Hey, I'm back! I went to a rockin' party and an awesome conference and now I am full of interesting tales. Also, I am full of determination to finish my thesis this year, and an unfortunate byproduct of that resolution is a need to cut down on my blogging. Therefore, as you can see from my mutilated banner, squid-a-day is temporarily squid-a-week, until I finish my degree.

So once a week I will be delivering a concentrated dose of squid! Are you ready for the first? It's extra concentrated, since I had to cover the first twelve days of the new year . . .

Despite spending this holiday season at home, where the sun is shining, the grass is green, and the orange and palm trees sway, I've been metaphorically snowed under. Between wrestling a paper into submission (that was a pun! submission, like to a journal? hah? hee?) and preparing data for a conference presenation, squid blogging has fallen somewhat by the wayside.

But squid news continues relentlessly, never pausing for its chronicler's busy schedule. So, I give you the tentacular highlights that have accumulated over the last few weeks, starting with PW Style's truly large, totally amazing homemade squid presents:

I think this may be the best pop-sci treatment of the jumbo squid invasion that I've seen yet. Go, Christian Science Monitor!

For example, most invasion articles don't take the time to explain the nuanced history of the squid's presence in California, but here we learn:

When scientists dug through historical records, they discovered that the squid's northward advance wasn't entirely unprecedented. There were accounts from the 1930s of the creatures in Monterey Bay. But never in numbers comparable to what scientists observed now – schools many hundreds strong. And no one had ever seen them as far north as Alaska.