It’s calendar season and I’m part of it this year.
Many years ago, I published a calendar based on our village and it sold like crazy. Now I have a 2026 “Tomversation” cartoon calendar, based on my cartoon work.
It’s a wall calendar, 11″ x 8.5″ in size when opened. There are over 25 cartoons covering the 12 month calendar pages. It’s a limited edition.
They matte finish allows for writing on the calendar for notes and such.
I based the calendar on animal cartoons – mostly dogs, some cats and even snakes and other animals like lions and fish (are fish animals?).
I don’t charge for my blog or cartoons published online and people are always asking how to support me, so I put this together where you can purchase a calendar or two and support me that way. It will keep me from charging for subscriptions for this blog and my Tomversation comics online.
No calendar? That’s fine, you can subscribe to this Tomversation blogby clicking here – it’s free! Receive my five cartoons each Friday and 2 blog posts during the week!
Leaf blowers. One of the noisiest things in the neighborhood. They are ubiquitous, never a day goes by without hearing them, before you actually see them. Blowing leaves all over the place.
We have a maintenance man here at the condo and he loves his leaf blower. It’s almost attached to his hand. I didn’t get the idea for this cartoon from him, but I could have.
The interesting thing is that when he is moving leaves around because that seems to be the thing, he is on top of us when doing it. You know, he is never off in a corner somewhere, he is right there, near us.
I know, first world problem.
One time, three of us were discussing something about the building and there was our guy, literally two feet away blowing the leaves. We could not hear ourselves talk.
The maintenance guy at the building next door, takes his leaf blower on a neighborhood tour. He is all over the place – up the block, down the block, I’ve never been able to figure out why. I’m tempted to ask him, but I don’t want to look as if I am attacking him.
But he has that loud thing running for hours on end. Non-stop. He goes around their building, then up and down the street, not sure where he is blowing the leaves, but you can be sure he is not picking them up.
I see gardeners blowing the leaves all over the place all the time. They blow the leaves from one area to the other. They don’t think I have ever seen them pick up the leaves – they usually blow them into the street, or into the next yard, like my cartoon here. The literally move from the yard they are working on, into the street, or somewhere other than that yard.
We’ve had these discussions in town about outlawing them, and the outcry is, “Then how are we going to pick up (I say move around) the leaves?”
I always remind them that when we were kids we used a rake and bag and not even a bag – we dumped them right into the garbage pail. We physically raked them up and dumped them into the garbage.
A novel concept whose time has come back. Or maybe electric leaf blowers are the answer, they are quiet, they are tethered to the wall with a plug and you can’t wander the neighborhood with them.
Till next time . . .
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An odd thing happened at Publix the other day. I was checking out at the self-check-out, which I always do, and the lady who runs the front area at the check-out, came up to me and asked me if I scanned something, assuming I didn’t – they were pomegranate seeds/arils.
She knows me, she sees me there all the time. She said hello to me when I first walked into the store. So I found it very odd, and insulting.
At first I couldn’t hear her and I thought she was asking about the arils. Sometimes when you go through the regular checkout lines, they ask about the food you are buying if it’s something they aren’t familiar with. It’s a bit strange, but they do that. “Is it good?” “What is that?” Things like that; so I thought she was asking about that.
I told her I did scan the item and she should check it on the screen, which she did. She actually looked at the list of food and saw it was scanned.
I found the whole incident strange. Maybe they are trying to stop pilferage, which I can see happening at self-checkouts and it seemed like she randomly chose an item to ask about – or is there a pilferage problem with pomegranate arils, which are overpriced- but so is everything in Publix.
Maybe she was being watched by management and felt the need to look useful, who knows. But it was a rude thing to do to a regular customer – someone she knows.
If they are worried about pilferage, maybe they should follow the old men who take food from the produce department and eat it in the store – they grab cherries, grapes, etc. constantly and eat it right there without paying.
They should really watch the schmucks that Publix allows to walk around the store with firearms – yes, open carry idiots. Those are the ones who need to be watched (and banned from the public and Publix).
I like self-checkouts and use them in all stores that have them – Target, Walgreen, CVS, Home Depot, Winn-Dixie, etc. I find it fast and I don’t have to have a conversation with anyone. It’s just in and out. And I’ve never had an issue with being questioned before.
I am tempted to ask her why she questioned me the next time I am there, but I’ll just let it go. Guess the $60 billion Publix made last year wasn’t enough, they want to be sure they get every penny that’s coming to them.
Till next time . . .
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Since a Nor’easter was affecting things up north, I sat down on a bench to check my airline schedule, to be sure it was on time the next morning. This past summer I had my flight home canceled and then rescheduled and rerouted thorough Boston, due to bad weather, so I wanted to check this time.
All looked good. The app said all was on schedule.
I was sitting on a bench across from Lincoln Center looking at my phone when two NYC cops came up to me. They asked how long I was sitting there. “Oh, no, I thought, what was this about?”
I had just read an ad in the subway, which was in Spanish, which said something like, “Have your real ID on you, they are on the streets! Truth!” So I thought this was that.
I told the cops I was only there a short time, and I asked why they were asking. One said, “Well, we were told a guy was chasing another guy with a firearm and they ran right by here. And we wanted to know if you saw anything.”
“What?” I said? “If I saw a guy holding a gun up to another guy running by, I wouldn’t be sitting here so calmly,” and I held my hand out as if I was holding a gun.
The cops laughed and ran off, looking for the guys.
Oddly enough, a few days before, these two cops came up to me in Hoboken (I blurred their faces here).
Again, I was sitting on a bench, this time to tie my shoelace. I seem to do a lot of bench sitting it seems. Anyway, I was sitting right in front of City Hall, and they came across the street looking at me. It could be because I took this picture of them, but they came up to me and said, “Hello. how are you doing?” I said, “Ok, thanks.” And they were on their way.
A few minutes before I had taken some pictures of some bigwigs in suits in front of City Hall, although I don’t think the cops saw that. I took the picture because I thought it was funny. Hoboken is literally one square mile in size and they have their own city council, mayor, police department, etc.
It’s sort of a real life Mayberry, when you think about it. I always say if I was to move to New York, I would actually move to Hoboken, one train stop from NYC. It’s like being in Brooklyn, but on the other side of Manhattan, so it’s a quick ride in and out.
It’s autonomous, it rules and controls itself, as any city would. It isn’t part of a larger government, like Brooklyn is (which is part of NYC). So little Hoboken calls its own shots. There are really no tourists there, because who, except for me, goes to Hoboken? It’s easy access to and from the city (Manhattan), it’s right next to the larger Jersey City, which is its own city, too.
I’ve seen people pop over to Macy’s at Herald Square in Manhattan, it’s only a few train stops away. Very convenient, yet it’s a quiet little “village” right on the Hudson River, doing its own thing.
Till next time . . .
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I’m glad to be back in Miami. But it seemed like I would never make it home from the airport. The Uber drive from the airport almost took as long as the plane ride from New York, and it should only take about 15 minutes!
My plane ride home was uneventful, the best type of plane ride. It left on time and arrived earlier – can’t get much better than that. Except, then there is Uber.
I summoned an Uber and waited and waited and waited. The app showed she was right near me, but I couldn’t find her. And apparently, she could not find me.
The last time this happened was last December, during Art Basel, where the airport is a madhouse, but this was a quiet Tuesday afternoon in October, so the airport was dead, there weren’t many people in the place, but yet we could not find each other.
I kept looking for a gray car, I can’t remember the type now, but there were no gray cars and the thing with Miami cars is that we don’t have front license plates, so it’s sometimes impossible to find your Uber.
In places like NY, you see the car coming simply by looking at the front license plate.
I sent the driver a message or two or maybe six or seven. And I called her a number of times. Nothing. No response. After half an hour, I canceled the call and they are trying to charge me something for the cancellation, which I’ll fight.
I summoned another car. This one was “green” and the guy was apparently deaf. That’s what his profile said. So I thought what could go wrong. He arrived fast and turns out he wasn’t deaf. So that was good, I was picturing a Seinfeld episode in my head trying to communicate with him, but that wasn’t a problem.
The issue with this guy was that he took me on a long trip through Miami. Basically, on a sightseeing tour. We went through Doral, Little Havana and other areas. I asked him why. He said he was trying to avoid traffic.
Finally, when we got to my neighborhood, I told him to go straight ahead to the main street and not make twists and turns through the neighborhood, as Uber usually does with their maps.
After an hour-and-a-half, I got home. An hour and a half after we landed at the airport! I may start going back to yellow cabs for a while.
COMING UP: My brush with Urban cops – NY and Hoboken Friday’s Tomversation toons of the week What’s behind my Publix self-checkout scrutiny?
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Three of us, two of my cousins and me, did our yearly thing – we went upstate New York to pumpkin and apple pick.
We ended up at one of the farms we had been to before, we usually change it around each year.
It’s so peaceful and beautiful on the farm. The leaves are starting to change, there are pumpkins in the field and apple orchards at another end and a farm store where you can get apple cider donuts, pies, jams, and so many other things, including hot apple cider.
We went to lunch at an old tavern from 1832 in Cold Spring, a small village right on the Hudson River.
A Nor’easter was coming, so the weather was a little rainy, sort of misty at times, but still so beautiful up there.
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Comics Kingdom tells me I am on their short list to be published by them, but I didn’t see anyone I new at the booth to pester about that, so I didn’t
I tried to find my cousin who usually works the booth for the comics company he works with, but I couldn’t find him in the crowd.
See that Batman photo above, from his back, I was following him from behind, filming him for a mini movie and he turned and asked me to take his picture with Superman, who you can see there. I didn’t get the image on my camera, but I took a few of them together on his phone for him.
There were a few Spider-men around, not the usual dozens that I usually see and of course, there were many characters that I didn’t know who they were.
A couple of times I heard people thanking others for knowing who they were, so maybe they weren’t that common and only real fans knew who those cosplayers were.
When I left, scalpers were asking for my badge. I didn’t scan myself out because I knew I wasn’t returning, so it was not a usable badge if you don’t scan out, and I almost sold my “dead” badge to the scalpers, but then realized they wouldn’t lose out – an innocent person who buys the badge from them would suffer, so I didn’t sell it, I just saved it as a souvenir.
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There’s a deli down the block and I try to eat a small piece of salmon every day. It’s not dinner or lunch, it’s just a small piece of salmon. I get it at one of those hot bars, where you help yourself.
Well I walk in and there the other night and are two old ladies blocking the area where the salmon is. They were sort of debating what to eat at the hot bar in the deli. It’s set up like Whole Foods – two sides lined with food where you can see reach through the middle from one side to the other if you wanted to,
I wanted to get my salmon and leave, and I didn’t want to have to ask them to move, so I went around to the other side of the hot bar and reached through to grab a small piece. Keep in mind, there was a whole tray of salmon, plenty for all. And as far as I knew, I was being unobtrusive.
Well, the ladies went crazy when they saw my spatula reach through and start cutting a slice of salmon. They started fighting off my spatula with their spatula, sort of like a sword fight.
One of them broke up all the salmon and ruined it. She turned the beautiful full fillets of salmon into shredded salmon, just to keep me from getting a piece.
One lady reminded me of Ramona Singer, from the Real Housewives of New York – that type if you know who I mean, sort of an entitled, confused Upper East Sider. We were on the East Side of Manhattan, by the way.
I finally grabbed my small piece of salmon. One of the ladies called me a “low life.” I walked around the counter and towering over them, I said, “What did you call me?” She backed off and said something about waiting her turn to get the salmon and I didn’t wait, but I didn’t get in their way.
I walked away, paid and left. There was a security guard standing there watching it all and enjoying the show.
I ended up with this story, and so did these two old ladies who I am sure told the story to 100 people by now, “the salmon thief” (in their eyes) made their day in the end.
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