Archive for April, 2010

14 Apr

You have seven bunny buddy requests!

Posted by Allison | Squirrel Thoughts in Squirrels/bunnies/mascots.

In my quest last week to find as much information as possible on owning a new bunny, I came across bunspace.com. It’s basically MySpace/Facebook for bunnies. No, not bunny owners. The bunnies themselves.

Well, OK, the bunnies aren’t actually posting photos and updating their statuses (they lack opposable thumbs); their owners are. But from the perspective of their bunnies. As in, instead of posting “I just fed Hopperton some lettuce and he loved it!” it appears on the site as “OMB! Mom just gave me some lettuces and it was super yum yums!”

Though you already may have suspected it, I’ll just tell you right now: These people are crazy. Crazy delightful!

Now, I could say the only reason I signed up was because I couldn’t post a question if I didn’t, but we all know that would be a bold-faced lie. I wanted to join in this absurdity the minute I found it, and Pancake was a proud owner of a bunspace.com profile about 30 seconds later.

As expected, Pancake was an instant hit on BunSpace. She had about 25 “bunny buddy” requests the first day, and she’s easily on pace to surpass Zach’s number of Facebook friends. (“Hey dude, heard your pet rabbit has more social networking friends than you do. BURN!”)

Despite all the silliness it entails, the people on the site are just really enthusiastic bunny owners who’ve been very helpful and encouraging. And they’re all rooting on shy lil Pancake to take her first brave steps out of the cage (it has to happen someday… ). Plus, someone posted this photo on her profile:

It just doesn’t get any better than that.

13 Apr

Cuckoo for Coco!

Posted by Allison | Squirrel Thoughts in Life and Such, Other.

As I’m sure you probably guessed, I’m pretty excited about Conan’s November return to late-night television. I was a little surprised to hear his show will be on TBS, since I didn’t think that channel actually produced any shows of its own (though I won’t complain about unlimited “Seinfeld,” “The Office” and “Family Guy” reruns). But hey, it’s one of the few channels offered through our extremely basic cable that isn’t C-SPAN/home shopping/Jesus related, so I’ll take it!

Me too, guy in the mildly frightening face mask. Me too.

And before any of you devil’s-advocate types (ahem: Zach) get started on that “but isn’t Conan doing the same thing to George Lopez that Jay did to him” BS, you should know that Lopez personally called Conan last week to encourage him to make the deal, and he is “completely 100 percent on board with this move.” That may just be PR spiel, but having Conan as his lead-in will do nothing but help Lopez, and he knows it. So don’t even start.

And I’m pretty happy about the 11 p.m. start time on the coasts, which (I think) means that it will start at 10 p.m. in the Mountain time zone. As I approach the quarter-century mark, it’s getting harder and harder to stay up past 10:30 or 11. (When my insomnia doesn’t strike, that is, though that tends to happen around 4 a.m. these days. I’m sure you care.) If the show starts at 10, I will be better able to devote myself to watching Coco four nights a week.

I’m also glad the time slot will give Conan a head start on Chin-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named’s show, so Coco can dominate the ratings and his lesser counterpart will crawl into a hole somewhere and die (what can a say — I’m bitter and hold grudges). However, it’s become quite clear that most Americans are bona fide idiots (derrr, typos and stupid people on the street are soooo funny, har har!) and that will never happen. A girl can dream, though.

12 Apr

You. Got. Squired.

Posted by Allison | Squirrel Thoughts in Funny Things That Happen To Me.

When Zach started law school last fall, we went down to the Iron Horse one evening for a “meet and greet” of sorts. I happened to recognize one of his classmate’s names from the local weekly he wrote for before he started school, and I’d also heard a lot about him because he was my co-worker’s neighbor/friend.

Wanna be my fwiend!?!? Pease!!!!

So, when Zach introduced me to him, instead of saying something normal, like “Hi, nice to meet you,” I proceeded to spew off the facts I’d acquired. The convo went something like this (names have been changed to protect the innocent parties involved):

“Hi, I’m Allison, Zach’s girlfriend.” Hand-shaking commences.

“Hi, I’m Jordan. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh yeah, you’re Jordan Freeman!”

“Yeah…” Withdraws hand.

“You used to write for the Independent!”

“Yeah, I did … ” Begins to eye me suspiciously.

“And you live next to Brenda! She’s my co-worker.”

“Uhh, yeahh, I do.” Starts to slowly back away when he realizes I know his last name, his most recent employer and where he lives despite having met him approximately nine seconds ago.

To hear Zach describe it, “you could see the look on his face grow more and more concerned with each new revelation.” Despite this, I just kept plunging ahead.

And this, my friends, is how you Squire someone.

I realized soon after how awkward I was and how uncomfortable I must have made this poor guy feel, but it was much, much too late. I had effectively freaked him out. I learned my lesson and it hasn’t happened since, but Zach still likes to make fun of me for it and call doing such a thing to someone “Squiring.”

Now, the term has resurfaced in the Squires-Franz household, after we attended another law school function last week (um, yeah, that’s apparently all I do now), and Zach introduced me to a different classmate. And you wanna know what happened next? He Squired me!!

“Hi, I’m Allison.”

“Hi, I’m Fred. You look familiar.”

“I do?”

“Oh yeah, you’re Allison Squires!”

“Yeah!”

“You used to work for the Kaimin!”

“Yeah!”

“You know Mary Lou Smith! She’s one of my good friends!”

“Yeah!”

Squ-IRED!

(You may notice my reaction was not nearly as freaked out as the guy I Squired. This is because I’m used to dealing with such awkwardness in everyday life, so it really doesn’t faze me when others let it slip.)

So, there are two things you can take away from my post on these experiences: a) There’s a new verb out there — “to Squire” — and you should use it every chance you get so it catches on; and 2) If you want to make friends and have people think you’re at least somewhat normal, never, EVER do the aforementioned verb to them. Just don’t.

10 Apr

Say hello to … Pancake!

Posted by Allison | Squirrel Thoughts in Squirrels/bunnies/mascots.

This is Pancake, the 11-week-old bunny Zach and I got this week. Isn’t she the cutest most adorablest fwuffiest thing you’ve ever seen?!?!?! (Warning: if you say she’s anything less, you’ll be added to My List. You don’t want to be on My List. Trust me.)

I’ve always liked bunnies and wanted one as a kid, but my parents would never let me have one. (I suspect they couldn’t handle any more cuteness after having me, though they’ll probably disagree, natch.) And, since having a dog doesn’t really make sense without us having a yard of our own, we decided a bunny would be a good option. And we’re right, so far, as long as she decides to come out of her cage at some point so we can cuddle and spoil and love her even more! I’m sure she’ll get there eventually, so stay tuned!

(Addendum: No need to panic — ‘Squirrel Thoughts’ will remain as such, and will not be changed to ‘Bunny Thoughts,’ as some fans may have suspected. I still wuv me some squirrels, so no worries.)

2 Apr

I’m an April Fool

Posted by Allison | Squirrel Thoughts in Funny Things That Happen To Me.

Well, not really (really!). But I was part of a published April Fools’ Day joke, pictured below. I bet you can figure out my role in these hijinks…

I was hoping they’d use my real name, but whatevs…

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