Veggie Tales

I attended a presentation about the sport known as Pickleball last week. It is America’s fastest growing sport. There are tournaments all around the country now and it may become an Olympic sport. We’re getting some new courts near us and I really want to play. The guy doing the presentation is 85 years old and he plays every day. Very impressive!

During the Q & A I asked him about the origin of the name “Pickleball”. I asked him if he thought there would be other racquet sports named after vegetables. I reminded him that we already had squash.

I like to think that maybe I’ve planted the seed for other vegetable themed racquet sports.

 

Jeans

We’ve got one of those things at work where, if you donate to a charity from your paycheck, you get to wear jeans on Fridays. The good news is I think everybody does it. I now do it. They have to be nice jeans. None of those holey ones.

I didn’t used to do it. But I kind of have to wear jeans on Friday. I don’t really want to, but if I didn’t people would think I didn’t contribute to the charity. They’ve got me over a barrel. Good thing I’m wearing jeans.

I don’t know how this works for the people who work from home and never get dressed. 

 

You Say Potato Beetle, I Say Potato Beetle

I had another nice chat with the bug man Friday. (He comes to our office and sprays once a month.) I’ve learned a few things from him in our chats and I’d like to think that he’s picked up a thing or two from me. I asked him if he was allowed to tell me which local hotels had bed bug issues, if any. He of course, as a matter of policy, was not able to share that with me. But he mentioned that yes, there was one with some bug issues, and that his aunt had stayed there.

I listened to his story, but then noted to him that he had used the “ant” pronunciation for the word “aunt” and not the “ont” pronunciation. While both are acceptable, I thought he as a bug man might find it more appropriate to use the “ont” pronunciation. He agreed and said that he would be using “ont” going forward.

We here at Uncle Tommy are glad there’s only one pronunciation of Uncle!

 

DORA Explorer

We have a Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area (DORA) downtown now. I’m not sure why they call it “refreshment” area, ‘cause it’s really just about drinking alcohol. You were allowed to eat or drink anything else there before. Now people shuffle around aimlessly carrying cups. DORA? Nah. It’s more like NOLDA. Night of the Living Drunk Assoc. Only one person’s been hit by a car so far…

We were downtown Saturday night. Unfortunately I had forgotten about the DORA. But seeing people shuffling around aimlessly holding out cups, and dealing with our downtown’s poor lighting, I quietly put a coin in each of the first few cups I saw. My wife eventually stopped me but by then I was out of coins.

Ten to one these NOLDAs used the coin to help buy another drink…

 

Acknowledgment

A while back we took a look at the word “awkward”, and saw how truly awkward of a word it is, having a W before and after the K.  Have you ever noticed how cool of a word “acknowledge” is? I don’t imagine this carries over to other languages, but let’s take a look at this word in English. The K plays a double role – it’s the hard K following the C. It needs to be there to reinforce the C since C and K, as you know, typically work together to form the hard K sound. But then take a look at what else the K does. It acts as the silent K in “knowledge” ‘cause it needs to be there since it’s, even though silent, part of the word “knowledge”. So the K is a hard K and a silent K in the same word, even though it’s only in the word one time.

 Now that’s what I call a special K!

 

Hire the Vet

I just talked to a guy whose daughter is in veterinarian school at Cal-Davis. He of course wants her to come back here after graduation and get a job with a local vet. I told him I had just seen an article the other day about a local vet clinic; the headline referred to it as a female vet clinic.  I didn’t get a chance to read the article. I assumed that it was about an office where the vets were all women. Nothing wrong with that I thought.

But when I described the headline to the guy it occurred to me that this might be a veterinarian office just for female pets. You know. A female vet clinic. That makes sense as well.

Of course there is a third option. It could be a clinic run by women for female pets. I bet that’s what it is.