I had one of my fast food ESP moments again yesterday. I never get the Lottery numbers though or Kalshi betting info, but the fast food stuff seems to work.

This is a perfect blog post for today’s date – Friday the 13th.

I had gone to Pollo Tropical, but for some reason, they were closed, so I went across the street to Burger King.

I went through the drive thru and was going to order a Whopper, by itself, no combo, but I change to a Chicken Sandwich, by itself, no combo.

When I got to the window, the guy said, “Did you order the Whopper by itself?” I said, “No, I ordered the chicken sandwich by itself, but your ESP is working, because I was going to order the Whopper by itself, but changed my mind.”

He said, “Well the guy behind you read your mind, because he ordered the Whopper by itself.” Crazy.

And that would really have been weird if we both had ordered the same thing, one car after another. Usually people order combos, so just the fact that we would order the Whopper as a single thing, is the weird part.

This reminds me of other instances where this happened at food places and once at a theater.

More than once at a fast food place, just like this recent experience, I had thought of one thing and changed my mind, and they gave me the first thing I had ordered – in my mind! These were at different fast food places.

Once I was thinking of ordering a chicken sandwich and changed to a burger, and they handed me a chicken sandwich at the pick-up window instead of a burger.

Another time I ordered a taco salad, but before that I was thinking of ordering a burger, but I changed it (in my mind) to the taco salad, and at the pick-up window, I was handed a burger.

This has happened quite a few times at fast food places.

I was at Starbucks once and as the girl was making my drink I noticed my friend Hank sitting outside. He hadn’t come in, he was just sitting at a table. I was thinking to myself, “Oh, there’s Hank, I have to stop by and say hello.”

As I am thinking this, the girl is putting my drink down and she calls out, “Hank?” And knowing that was my coffee, I asked, “Hank?” And she said, “Oh sorry, I meant Tom.”

How about that? She read my mind.

Once I was in Starbucks in NYC and all of the customers were named Tom. I kid you not. There were about six, maybe seven of us. And each time the server called out “Tom” to hand over the coffee, we all went up to grab it. And we all were the only customers in the place. All Toms. True story.

ESP AT THE THEATER

Another freaky thing that happened once was at a one man play with Jesse Tyler Ferguson. The play was called “Fully Committed.” Jesse plays a phone operator at a fancy restaurant – he answers the phone calls from people making reservations and the conversations are funny as he plays the characters on the other end as well as himself, the operator.

I had a couple of premonitions that night. Stupid, but they played out as I described. This was 10 years, ago, seems like yesterday.

Before the play started, I told my cousin, who was seated next to me that the guy seated next to her would have his phone ring during the play. And it did. The only phone to ring! Jesse looked at the guy from the stage and made a joke of it, even though he was annoyed.

Jesse played a phone operator in the play, so he joked about the phone ringing as being part of the play, saying something like, “I’m still hearing phones ringing,” or something like that. He was a good sport.

I also predicted another stupid thing, which made no sense – I said that Jesse would spit on the stage or on the audience by accident. Now why, I would think that and say that, who knows. But it happened.

He talked so much during the play that at one point he just spat from all the saliva, I guess. He spat right onto the front row! He laughed about it, was embarrassed, and apologized but that happened, we were in row two or three, so we saw it happen, and my prediction came true.

MAYORS AND THIER FAMILIES

Another weird thing was that for a number of years. I would go to the gym early weekend mornings, and usually on Sunday, when I would return home, as I was driving into my driveway, I would have to stop and wait for a guy to walk by, the same guy all the time and we would both arrive at the same time.

I would stop and hang out at a breakfast place with “The Breakfast Club,” a group of locals, or hang out for breakfast at the bookstore after the gym, so my timing wasn’t always the same, and I guess neither was his, but usually every Sunday, when I would return, just as I was driving into the property, I would stop to wave him by, as he walked past.

He was our ex-mayor of Miami and currently one of my neighbors in the condo is the daughter of another ex-mayor of Miami, who was the mayor for many years when I was a kid. And I had a nasty incident regarding business with her son many years ago. Lots of interesting coincidences.

Now if I could just start predicting the stock market or the lottery numbers. I’m still waiting for that.

Until next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Some of you may have been expecting my weekly “Tomversation” cartoons here, but they are on hiatus. I’m publishing Ollie And Jacomo now. They’re here. And every Friday, their five cartoons of the week are emailed out and you can subscribe here if interested.

I email this blog and Ollie And Jacomo through Substack, but you don’t have to join Subtack to get the emails. You can just bypass that prompt if you see it. Substack wants you to be part of them, I just want to send you my emails when I publish something.

EATING POMEGRANATES

This Ollie And Jacomo pomegranate cartoon this week came to me when I bought pomegranate kernels, which are called arils. Ever try to cut open a pomegranate? It sort of looks like this, the issue that Jacomo is having.

I buy the arils rather than the whole fruit and all I do is pop them in my mouth. At Publix they are kind of expensive and they keep an eye on them. Twice I noticed while I was self checking out, they had their eye on me!

One time the girl who monitors the front came up to me to ask me if I scanned the arils! I did, I showed her. And the other day, another lady up front stood behind me watching as I was scanning the arils. Are they that popular that people are stealing them?

I buy the arils because the actual fruit itself is hard to open without getting it to squirt red all over the place. I’ve seen where you should put them in a bowl of water and cut them open that way. But buying the arils already in a container is so much easier to handle and eat.

They are very healthy. In today’s 10 With Tom I give 10 reasons you should be eating pomegranates.

THE KEY, WE FOUND THE KEY

That lost key I told you about popped up.

I came home the other day and our part time maintenance man, Rick, said “Hi Tom!” So i went over to say hello. As I approached him, I noticed he had the key and he was using it to open the main key box which holds the building keys.

He wasn’t here the day of the commotion, but he is on the building’s text list, so he did see the conversation.

I asked him where he found the key and he said it was there all the while. Which it wasn’t because I looked all over that day and I know it was not there. I suspect that he had taken the key home with him and was embarrassed to say something at the time.

But the expression on my face when I saw him opening the box with the key, as if it was nothing, when we were looking all over the place for it was priceless. I couldn’t comprehend it for a minute. But I was glad we had our key back.

Guess we no longer have to break into the doors using a screwdriver. For the time being anyway.

First world problems.

Until next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

We have a small key to a box at our condo, which houses a bunch of other keys for the building. Some of us use the larger keys for various things. I needed to change the lighting timer since the time changed last week, but the small key to get the larger key for the room where the timer is was lost.

So I asked around the building and figured it would show up at one point. The problem is that too many people know about the key. Just a couple of us who actually do things around here, like a super would, should have the key and access to all of the other keys.

I texted everyone in the building about it asking if anyone saw the key. One neighbor came up with an old elevator room key and I suspected that perhaps the elevator guy who was here yesterday to work on the elevator, used the lost key, which of course wasn’t lost at the time, to get to the elevator room key.

So a few of us went to the elevator room to open it with the key my neighbor had and it was ajar – two elevator guys were in there working.

I asked them how they got in, hoping they had the smaller key I needed. They said they broke in with a screwdriver. They literally broke into the locked room this way.

I told him my idea was to have a keypad lock installed so in the future we didn’t need to break in or deal with actual keys. He got sort of adamant and told me that it’s illegal to have that keypad on the elevator room and the electrical room, next door, where I needed to get in to change the light timer.

I said, “It’s illegal to have a keypad, but it’s ok for you to break in with a screwdriver.” He just looked at me.

I then said, “Bring that screwdriver over here and break into this other room for me so I can change the light timer. He didn’t hesitate, he broke in and I changed the light timer.

It wasn’t an actual break in, because he didn’t break the lock on either room, but he did shimmy something with a screwdriver to let himself in both rooms.

Problem solved.

I was at Publix yesterday and they had Mallomars featured. The Mallomars are a winter thing because they melt easily, so they are only sold in fall and winter. They advertise themselves as “a seasonable favorite.” So there they were featured up front, when you entered the store, along with other items on some shelves.

I went to get the Mallomars and they were warm. The shelf above it was heated. I can’t remember what they were heating, and I never saw store shelves heated before, but there it was.

The odd thing is that Mallomars are only sold in the colder months due to the melting issue and here was Publix carelessly warming them up.

I didn’t buy them. I’ll try another store when I get a chance since I am hoping they won’t be warming them up. I buy them because they remind me of when I was a kid – we always had them.

Until next time . . .

So here we go again. I’m getting itchy.

I am going to take a break with my daily “Tomversation“ cartoon panel and bring back Ollie And Jacomo. I treat them sort of like a tv season it seems. They come, they do their thing, and the season is over. I’ll try to keep it going this time.

I know. I do this often. I guess I just need the change. It’s the Gemini in me.

If you don’t know Ollie And Jacomo, they are my two little animal cartoon characters. Ollie is a rabbit and Jacomo, we’ll, I don’t really know what he is, I’m calling him a hedgehog these days.

I have many other characters which I’ve been holding back, which I would like to introduce to you, so I guess they’ll be part of the mix this time. It all starts tomorrow, Monday, November 2.

They have their own webpage here, where I post a daily single panel cartoon, you can see the past cartoons there now and on Fridays, I email out all five toons of the week, all at once, which saves an annoying email from coming every day. You can subscribe here if you like. It’s free.

So hopefully, I’ll see you over here – OllieAndJacomo.com and also via your email through a subscription.

I’ll still post here on my blog a couple of times a week. If you don’t already subscribe, you can subscribe to my blog separately here.

Until next time . . .

So here we go again. I’m getting itchy.

I am going to take a break with my daily “Tomversation“ cartoon panel and bring back Ollie And Jacomo. I treat them sort of like a tv season it seems. They come, they do their thing, and the season is over. I’ll try to keep it going this time.

It all starts Monday, November 2. This blog will of course continue and Ollie And Jacomo is a separate thing.

You ever see that Seinfeld episode called “The Revenge“ where George is fired, but he goes back to work as if nothing happened? I’m sure you have.

This is a true thing that happened to Larry David, who wrote the episode, and it happened to me, too! When I was 16.

I worked for Sears in the stock room. My family was going up to New York from Miami for a few weeks and I asked my manager for time off. He told me no, but I guess I thought he was kidding, he was a very dry person, never cracked a smile. And it was my first job, and I didn’t really know how things worked.

So, I went to New York with my family. We were gone for a couple of weeks.

When we returned to Miami, I went back to work. I guess I just walked in and started working. Vince, the manager, called me over and asked what I was doing there. I don’t remember the whole conversation, but I said I was back. I guess that didn’t sit well with him, and he told me I had been fired because I left town when he said I could not.

I don’t remember walking out after that, but I guess I just said, “OK,” and walked out.

I was a 17-year-old high school boy, loading boxes at Sears. This jerk felt I should be fired.

Many years later, I was in church and saw Vince sitting a few pews in front of me. He had a long Polish last name, which I still remembered. And I said in out loud, but in a whisper – which I have a tendency to do – say things out loud that I think I am thinking in my head, “Is that Vince so-and-so?” I spoke.

I said it loud enough for my sister-in-law who was sitting next to me hear. She said, “Yes, that’s him, he’s a jerk.” I asked, “You know him?” She said, “Yes, he’s a member of the church.”

The odd part is that he looked the same as he did so many years ago – guess this church-going-jerk made a pact with the Devil to stay young.

I was talking about AI and licensing last week and coincidentally, the next day, I was contacted by someone at Cartoon Stock to tell me that someone was using my work without being licensed, which I thought was strange since it had my copyright on it, so I know they didn’t get it from Cartoon Stock. But it was nice of them to keep an eye out.

They wanted to go after the people and charge them a fee. I told them I would handle it.

I emailed them and asked them to remove it, only because they did not give me credit by linking back to me and they basically cut off most of the copyright info. So that to me is a no.

They removed the cartoon and all is right with the world.

I only mention it here because I had recently written about it and here it was come to light.

Until next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

I’m considering adding Art Cards, better known as ACEO (Art Cards, Editions and Originals) to my art line.

My wall art pop art is doing great, and occasionally I get emails asking about the Art Cards, people seem to want to purchase those with my cartoons on them.

Art cards are specific items, with specific specs – they are on card stock, and strictly measure 2.5″ x 3.5″ inches and are sort of like baseball cards, but with original art drawn on them. I also see that they can be reprinted from other items, like some of my cartoons.

This is one of the pop art wall art pieces in a pizza shop. The cards will be similar, only much smaller, of course.

About 10 years ago, my friend Sherri, who owned a gallery in town had an Art Trading Card event. It was a happy hour, gallery show featuring the cards.

ATC’s – Art Trading Cards are traditionally traded from one person to another in person – sort of like Olympic buttons and other things that people collect. But ACEO’s (Art Cards, Editions and Original) are created specifically to be sold and collected. It’s a whole thing with their own rules.

Many are sold on ebay and Etsy. And that’s where I’m thinking of adding mine since I am selling the wall art pop art on Etsy now. They sell for a few dollars and up.

All sorts of mediums are used – pens, watercolor, acrylic paints, ink – just about anything that creates the art.

I need the materials to get things started. While I’ll print out cartoons on the cards, I would also like to draw original art, not cartoons, but my cartoon style art.

I went to Michael’s that crafts store, to get some things I needed, like the blank cards themselves, some markers, sleeves that they are presented in and some other items, but unfortunately, they didn’t have most of the items I need, so I ordered them online.

Oddly enough, I could not find a pencil in the house. Since I draw my cartoons digitally, I don’t use a pen or pencils, or paper, for that matter, and I would like to lightly rough out the sketches with a light pencil.

As I approached the elevator coming in from Michael’s empty handed, there was a yellow #2 pencil on the floor, staring up at me! I had forgotten to add pencils to my list of things I needed. So I picked up the pencil and have it now. I guess that was the Universe telling me to go ahead with the project. So I will.

I already ordered the supplies I need online, and we’ll see how it goes.

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

I was at Whole Foods over the weekend and they had so many of my regular things on sale – the peanut butter I like, the Ceylon cinnamon I use, the apples I like, the oat bran I use and so much more of “my stuff” was on sale. I didn’t know any of it was on sale, so each time I went to get an item, I was pleasantly surprised to see it on sale.

I spent a lot of time going around piling up the hand carrier, that thing you carry around. It was quite heavy.

I finally get to the check out – the self-checkout, I like that, and the lights go out. The whole store went dark. The electricity was out in the whole building.

So all the customers waited around for the lights to come on, but that didn’t happen. We were then told to “evacuate.” They used that word and rushed everyone out.

We had to walk up the escalator, which was not working, to get to the garage, which is upstairs from the actual store, and as I reached the top, I asked a guy who was standing there, why we were told to leave and he said, “Because the electricity is out!” And I responded, “I thought it was some sort of emergency, you keep using the word “evacuate.”

I thought it might be a fire or who knows what. But it was just the electricity according to them, so we evacuated.

I was thinking they should have let everyone walk out with the stuff they had in their carts. So much of it was just sitting in the dark perishing and may be thrown out, like the prepared food and soups, etc. I mean are they even going to put back tomatoes and avocados and bananas and stuff one at a time after people handled it all and carried it around the store?

The next day I went back to get the stuff, I had to re-shop. When I went to get watercress, the same guy was halfway in the cooler, working there. I excused myself so I wasn’t in his way. I remembered him from the day before.

I mentioned to him that we did the same routine the day before and he remembered that, also, and said, “Yes, it was about the same time, too.

I asked him about the electrical problem and asked if that was all it was. He said that was it. I mentioned the word, “evacuate” and thought it might be worse because of that. He said, “That’s a silly word for them to use.” So we both agreed about that.

I got my sale items and other stuff and ended up spending twice what I usually do, so the sale wasn’t really a sale after all, was it?

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.