Squirrel Thoughts

Happy National Cheese Lovers Day! Cheese is probably the best food ever. In fact, I really don’t like any other foodstuffs; I pretty much consider them vehicles with which to get cheese into my mouth. If it were socially acceptable to just eat handfuls of cheese with no need for a chip, cracker, pizza, etc., I’d just do that instead.

Today is the one day of the year when it’s completely acceptable to eat an entire block o’ cheese without any remorse. Which is what I am going to go do right now. And you can’t judge me. Ha!

(EDITOR’S NOTE: “In a nutshell” is an occasional series featuring some select musings/tangents of Squirrel.)

La Nina is a bitch. A silly, silly bitch. Seriously, enough with the snow already, you whore. I’ve reverted to wearing my snow boots to work every day and changing into more professional-looking shoes when I get to the office, kindergarten style.

Thankfully, though, I don’t drive in it most days, as the Mountain Line bus service gives me free rides to and from work, so I don’t have to try to maneuver my unwilling vehicle through all that snowy, slushy, icy muck.

Also, would it kill you to let a little sun shine through every once in a while? My vitamin D stores are running dangerously low, and I am not afraid to fight you over it. Ho.

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Last night’s episode of HIMYM was legen – wait for it — DARY. I’m not going to pretend I don’t usually cry watching it, because that show always gets the waterworks flowing for me. (Yeah, shut up. I know it’s a comedy. But it’s always so touching, damnit! Like that new year’s episode where Marshall gets a marching band to play “Auld Lang Syne” for Lily at the airport? Don’t try to tell me you didn’t well up just a bit during that one!)

Anyway, a lot of people (and by “people,” I mean anonymous commentors on the Internet I don’t actually know) are complaining they shouldn’t have used the “gimmicky” numbers thing to count down to Marshall finding out about his dad. But ya know, I thought the writers played it perfectly. Everyone was having fun and playing along to find each number, just like Marshall was feeling good after finding out his boys can swim, and then BAM! — bad news. And everyone watching felt just as sucker-punched by the news as Marshall. Maybe that wasn’t the intention, but that’s what I got out of it.

And I love Jason Segel even more now. I might have to move him up to No. 3 on the “Five Famous People I’m Allowed to Hook Up With and It Doesn’t Count as Cheating” list. (He’s currently at No. 4, behind Leo, JT and Jason Bateman c. 2003-06.)

On a could-not-possibly-be-related-in-any-way note, I may be developing an unhealthy emotional attachment to fictional TV characters.

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For some reason, I’m getting an unusual kick out of signing e-mails with “Happy new year!” and have been doing it on every one I send. How far into the year can you say that before it gets creepy?

Finally, I renewed my blog’s domain name today, kids, so get ready for a 2011 chock-full of Squirrel Thoughts!

Happy new year!

I know you loyal Squirrel Thoughts readers are super interested in how my blog fared over the past year, so fortunately for you, a talented bunch of helper monkeys over at WordPress have assembled a statistical snapshot of squirrelthoughts.com in 2010.

I hardly deserve the high marks, seeing how I haven’t posted for almost a month, but I promise I’ll get her up and running again in the new year. And the Interwebs police keep bothering me about paying up to maintain my domain name, so I better make it worth that 15 bucks. Happy 2011, everyone!

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,100 times in 2010. That’s about 15 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 59 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 167 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 92mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 5th with 115 views. The most popular post that day was In which Monte burns down the University Center.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, theyogurtchronicles.blogspot.com, whatgoodarethewords.blogspot.com, emilysrunning.blogspot.com, and twitter.com.

(I’d like to thank my good friends Danny Davis, Sarah Windmueller, Emily Hoover and Mark Zuckerburg for these referrals. And the Twitter guy, too. Biz, maybe? Buzz? Buzz McAllister?)

Some visitors came searching, mostly for baby bunnies, fat bunnies, types of bunnies, fat bunny, and fattest rabbit.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

In which Monte burns down the University Center November 2010

Hey kids, want some racist tattoos? March 2010
5 comments

Today’s Dysfunctional Family Circus cartoon April 2010

A whole new level of mascot obsession September 2010
1 comment and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Keep Missoula … original? February 2010
6 comments

(EDITOR’S NOTE: “In a nutshell” is a new, occasional series featuring some select musings/tangents of Squirrel.)

Though I don’t actually care, I rooted for the Lakers to win the NBA Finals. But only because they’ve been Papa Squirrel’s favorite team since he was 5 or something, so sure, whatever, go Lakers. But when sports reach the professional level, shouldn’t the fans be over the “booing the other team’s players when the announcer introduces them before the game” antic? I mean, if this were Capital High School, c. 2002, and the Bruins were about to take on Helena High in a highly contested crosstown match, upon whose outcome the Fate of the World rested, and the Capital student fans all pretended to read newspapers while the announcer listed off the opposing team’s players, then it would be cool. (Try to do that with the Internet! Ha!) Mainly because high school kids are not yet a recognized division of civilization, so they can get away with such hijinks. Until the principal threatens suspension, at least. Once you graduate from high school though, you’re technically a Responsible Member of Society, so you can at least pretend you believe in the ideals of good sportsmanship before the game starts.

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Speaking of good sportsmanship, how ’bout them Republicans? They’re such good sports about this whole worst-environmental-disaster-in-U.S.-history thing that they apologized for “shaking down” the company that caused it! Apparently, 11 people died, thousands are out of work, and it will probably take years to clean up the gazillion barrels of oil threatening the Gulf’s fragile ecosystem, but gee willikers, BP, it’s not like you were negligent and cut corners to boost profits or anything! Oh, wait … OK, so it was one Republican, who later “apologized for his apology,” if such a concept even exists, but that doesn’t really make a difference. I may be a pinko-commie socialist, but if we’re expecting the government, taxpayers, etc., to adhere to the ideal of personal accountability, then we should expect the same from corporations when they screw up, no matter how much money they donate to our campaigns.

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On a fluffier note, I was out doing the marathon-training thing a few weeks ago, and I saw a corgi, a husky and her puppy, and an English sheep dog, all on the SAME RUN! It was the best day EVER!

Family Circus is some of the stupidest sh*t ever created. It is funny, however, when people inappropriately recaption them. Enjoy this week’s selection.

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