Cafe Pets Rides Again

The holiday season was CRAZY!!! I was so busy working on my Cafepress shop that I forgot all about my blog for Cafe Pets. Oh well! I'm sure you all forgive me for being so negligent, right? In any case I have lots of new designs to share with you.

One of my biggest sellers this holiday season was the line of "Christmas Hippopotamus" designs I made. I love the song "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas." It's my favorite holiday song. I was surprised that so many sold in adult size t-shirts since I expected they would mostly be purchased for kids. I guess I'm not the only silly grownup out there.

Here's just one of the designs I made:


I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas

Isn't that about the cutest and silliest thing you ever saw? It cracks me up every time I look at it. There are two other Christmas hippo designs you can see here, plus all the other hippo designs I've made. I guess I'm a little goofy about hippos. Must be those weird teeth.

Hippo T-Shirts & Gifts

Now that the holiday season is behind us I've started working on Valentine's Day designs. I have a new shop called Candy Hearts. There are cute candy heart designs, suggestive candy heart designs and even anti-Valentine's Day candy heart designs. Take a look! (It makes me so happy!)


Pop-Art LOVE Candy Hearts


Bite Me Candy Heart


Be My Hero Candy Heart

MIA

I've been missing in action for a few days. Did anyone miss me? (Insert echo here.)

I have a good excuse. My computer crashed last week. The fan died which caused the innards to overheat and all the boards fried. Well the darn thing was almost due for replacement anyway. My new computer isn't anything special but it does have more memory which is a joy. Oh, and I also bought a portable backup device for hubby and I to share.

All the stress was a good test of my commitment to quit smoking. I quit about two months ago. It's been difficult but worthwhile but I worried how I wouldd react when something stressful came along and I really, really wanted to smoke again. The good news is that I stuck to my commitment. I kept myself busy by designing some new images for my CafePress shop. The theme is, "Kiss Me, I Quit Smoking."

This one is my favorite:



You can see all the designs I made here.

Tags: Quit Smoking, Great American Smokeout Day

My Bear Behind

I reread my introductory post and realized that it's just too serious! I'm really a very silly person -- in person -- but apparently it's going to be a challenge to get that across in writing. This is a blog for heaven sake, not a college essay assignment!

My web sites are humor sites. Yuckles is primarily about animal and pet humor, Funny Tummy is food and cooking humor and Big Dance List is very visual and auditory and has a musical theme.

So here's a funny story about a common occurrence at the nature center. It's very common for a visitor to point to something in the animal room and ask me, "Is that real?" I'm always tempted to reply, "Well it's not a figment of your imagination, so yes I suppose it is real!" Instead I answer, "Yes, it's a real live thing," or "Yes, it's a real dead thing," or even, "Yes, it's a real plastic model of an animal." It doesn't surprise me too much when kids ask this question but it's very odd to hear it from an adult. You'd think a grownup would know the difference, wouldn't you?

Time for an animal joke.

Two hikers were on their way back to camp when they stumbled on a brown bear mother and her cub who were grazing by the side of the trail. The mother bear spotted the hikers, too. The hikers froze for a moment but when the mother bear charged they both began to run in the opposite direction down the path.

The hiker bringing up the rear suddenly yelled at his friend, "This is crazy! You know we can't outrun a bear!" His friend replied, "Hell, I don't have to outrun any bear, I only have to outrun YOU!"

Speaking of bears, this is my favorite bear design that I made. It's called, "Wanna See My Bear Behind?"

This is the front design:



This is the back design:



Tags: Bear Jokes, Bear Humor

Half Geek, Half Nerd

Ever since I was a little kid I've been fascinated by two things: animals and "how-things-work." When I was a child you could usually find me either outdoors tracking or watching animals or indoors taking some mechanical device apart. This might explain why even though my college degree is in biology I've spent most of my career working with computers in such varied jobs as systems administrator, office automation analyst and process-workflow administrator.

It was loads of fun for me to build Yuckles, my first web site, in 1999. After that I couldn't stop making web sites and eventually I quit my "real" job and became a full-time, work-at-home, self-employed webmaster.

I started fiddling around with CafePress in 2003 but it wasn't until 2006 that I became serious about making my own t-shirt and gift shop. I named it Cafe Pets and it mostly contains animal designs although there are also some food themed designs and a few odds and bods.

In the coming weeks I hope to share more about my experiences working with animals and being a webmaster. Even though I work at home running my web sites and CafePress shop I still find time each week to volunteer at a local science museum where I help take care of the animals and do education programs for the public.

Tags: Half Geek, Half Nerd