The 700 Club

As we approached this, our 700^th post here at Uncle Tommy’s, we couldn’t help but think about Ole’ Albert Pujols working his way toward 700 career home runs.  Who would get to 700 first, Albert or us?

We here at Uncle Tommy had 693 posts and Albert had 698 homers when I thought of writing this. He hit two homers that Friday night so he made it to 700 before we did. So yeah, he won this round.

I’ve got nothing against Albert. He’s had a great career. But I think his winning the race takes nothing away from this blog. Had I won the race, I had no plans to call him and rub it in. Nor did I have any plans to go to a game and shout the results at him from my seat. Heck, I don’t even know if he reads the blog.

I prefer to dwell on what we have in common and that’s this: neither he nor we have ever used performance enhancing drugs to get to 700.  Yes, I drank some five hour energy drinks (free at the hotel we were staying at in New York) years ago and cranked out like 5 posts in one sitting. But I admitted to it and we’ve moved on.

 

Pay the Piper

We all read last week about King Charles having a piper play outside his bedroom window every morning at 9AM. This wakeup service is something that his mother had also enjoyed. I assume that it’s the same guy she had. While this service seems a bit over the top (and doesn’t it rain a lot in London?), I, for one, am glad Charles is continuing it. If he hadn’t, it might be kind of difficult for the piper to find work. Sure, he might get hired by some rich guy, but it probably wouldn’t be in London, and the guy would have to move his family. And maybe the new employer would want to wake up at 6AM instead of 9AM and it’s not like the piper has a piper to wake him up in the morning. And maybe the new employer might make him play pop stuff like ABBA or Anne Murray.  

So, how does it work? Does the piper keep playing louder and louder ‘til Charles gets up? Can a piper play Reveille?

How long before Harry gets a piper?

 

Intentional Walk

I know it’s fall time now, but I still have to cut the grass. It just keeps growing. Speaking of cutting grass, what’s with these guys with the really slow walk behind self-propelled mowers? Yeah, they don’t have to push the mower but it takes them like 3 hours to cut their postage stamp lawns. If you pushed a stroller that slowly around the block you’d need to pack a lunch. (Do they make self-propelled strollers yet?) ‘Cause it’s so slow, I’ve often referred to the self-propelled mower walk as the Frankenstein strut. (I know, technically, I should have called it Frankenstein’s monster’s strut.)

I was never that scared of the Frankenstein dude, ‘cause he walked so slow. I mean, was he really gonna catch anybody? If he came back today, the only guy he’d catch would be that guy down the street with the self-propelled walk behind mower.

 

Maris on the Mantle

In baseball, Aaron Judge is trying to break Roger Maris’s home run record. It’s been exciting, hasn’t it? He just hit his 61^st last week. Back in ’61, teammates Maris and Mickey Mantle battled each other as they raced to break Babe Ruth’s single season record. Maris ended up with 61, breaking the record. That record had stood for 61 years – I just realized that. 61 homers in ’61 followed by 61 homers 61 years later.  The number 61 will never be the same.

My friend has a lightly used Roger Maris board game. (I wish I had one.) I suggested, at least while Judge is pursuing the record, that he put the Roger Maris game on the mantle in their family room, in effect honoring both Maris and Mantle. Sounded to me like a win-win.

His wife is not having it. Does this sounds pretty judgemantle to you?

 

Uniform Policy

I didn’t see much of the queen’s funeral on TV, or the telly as they would say in England. But I saw bits and pieces of it when I was at the dry cleaner. (Who says we don’t need TV’s at the dry cleaner?) I saw the part where William and Harry were in military uniforms. Those were some cool uniforms, I thought. Being at the dry cleaner, I of course asked the employee there (Tammy) what it would cost to have one of those uniforms dry cleaned. She didn’t know. She said it would depend if they had endured any actual combat. I thought that was a good answer.

I asked her if she thought William or (more likely) Harry ever wore their uniforms around the house, and maybe marched around and stuff. (You know he does…). She didn’t know.

I like having the TV at the dry cleaner.

 

The Lions & the Switch in the Wardrobe

A friend of mine offered me free tickets for the Lions – Dolphins game on October 30^th. He couldn’t go ‘cause his wife wants to host a Halloween Party that day. I told him to keep the tickets – ‘cause he was gonna go to that game! He looked at me with astonishment. I told him the plan: all he had to do was to find somebody about his size, and get that guy to wear his costume and go to the party and pretend to be him. Maybe my friend pretends to forget the ice, but he already had his costume on, so he goes to the store in his costume. He then trades places with the replacement guy at the store and that guy comes back with the ice in the same costume. Something like that. And the replacement guy mostly hangs outside at the party with the smokers so as not to bring attention to himself. And you pay the replacement guy back with some Lions tickets for another game. 

I call that a win-win.