Happy 2009, Friends!

I hope you celebrated safely and had someone pretty waiting for you to kiss at midnight. Personally, I got a kiss on the head from Rhea and then broke my foot the next day.

Hmm, can I start 2009 over? As Jim said, it could have been worse. I could have broken my hand. [Hey, QualityGal -- remind me to "accidentally" hit Jim with my crutch, okay? Thanks!] Or maybe I could have tried to kill myself like Matt Cutts? So far, 2009 blows.

In non “omg-i-broke-my-foot” events:

• Barry Schwartz revealed the big news that he and his wife are expecting a baby. Congrats, Barry and Yisha! I wonder if the baby will be a liveblogger? I hope so! Then I can retire.
• Matt McGee announced the winners of the 2008 Search Quiz and showed the rest of us losers the whole quiz.  Apparently most of you couldn’t even make it passed the second question. And I say most of you, because I was too chicken to even take it. It’s how I roll.
• Matt Cutts picks out a good example of why every company should have a blog (…and why no one needs a Zune).
• Michael Gray led a campaign to get Robert Scoble erased from the Web.  Here’s a screen shot of what the world would look like if we eliminated He Who Shall Not Be Named.
• He Who I Never Want To Piss Off aka Loren Feldman got his Twitter rant on and called us all freaks. I’m pretty sure I’d have a crush on Loren if I wasn’t so damn terrified of him.
• We Build Pages hottie Zane DeFazio decided to get useful with his Twitter account, pointing to recession tips for Web designers, asking if you’re losing traffic because of poor findability and showing his love for typetester. Okay, seriously, when did Zane get smart?
• Rae Hoffman tried to make us all a little smarter with her Advanced Ad Targeting tutorial for Thesis. In case you were wondering, Rae would have little Thesis babies if she could.
• If you’re into lists, Chris Winfield pointed us to one about the Top 46 SEO Posts of the Year 2008. Personally, I was hoping he was linking to the best posts of the year 2010, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens in 2009 first. Congrats to Jim Boykin for making the 2008 list, though.
• Eric Lander highlighted Marty Weintraub’s post on What Are The Important Social Media Values. The post is filled with great responses from some of our favorite Twitterers. I, too, am mentioned, but feel free to ignore that part.
• theGypsy let us know that Yahoo will soon offer an automated SE0 program. It’s part of their plan to (a) look more like Microsoft and (b) pretend they know SEO.

On the silly side:

• I goofed and tweeted yet another top SEO blog list — only to realize too late that the list was from 2007 and that I am, in fact, kind of a dumb ass. Thankfully, I have friends like Rae Hoffman who are always there to remind me of that.
• Barry Schwartz shows us how badly kids across the world wanted a Wii. Apparently getting a Wii makes children either fall down or break into dance.  [You really need to watch this video. It's scary.]
• Darren Rowse asked if social media users are anti-social in real life. We all giggled while passive-aggressively thinking of ways to zing him.
• Analytics god Avinash Kaushik shared a cute, two tweet story about his daughter Damini’s relationship with Google.
• Guy Kawasaki showed us the 10 weirdest items removed from the stomachs of pets. I’m pretty sure my cats are currently sporting half a Christmas tree in their stomachs by now.
• Kim Krause-Berg shared a video of her new snowball-looking puppy. Prepare to melt on the floor if you click play.
• Mark Laymon found Bambi, and for a brief moment, I thought Bambi was going to kill him.
• And thanks to Eddy DeMelo for perfectly capturing how I feel today. Maybe Eddy’s not so bad after all? Nah, he is.

Okay, that’s enough out of me. I think it’s time for some candy. Er, I mean pain meds.