater Austin Garbage Arts, a memorial to Stevie Ray Vaughan and an abandoned airport control tower.

If you're one of those hard-core road trippers who drives hard and tries to hit so many attractions in one day that you occasionally have to pull over and take a nap on the side of the road, this could be the accessory for you.

The Take Me Anywhere Suitcase Pillow, designed by Etsy user Olive, is the perfect detourist's snooze pillow in both style and function. Designed to look like a snazzy piece of luggage, it features a handle for carrying, and can even be ordered with a custom luggage tag so you and your navigator can keep straight whose pillow is whose.

The whole reason I hit junk shops every chance I get, other than to pick up great orphaned photos, is the opportunity to discover something like this just sitting on a shelf waiting for me to barter for its ownership.

This gorgeous Erres table fan, from what I've been able to surmise, was manufactured by the Dutch trading company R.S. Stokvis & Sons. I can't seem to find a date for the fan, but its color, its clean lines and its minimalist design tell me it comes from the era of awesome.

Unfortunately, I wasn't the one who found it. Flickr user kaylovesvintage discovered it in a Dutch charity shop and posted a picture of it to elicit my jealousy.

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I was never a frequent shopper at Trader Joe's during that short time I lived in California, but I did like to pop out of work on occasion to have one of their caesar salads in a plastic box and to roam the aisles perusing all the unusual foods.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this amateur commercial produced by Carl Willat of Carl's Fine Films, who used his cell phone to break the establishment's no-camera policy and exemplify the Trader Joe's experience in video and song. It's just as I remember it.

These days, I'd probably take more advantage of Trader Joe's, but sadly there are none here in Texas.

Despite the scathing reviews on Neatorama, I rather enjoyed photographer Kevin Bauman's project titled 100 Abandoned Houses, in which he shot a hundred forgotten and decrepit houses viewed from the street.

What do you get when you combine entertainment technology and German engineering in an age of outlandish Googie design? You get what is possibly the most awesome entertainment center ever conceived.

The Kuba Komet was manufactured between 1957 and 1961, and included a 21-inch television, record player, radio and eight speakers in a high-gloss, palm- and maple-wood cabinet. A remote control and integrated tape recorder could be had for an additional charge.

Plus, as long as the owner had the clearance, the Gumby-shaped portion could swivel to allow viewing from anywhere in the room.

Though surely none can compete with the singular style of the Komet, you can explore dozens more midcentury television sets at Television History - The First 75 Years.

After posting about the great retro valentines available at Fred Flare, I did a little searching to see what else I could come up with.

I was pleased to find a great collection of vintage valentine images over at 7 Deadly Sinners, some of which, like the Freudian banana card pictured here, can be just a little bizarre.

Plus, Perpetual Kid offers another set of retro valentines for purchase, comprising 10 really awesome space-themed cards.

Though it may be a distant memory, there was a time prior to junior high school when every Valentine's Day was something to look forward to, a time before the holiday's purpose became simply to highlight one's singleness.

Every year, you'd decorate a lunch bag, tape it to the front of your school desk and watch it fill with dozens of tiny, yet clever missives sealed in envelopes as thin as Bible pages.

Those days are now easily relived by going to fredflare.com and picking up a pack of their reproduction 1950s valentines, featuring octopuses confessing their "arms long for you" and hot dogs proclaiming "FRANKLY, I like you!" No Spongebobs or Pokemons in the bunch.

Tool blog Toolmonger has just turned me on to a nifty little gadget that could offer many of us road-trip enthusiasts a better sense of security on the road. Called the Wedge Alarm, it's a simple little 110dB noisemaker that's designed to fit temporarily under the edge of a door or window and notify a room's occupants of any unauthorized entry.

Now, it won't do anything to keep burglars from making off with your luggage while you're out of your motel room, but as someone who has stayed in some pretty sketchy places, I can say that I would certainly sleep a little sounder in certain motels with this thing wedged under the door.

According to Google, you can pick this one up, or a model similar to it, for as little as around $4.

If you're stuck at home like I am, holed up by the icy weather that's sweeping a good portion of the country, why not spend some time browsing through Google's archive of photos from Life magazine?

And if I might offer a suggestion, try searching for "New York World's Fair," which will reveal hundreds of captivatingly nostalgic images chronicling the architecture, rides, pavilions and events from both of the state's expos, held in 1939 and 1964.

Highlights include:

Enjoy, and stay warm!