Gotta lick up every last crusty morsel the year had to offer.
The toilet paper roll of life just keeps winding down faster and faster, doesn’t it? Another year has come and gone, and since this will be my final post of 2014, I can now safely look back on the year that was at Evil Squirrel’s Nest without worrying that I might miss something that inevitably falls between the couch cushions of the year end review and the ball drop in Times Square.
Or something that just gets lost in the moment.
I think I can honestly say that 2014 was The Nest’s best year ever… and not just because my blog’s only had two other years to compare it to, but this may be a year I have difficulty matching, let alone topping in 2015. To start with, this past year was bookended by two very popular contests!
In February, after playing Jesse James enough by swooping in to raid the prizes on numerous other blog contests, I finally got aboard the blog giveaway train and held my First Annual Contest of Whatever. For a chance to win a prize from my Cafepress store, all it took was a little creativity involving a squirrel, a possum, and a unicorn. Thirteen bloggers submitted thirteen awesome entries, and in the end, YoungAtFifty and Goldfish picked up the prizes! The Contest of Whatever was so much fun, that you can best believe we’ll be doing it again this coming February!
Not one of the winning entries.
And as is still fresh in your minds, I concluded 2014 with my holiday card contest where the first 20 bloggers to yell, “Yo!” received a hand-drawn and colored character of mine pulled entirely at random from the completed deck. The fact that nobody, including myself, knew which characters were going where made it all the more entertaining. As the results trickled in over the next two weeks, the coveted Rainbow Donkey card continued to be eminently available for those who were still waiting, until it finally became the only card not to show up.
Help!
You could get 100 of the best storytellers of all time and put them at 100 typewriters for 100 years and not get the tragicomic conclusion to this contest that happened in real life. Running Heartless, who had been hoping and hoping for the Rainbow Donkey card, actually was the player who was lucky enough to be dealt it! Only when it showed up in her mailbox, she had no idea what in the hell it was, and had it sent back to me! That threw RD into holiday post office purgatory until after Christmas, when he finally galloped in on my end and I was able to resend him.
Next time, I will kidnap you for good, silly unicorn! You can’t escape The Snuggle Bear!
And in between those two contests was the one series that slowed the year down to a crawl like your fourth grade class. Having run fresh out of Flashback Friday ideas early on in the year, I decided to begin using Fridays to tell my tale of having appeared on the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire back in 2001. I figured it would be a nice way to take up a couple months of Fridays…. until it became painfully obvious to me that my detailed and overly digressive storytelling format was going to drag the tale out over half the year! Beginning on April 11, and not concluding until Part 33 was published on November 21, my saga of The Big Apple, Regis, glowing potatoes, and going Bendy Side Out® kept many of you hooked throughout the Summer and Fall as to just how much nuttier this real life adventure could possibly get.
Hey! Where’s MY mention, ES? I was the STAR of your story after all, and don’t you try to deny it, or I’ll sing again!
My Thursday comic continued to grow and get better with age. I can’t even begin to list my favorites from the year, because there were so many that got a great response. When Sheena sent me Vinyl Scratch from her MLP collection back in May, all she asked in return was a single comic shoutout for her. Instead, Scratchy has joined Buster and Rainbow Donkey as permanent Easter eggs in my comics. She’s been in every comic I’ve drawn since May 1, and will continue to appear forever more…
Now I need to wash the possum guts out of my mane.
Of course, my other longtime series, Saturday Squirrel, continued to treat you to your weekly dose of sciurine cuteness every weekend… and will continue to make stars out of everyday squirrels for years to come!
Yesss!!!! Oh boy, this is awesome!!!
My Flashback Friday spinoff series, Retro TV Ad Tuesday continued to go on as strong as ever through the first half of the year, before hitting a wall in late summer and only popping up occasionally after that. I really need to try to pump some life back into RTVAT, since it accounted for some of my best posts of the year… like my take on Mountain Dew yutes, Hawaiian Punch lunacy, and sciurine madness.
And we got to see just how big of a con man Art Linkletter really was.
One new weekly series I added to The Nest in June was my tribute to some of the lesser known, but totally awesome songs I got to hear at work… Mecca Muzak Mondays. Now you can all suffer through mine and Mecca’s poor taste in music every Monday to help get your week started off on the right ear foot!
Yes! Baby, baby, baby… come on, sing it with me you all!
And there were many other assorted gems sprinkled in between all of my regular features… like how Daylight Savings Time is totally stupid, snooze buttons are the work of the devil, how nobody wants to sit next to an “elf on the shelf”, how to totally ruin a religious masterpiece, and why you should never, ever degrade a squirrel by trying to selfie with it…
Angel’s gonna kick your ass, MBRS…
I even branched out in 2014…. a little anyway. Thanks to winning her Beatles contest, in April I won the chance to guest post on Merby’s blog, and in return, she made the first and only guest post on The Nest. I also was given the chance by Bacon to guest host his hilarious Dear Bacon feature back in May, which I had a lot of fun with!
That’s about as much branching out as an introvert like me can stand in one year.
And I know I didn’t cover even close to everything that happened at The Nest in this fascinating year, but man, just from the highlights it was obviously an awesome ride! I thank each and every one of you who rode shotgun on this fantastic voyage with me this year, as all of this fun would never be possible without you all to help inspire me and cheer me on. If the fucked up humor I inject into everything I do has given even one of you a smile or a belly laugh at a time in which you desperately needed it, then all of the time I put into this blog is totally worth it. I appreciate my cyber friendship with all of my followers more than you could ever know, and I hope you’ll all stick around a bit longer to see what The Nest has to offer in 2015!
I promise… no Regis on the can jokes. At least not as many….
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
What a year! I am still damned proud that I guest posted here…and to be the only one to do so is such an honor, which can be seen on my blog with my very own badge of….um, honor. 🙂
And nobody else may ever get the chance to do so! Well, except maybe the North Korean hackers if they ever hijack my blog…
No way, I won’t let them. I have to hold on to my title, you know.
Good year here at the nest. And I have a feeling that there’s one more highlight to come this year for you.
And with the pingback I just got, now this comment makes sense to me… I must go see what this is about!!!
Awesome wonderful year it was my friend. So much fun indeed! I’m super glad you had a great time hosting my Dear Bacon issue. Eyebrows up – perhaps you would like to do it again in 2015? Snorts and oinks to a great year to come! Keep the evil going! XOXO – Bacon
I would be more than happy to do it again! Just let me know!
I most certainly will do my friend – thanks! XOXO – Bacon
Reblogged this on Gems favourite things.
In my defense…if this hadn’t been my first holiday at my new home, I likely would have just opened the card when it arrived. But I’ve gotten so much mail for other people that I just assumed it was more of that.
But of course it was all worth it for another tale in The Misadventures of Running Heartless
It will certainly go down in my blog’s lore as one of my favorite stories. Maybe it might even make a good movie someday….
“Finding Rainbow Donkey”
I’ll make a call to my friends at Disney
Sounds great! But just remember, we want royalties out of this! We don’t want Disney just taking the idea and doing a Kimba/Lion King number on us!
This is true!
All the best for 2015!!
Thanks, and a wonderful new year to you as well!
I need it to be clarified that my MLP collection was not one I set out to have. Or still want to have, yet nobody will take these things! 🙂
Happy new year to you, ES! 🙂
I can’t believe nobody else has taken you up on one of those ponehs! Seriously, what is wrong with people!?!? Maybe you should put on some Sarah McLachlan and announce if they aren’t adopted in one week, you’re taking them on a ride to the glue factory….
Some people forget that I have their addresses, so they may just end up with them randomly.
(Not you…I wouldn’t wish more than one of those things on you!)
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What a good year for the nest! I specially love your mecca muzak mondays, I found some real gems for my playlist and I can hiss and spit at the beaver kid , ha! that makes my day :o)
Have a great start in a wonderful 2015!
Ha! My Justin Bieber is your Overlook Twins! 🙂
It’s has been a very good if very strange and rather scary year. Glad we are still here and hope that next year will be better and calmer and happier and we’ll get rich through no fault of our own! Happy New Year, to you and all the critters!
That would be awesome! Happy New Year to both you and Garry, and best of fortune in the year to come!
Great year for The Nest, my friend. I’m looking forward to enjoying 2015 right here with you!
And Happy New Year to you and The Reeg …
And a Happy New Year to yourself and cartoon Reeg!
Oh God please mention her and save us from her singing! 😦
HaHaHa! Happy New Year ES! 2015 is going to be the year of the rainbow donkey! 😀
I’ll bet Amy can do a killer version of Auld Lang Syne!
Happy New Year to you, Aunt Sharon! Rainbow Donkey needs to be added to the Chinese zodiac!
I see you managed to sneak in “dog in a dishwater” one more time in 2014!
Good times at the Nest 🙂
But of course! That had to be my lead photo this year! I think we should train dogs to clean dishes… they are much more energy efficient and conserve water!
Happy New Year Es, here’s to many more dogs in dishwashers and evil squirrels 🙂
Thank you! I shall keep them coming… whatever they happen to be this year!