Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world's only daily column that once again cautions all those Casanovas and, um, female versions of Casanova (?) that Valentine's Day is fast approaching. If you want to go out for dinner, don't forget to make a reservation pronto, or else you'll be that guy (or gal) who has to make up all kinds of ridiculous excuses (see any sitcom V-Day episode).

Also, remember to get your message in your favorite paper! We're not taking them here in Summit Up cuz there's just too many of you, but our classifieds department is here to help. Here be the skinny:

“Free Valentines Messages in the Summit Daily News. On Valentine's Day we will publish our popular Valentine ‘Love Notes.' This year the first 20 words are free for each note when you use our web form to place the note. Just go to summitdaily.com/valentine for more info or to place your note. Or for a small fee you can call it in: (970) 668-9937 or e-mail it to classifieds@summitdaily.com The deadline is Monday at 4:30 p.m.”

There you have it! Going back a moment to our confusion over what to call an amorous female and the term Casanova, just in case you've been wondering all these years who this Casanova fellow was, the quick answer is he was an Italian dude who lived in the 1700s who had a lot of, y'know, encounters with women and described them in his memoirs. His full name, BTW, is most excellent: Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt.

Of course, you don't need to have the morals of an alley cat to do the right thing on Valentine's Day. Just do something, OK?

As for women, there was Jezebel, who was a Phoenician princess who lived in the 9th century BC and who was supposedly an immoral woman. No word here on what she thought of Valentine's Day.

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Speaking of interesting women, we wrote recently about Madonna and how we weren't really big fans. We will now sit and take our medicine from Colin Carman in Breckenridge, who writes thusly:

“The authors of Summit Up ask ‘what's the deal with Madonna anyway? before sniping Who likes her music? It's so weak.' This followed a cartoon last week of a geriatric Material Girl playing the half-time show at the Super Bowl, old lady cane in hand and mistaken for Betty White. The fact is quite a lot of people not just like but cherish the pop star who, still going strong at age 53, has sold more than 300 million records worldwide over a nearly 30-year career and remains the top-selling female musician in music history, outsold, with 64 million certified albums, only by Streisand. More Americans tuned in for her half-time extravaganza than for the actual game. I'm all for expressing yourself — to borrow a lyric of hers from 1989 — but please, papa, don't preach as if you distaste is anything but a minority opinion.”

So chastened, we still don't get Madonna, and the fact that she's super-famous and sold a lot of records means little (we don't like Michael Jackson, either). That said, we're sure there's music we like that would evade the understanding of some, so we'll leave it at that.

Remember we're still looking for cool concert stubs (got a Madonna?), so send your best to us here at

summitup@summitdaily.com.

Happy Friday, Summit County!

We out.