Why?

The other day, I was minding my own business, beating a stuffed wombat with an inflatable tuba, when a coworker asked me why I end my blogs with ‘Cheers.’

NOTE: While beating a stuffed wombat with an inflatable tuba at work may seem odd, I will point out that it’s the only thing keeping the wombats in check.

It seemed a valid question, so I ceased my fruitless pummeling and endeavored to answer. In actuality, ‘cheers’ was not my first choice as a salutation. I originally planned on going with ‘Codpiece!’ but that seemed a little much. My second choice was ‘Surreptitiously,’ which was interesting, but hard to spell. My third choice was an unpronounceable symbol used to summon an Elder god of immense, cheese-related power. Unfortunately, Ariel doesn’t have that as part of its standard font package. I thought for sure Wingdings would have it, but again, no luck.

So, why ‘cheers?’ Frankly, it seemed like a nice way to kind of say ‘have a nice day’ or ‘wheee!’ or even ‘dude!’ I actually had a client at an old job who used it regularly and I liked it, so I adopted it for use in the blog. It just seemed like a good, all-purpose, non-denominational way to say ‘happiness.’

That being said, I will use it until I can find a font that has that unpronounceable symbol. Hopefully, the world won’t immediately end in a giant fondue fireball when I do use it.

Which would be damn cool.

Cheers,
-Jason