Roxy the Marijuana Dealin' Chocolate Eatin' Cat.

A couple of months ago, I put up for sale a photo of my parents' cat Roxy eating at her dish. I have a similar photo of Cookie that sells pretty well, so I thought that a cat should do equally well.

Occasionally I use Google's image search function to find where my photos that are sold through Getty Images end up online. Although the internet uses are the easiest to track down, they typically only earn me a buck or two. These are no different, but I since I know my parents will get a kick out of them, I thought I would share.

Here she is on AOL Pet's homepage!



But it gets better. Then I found her picture on this website:



Her photo is actually used in this Huffington Post video about a cat who brought home a bag of weed. You can see it at the 19 second mark. It even has my name credited - lol!

So there you have it. I guess if you put it altogether, Roxy must have been out sniffing some weed, got the munchies, and then chowed down on some chocolate. Hopefully my parents don't sue me for defamation of character because I didn't ask them to sign a model release.

52 Weeks of 2014 - Week 25

Another week has gone by, and we continue to be very busy. Lauren spent the weekend with her friends, while Mark continues to work hard to get the garden ready for the tour one week from today.



When Lauren saw this photo, she exclaimed, "Look at those dirty hands! He means business!"

While I was taking photos of the fruits of his labors, Mark pointed out a butterfly that was enjoying one of his daylilies.



I think he must have dropped his wallet in there.

This week, Lauren will be attending STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) camp during the day, and I'll be making preparations for next weekend's Girl Scout camping trip. So expect something camp themed for next week's photo!

Rain o'er me.

I'm a little late in posting this story, but it's better to tell it now that not at all. For the past few years, the music teacher at Lauren's school has arranged for the 3rd grade class to sing the National Anthem at PNC Park where the Pittsburgh Pirates game. When 3rd grade began, one of the first things that Lauren said to me was, "I am NOT singing the National Anthem." So I was pleasantly surprised that she changed her mind once April rolled around.

The big day was scheduled for Wednesday, June 11th. Tickets were purchased and the kids practiced there "O'er"s. When the day arrived, it was sunny and warm. Except the forecast was 100% chance of rain and a tornado watch for right around the time the kids were supposed to sing.

Since Lauren had to meet her classmates at the park no later than 5:30 PM, Mark left early to drop her off. Mel C, my dad and I headed down separately about an hour later, around 5:15 PM. As we arrived in the city, we could see that the sky was very dark, and just as we entered the park, it began to sprinkle. As we headed up the ramp to find our seats, we stopped to look across the park towards the section where we would be sitting. There we saw a lone person sitting in our section - Mark. We waved and continued on to meet him.

Our seats were in section 308, but once we got to around to section 320 the rain and the wind was so strong that the PNC Park employees waved us into an elevator hallway. There was a small window at the end of the hallway, but you couldn't see anything outside because the rain was coming down so hard. I called Mark to let him know where we were and to find out if he had gotten to safety. Everyone that was sitting in the stands were told to take refuse in the kitchen of a nearby concession stand. He didn't get any free food though.

After about fifteen minutes, the rain subsided enough that we could leave the safety of the hallway, but it was still coming down pretty good. We eventually met up with Mark along with some of our family and friends and spent a good bit of the evening speculating if they were going to cancel the game. Eventually, the rain stopped completely, and they started to remove the tarp from the field. The show really was going to go on, just like in the song!

At 8:30 PM, an hour and a half late, the moment that I waited three years for finally came:



About a half inning into the game, Lauren made her way to our seats no worse for wear, but very hungry and a little irritated for having sat around waiting for three hours. After a hot dog, cotton candy and a drink, she was ready to enjoy a few innings of the game and even got to cheer for a couple of runs scored by the Pirates.

52 Weeks of 20134 - Week 24

 

And now for something completely different - I'm actually posting this week's photo on a Monday! This is because today is my birthday, and the photo that I want to use for this week was taken as part of my birthday festivities. I haven't been to the Three Rivers Arts Festival in years, so since I took the day off, I thought that today was as good a day as any to check it out. So the three of us ventured downtown this afternoon. Because it was a weekday, we had a terrible time finding a spot in a parking garage near the festival's location at The Point, so we ended up parking in Macy's garage.

This ended up being a good thing because I don't know if we would have otherwise happened across this.



As an Impressionism aficionado, I couldn't be more excited to see this statue being installed. For me, this is right up there with the rubber duck. The artist based the sculpture of two people dancing on Renoir's “A Dance at Bougival.” It's absolutely breathtaking. The sculpture will be on display in Pittsburgh's PPG Place until October 3rd.



While the statue was the highlight of the day for me, we still had a nice time looking at everything the art vendors had to offer. Lauren loved everything and can't wait to go again next year. She got a stuffed dragon, a very cool hidden art drawing by Chazmania and a funny book titled, Zombies Hate Stuff by Greg Stones.



And it wouldn't be a birthday without a cake from Jean Marc Chatellier!

Glad I was able to catch up the blog because we have a busy week ahead. We have our Girl Scout troop's year end celebration tomorrow and the big Pirate game on Wednesday when Lauren and her class will be singing The National Anthem. So an all around great start to my forty-second year!

52 Weeks of 2014 - Week 23

 

Continuing with our gardening theme, here's Mark posing with his shovel. They have been spending a lot of time together recently, preparing our garden for the upcoming garden club tour at the end of the month. I took this when I was playing around with my new Nikon 185mm f/2.8 lens. I recently told Mark that I finally felt satisfied with my camera gear and no longer had urge to accumulate more. Famous. Last. Words. I had been practicing with my old manual focus lens and thought that it may be nice to have a longer telephoto lens. Manual focus lenses are much cheaper than their newer, auto focus counterparts, so I starting researching to find which one would be a good choice. Anyway, it ended up that the 185mm was around the same price as some of the manual focus lenses that I was looking at *and* it was auto focus. Plus, it's super sharp and produces a really nice background blur.




This little peony bud seems pleased with it.

52 Weeks of 2014 - Week 22

This week, I actually took quite a few photos, but then I got lazy and didn't post one for the project. This is Lauren proudly holding her sunflower sprouts. She picked this little kit from the prize box at school (I can't recall why she got the prize - the kids get prizes quite frequently for doing good work). We also recently picked up another kit with strawberry seeds and a red bucket, but so far they haven't broken through the soil yet. I might check Target to see if they have for the basil / green bucket kit so that we have the whole set. Thinking of the photo possibilities with the trio of course!