Working in a newsroom environment – long and somewhat stressful hours – can get to you.

It forms a strong bond among those who share the passion for the business, but outsiders, for the most part, consider news people weird.

Most people don’t get a reporter’s sense of humor. Basically, we’re weird on purpose. The longer your career spans, the more things you see, the less things surprise you. You see less and less of your family and more and more of your co-workers. Their weirdness rubs off on you and vice-versa.

Case in point: You come to truly embrace fast food when you work odd hours. There’s one local fast food burger place we frequent more than others. For the past several weeks, this establishment has offered small Halloween toys in their kid’s meals. We figured this out when my 4-year-old daughter came by the office for dinner one day last week. Inside her bag was one of these toys. I’ve been known on occasion to order a kid’s meal when all I want is a small burger and give the toy to my daughter, and I’ve accumulated several of these seasonal toys over the past week.

As of Monday, for whatever reason, Jeremy and I have made it our personal mission to collect all 11 of these toys, which have little to no entertainment value whatsoever. To date, we have eight of them, and we’re not opposed to asking for one specifically if we’re handed one we already have.

Don’t ask me why. I don’t really know. It’s just become another newsroom oddity and another bonding experience among colleagues.