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I chose to put on my 'Life is Better with Cats' socks this morning. For a couple of reasons.

Today would have been Squeak's fourth birthday. Well, kind of. I don't know for sure when his actual date of birth was, but I opted to coincide it with my friend's birthday (it would be easy to remember!).

Unfortunately, Squeak left us in December 2023. I often find me wondering whether he would still be doing some of the mad things he'd do like sitting himself in a Walkers Crisps box with both of his front legs hanging on the side (that photo, alongside Oreo, made appeared during Channel 5's coverage of NFL Monday Night Football!).

Would he still come in for the hugs as soon as the lights turn off? Oreo still does, so I'm sure he would have. 

Or, better yet - would he randomly choose to lay right on my back when I am on my laptop like he used to?

An AI cartoon Copilot created from a real Squeak photo in my collection

I also wonder whether Oreo still remembers his friend. He himself has an unofficial birthday coming up.

I Agree With Last Night's Fight Result

I saw the 'controversial' conclusion of the Oleksandr Usyk versus Rico Verhoeven fight and think the referee made the right call.

Usyk had knocked his challenger down. Mark Lyson then instructed Verhoeven's team to reinsert their fighter's gumshield back into his mouth and the contest resumed. Usyk came in on the attack once again and Verhoeven wasn't doing a good job at defending himself from the onslaught. The ref came in and stopped the fight one second short of the end of the eleventh round.

With that said, going by the scorecards, it looked like Verhoeven was seemingly on his way to victory because two judges had the fight tied 95-95 while the third had it 96-94 in favour of Verhoeven.

I wonder if this will get a rematch. Verhoeven deserves one.

A Returned Call (From A Call I Didn't Make)

I had a phone call this morning.

The person on the other end said he was returning my missed call.

Couldn't have been me. I haven't put credit on my phone this week, so I pointed that out.

It then struck me - my number must have been cloned by scammers. So, I suggested that might have happened to the man who rang me back.

Well.. the caller wasn't ringing 'me' back, was he? Ha. 

Gawd. I hope this isn't the beginning of a stream of people calling me because scammers used my number to hide behind their con.

What a bunch of spoofers.

Kyle Busch Passes Away

I don't follow NASCAR Racing, but I did know who Kyle Busch was. 

The driver died yesterday at the age of forty-one leaving behind a wife and two young children.

Devastating. That's really all I can say to sum up that part of this story.

As I mentioned at the start, I knew Busch. It vaguely had to do with his driving career. I remember the driver from his appearances on WWE TV. He was once a special guest host of Monday Night Raw during the period when World Wrestling Entertainment would have people from other sports and entertainment show up for a night. 

I surmise it was over a decade later when Busch became WWE 24/7 Champion in an angle with R-Truth.

In-between those stints, I'd hear his name mentioned on American radio and think to myself 'ah, he's the WWE fan'.

I got to say that twice within the past day. The first was when I came across a social media post from The Athletic with a news report stating that Busch had been hospitalised due to a 'severe illness'. Then, hours later, I read he had passed.

When I looked up his biography for today's post, I noticed another thing we had in common. As well as being WWE fans we also shared the same birthday.

Funny Trivia Note About Yesterday's Europa League Final Result For Villa

Here's something I loved to realise about Aston Villa's Europa League win last night.

Villa manager - Unai Emery - has now won the league on five occasions. He has done it with three different teams.

His Sevilla teams won it in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16. That was followed by a win for Villareal at the conclusion of the 2020-21 season. 

Last night saw him lead Aston Villa to the trophy with a 3-0 victory over Freiburg.

Notice something?

All three of Emery's  Europa League winning clubs have 'Villa' somewhere in their names. 

A brill trivia note. 

This Weekend

It's going to be an interesting Premier League final day this weekend weekend because there's fight to stave off relegation between Tottenham and West Ham United.

The Hammers are currently in the basement of the league with thirty-six points. Spurs are just above them, in seventeenth position, with thirty-eight.

To escape the drop, West Ham must get a home win over Leeds United and then hope Spurs fails to get a result against Everton.

Should those occur, it'll be Spurs going down.

Manchester City's 1-1 draw against Bournemouth last night meant that Arsenal were crowned Premier League champs. It was the first time they had reached the pinnacle since Arsene Wenger's glory days.

It would make for quite a trivia question - years from now - if  'in which year did Arsenal win the Premier League and their local rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, get relegated?' is asked.

Roll on Sunday.

Birthday Spread - Archie Manning

I looked at today's page of my American football trivia calendar and noticed that today is Archie Manning's birthday.

Upon noticing that the patriarch of the Manning Family is celebrating today, I thought I'd do what used to be a thing on Hawksbee and Jacobs' radio show on TalkSport (they could still do it for all I know) in which the pair would run through names of celebrities with birthdays on that particular day. It was up to Paul Hawksbee to guess their age. They'd then work out how far - or close! - Paul's guesses were to the actual age.

I guessed Manning is seventy-six today. He's actually seventy-seven. So, I would have had one on the spread.

Not bad.