Potraits

zdaughter enjoys making art, especially painting.  This is her fifth year of art camp so she comes home every day with new pieces.  Our home gallery includes a paper-mâché hippopotamus head, a drip-painted statue of a rabbit, a picture of a watermelon pressed onto paper using a styrofoam block, and many many canvases.  She likes landscapes and seascapes but I think her best work is her portraits.

Here are two self-portraits.

She has become a major Teedge fan ever since she saw photos of his cats with wine.  She calls him The Cat Wine Guy and will tell me "text this photo to The Cat Wine Guy."  Here's her portrait of him.

Alright, maybe not.  But that's a couch potato so it could be Teedge.

Here's her portrait of TR:

Alright, maybe not.  It's a deep pull from We Bare Bears but it could be TR if you watch the episode.

Here are portraits of zcats.

The one on the right was rushed so she's going to do another this coming week.  She also says the cat on the right is harder to paint because she's all one color.  We'll see what happens.

Here's one of me.

She says it looks better this way.

Again, maybe not.  That's Spider-Man but I'm a superhero for shlepping her to and from art camp all summer.

And my favorite portrait of the summer is the one of rob.

No joking here, that's our man squirrel.  Note the slightly angry camber of his eyebrows and the tuft of gray on top of his head and peppered into his chest hair.  Spot on.

Please feel free to request a portrait.  Every morning while I'm getting her ready for camp she says "what should I paint" and no matter what I suggest she says "that's boring" or "that's lame" so she needs inspiration from outside the house.

Random Inbox Fun

For no reason at all, received this email last evening at 10:04pm.

To: me
From: TR
Subject: Squirrel

Know Your Minor League Mascot: Worlds Colliding

It's been about three-and-a-half years (!) since our last edition of Know Your Minor League Mascot. The official mascot of the Richmond AA team is the Flying Squirrels, and it also serves as the unofficial mascot of Gheorghe: The Blog due to the squirrel enthusiast on staff. We may, however, have a new unofficial minor league mascot here: the Hartford Yard Goats.

We've been remiss in lauding the Yard Goats here previously. Last year was their first year with this mascot--they were the New Brittain Rock Cats previously. They have two (two!) goat mascots: a green goat named Chompers and a blue goat named Chew Chew. Everyone at G:TB loves goats and I could really use two goats of my own these days.

I learned of the Yard Goats on Sunday morning when the clowns on WFAN were discussing their four game stand in Richmond ... against the Flying Squirrels! Worlds colliding. I'm not sure who to root for, but the Squirrels took two of the first three games.

Yard Goat merch is strong to quite strong. This hat has a lot of character.

This tshirt imploring you to "Don't be a hero, be a goat" has a lot going for it as well.

Nothing, however, packs more bang for your buck (pun!) than this magnet.

For a mere $3 you can tell someone "You will always be a goat to me" without having to actually talk to them. Where were these magnets 25 years ago?

Even if the Yard Goats don't supplant the Flying Squirrels as your favorite minor league mascot, I hope you can find some room in your heart for this herd. Herd up, as they say.

rob-related filler

Video Week has been nuts...here is some sort of setup British rob has going on in his backyard. It's the Sciuridae Laff-A-Lympics: