Big Sale

Do you ever think about jewelry stores who, especially in smaller towns, might have a large diamond for sale, and they know there are only a couple of families in town who could ever afford that diamond? Well, we were talking the other day and somehow the subject of big clothes came up. Somebody said that they saw a pair of 10XL sweat pants at a store nearby. Do they get any bigger than that, I wondered? There aren’t many men that size, and our community is only so big, so I was like wondering how many men there were of that size in our community. I mean, is this a case of the store targeting like maybe just one guy they were aware of in the community? And how long do you inventory something like that?

Management conversations may have gone something like, “Hey, that pair of sweat pants is taking up a lot of shelf space. I hope that one guy comes in pretty soon. I hope he likes gray.”

Plungers

Today is New Year’s Day, the day of the Polar Bear Plunge (PBP) in our local river. They call it a swim, but it’s really just people walking into the water and walking out.  And now, with the warmer temperatures, the swim is even less of an event. It needs a facelift. Here are some suggestions:

•           Move the event to February 2^nd. Can ground hogs swim?
•     Bring in a food truck with a water theme. Watermelon, Water Chestnuts, Watercress, Water Buffalo…
•     Bring in a celebrity swimmer. Michael Phelps? Joey Chestnut?
•     Water polo

We need to see some real swimming here. I’ve seen better swimming at baptisms!

Jugglenaut

 I found out a last weekend that a friend of mine can juggle. That’s a cool skill. When I was a kid I worked with a guy who could juggle. We were bag boys at the grocery store. He would juggle people’s oranges and apples as he was bagging them. People frowned on his antics, but in hindsight, he was pretty good. He never ran off and joined the circus, but he could have. Yeah. He was good.

So, like, do people run off and join the circus because they’re skilled at circus acts, or do they learn the skills after they join the circus? Like, did the lion tamer work at the zoo and practice after closing time with the lions when nobody was around? Did the trapeze guys work as a lineman for the power company and practice swinging on the wires at lunch?

Is the fortune teller at the carnival a former economist? 

Merry Christmas as you juggle all your activities over the holidays!

Bold Prediction

Mitt Romney was in the headlines this week. Apparently he made a bold prediction. He predicted that Vice President Elect JD Vance is going to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2028. Wow! And what’s even more amazing is that the media reported it. A slow day for news, perhaps?

We here at UT have no beef with Mitt – no, this is not another meat post - but Mitt needs to take this a bit further and make a couple more bold predictions:

·         Trump will not run again in 2028

·         Joe Biden will not run again in 2028

·         Hunter Biden will not run in 2028

There should be presidential pardons for people who just say the wrong things. Maybe Joe can pardon Mitt for this gaff.

Meat Post IX

Remember when we used to do meat posts here at UT? Well, I love Chinese food. But menus at Chinese restaurants can be really long and time consuming. By the time you're done reading, you've drunk all your tea. When ordering Chinese food, be sure to check for the fine print on the menu. It’s easy to get fooled. For instance:

•              Almost Boneless Chicken – You may order this thinking it’s Almond Boneless Chicken. Be careful!
•     General Tso and Tso’s Chicken – ‘Nuff said. General Tso in general outranks Colonel Sanders on the Chicken Chart but make sure there’s only one Tso.  (Is Cap’n Crunch the highest military rank in cereal?)
•     Sesame Street Chicken – Don’t order this (thinking it’s Sesame Chicken) unless it’s on the children’s menu. By the way, has anybody seen Big Bird lately?

Yes, this may be that one post that you don't read to your children. We want a Happy Family.

 

Step Right Down!

I took a fall last week coming down the steps. I’m OK, just banged up a bit. I tripped over a box on the third step and next thing you know I was down in a heap. I asked people at work how many steps you had to fall before you could say you “fell down the steps”. They said it had to be at least four steps before you can say “fell down the steps”, but for a senior they said it could be three steps. The nurses I asked said that there was no set rule for that in the medical community.

I didn’t turn the stairwell light on and that likely contributed to my fall. I had asked an eye doctor a while ago if, as I age, my pupils adjust slower to the darkness or light, say, when I go in the closet. His response to me was, “Why don’t you just turn on the light?”

I bumped into the eye doctor last week and I told him about the stairwell fall. He said if it happens again he’s gonna put me on a twelve step program.

Fake Diamond

There’s a concert coming up soon at one of our local theaters. I saw it advertised on a billboard along the freeway. It’s one of those billboards that lights up. It’s a picture of Neil Diamond and it says “concert” or something like that. I assumed it was a Neil Diamond tribute concert.  But I saw a friend of mine at a restaurant Friday night and he said it was the real guy, that Neil was coming here to perform. Now Neil’s 83 years old, but hey, I thought, Frankie Valley is still performing in Vegas at 91.

So I did some research, and no, it’s a Neil Diamond tribute thing. But the tickets are like $118! That’s where they fool you. Here’s their strategy: if you price the tickets high enough, we consumers think it’s the real guy and we buy the tickets.  I think this is brilliant – Why didn’t I think of this?

These tickets, if used as a Christmas present, could prove to be a problem however. I could see this one sided conversation happening: “No, instead of giving me a diamond for Christmas, he gave me Neil Diamond tickets. Only it’s not even the real Neil Diamond.”  Be careful.