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Saturday, June 15, 2024

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog - #21: Grampa's Donuts, Just Like Flanders, Stinky Footprints, etc.




1. Hole In One Donuts has 4 locations. There are 3 on Cape Cod including a new one that opened in Yarmouth at the end of May. My Grampa in his life operated several donut shops including one in Hyannis. When he was forced to close his shop in the early 1990s the place that bought his equipment was Hole In One. They make their donuts exactly the same way my Grampa used to. This week I bought a half-dozen from their new location. I brought these to my mother, stepfather, and sister so that they could eat Grampa’s donuts again. I highly recommend Hole In One.


Grampa's donut shop ad from 1976



2. I live within walking distance of a high school. This means I can walk down to the track to run. After a recent run, I climbed up into the bleachers to an enclosed area to sit for a few minutes. My mistake. There was a bird angrily tweeting as it was trying to build a nest in one of the corners. I sat for a few more minutes until the bird brought two more birds. By that time the numbers game was against me. I mean I could take one of those little fluff balls, but 3? I don’t know. 


3. Two days a week I have to get up extra early to go to work. Typically I am up around 4:45am. That means the night before I am in bed early as well. I am popping melatonin at 7:30pm and drawing the blinds. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode when Bart, Lisa, and Maggie get sent to live with the Flanders. They end up in bed while it’s still sunny and kids are playing outside. That’s my Tuesday and Wednesday nights.


4. Is there a certain time of day/night when emergency vehicles don’t or won’t use their sirens? I have seen ambulances heading to a nearby retirement home after 10pm with no sirens going. Yet this week I heard sirens before 6am. Is there no rhyme or reason? Or is this just done on a case-by-case basis?


5. I was on a walk on a sunny afternoon on the bike trail. A young couple rode by with their son in the little rear trailer. The father turned and said something to me as he rode by. I could see his mouth move and he started to slow down. My first thought was uh-oh are we going to fight? Quite the opposite they were so sweet and asked which direction on the bike trail would get them to a beautiful spot first. I pointed them back the way they came and told them to go about 2 miles. They were so grateful and I was happy I helped someone instead of a random bike trail fight.


6. At my work we are working with something called metabolic breath analysis. The company’s name is PNOE(Greek for breath). Before we roll it out to our patients we all have had to do both the resting and active metabolic tests. The gist of the testing is that you are given results for 23 biological markers in your body as well as ways to improve them. Highly valuable stuff. My favorite stat to come from the tests is biological age. It’s a good view of how well you’ve lived up to that point. I am 13 years younger biologically than chronologically. So I am well on my way to living to 100.


7. I was driving from Sandwich to Yarmouth on Rt. 6A the other day when it began to rain. When I say ‘rain’ I mean it went from a few drops to an ocean on the streets in a minute. It was one of the hardest downpours I’ve ever been in and makes it easy to see how cars can get suddenly inundated with water in a flash flood. Then just as quickly as it was insanity it was over. A wild ride.





8. I buy so many of the same products and visit Stop & Shop so often that I sadly know when prices are lower for these things at different locations. At a store probably half an hour from where I live I started noticing the differences. First I was like ‘Oh man everything is cheaper here.’ Then it morphed into ‘Oh man I have memorized prices for the things I buy.’ I didn’t know whether to pat myself on the back for having a good memory or hang my head in embarrassment that this type of info is what I fill my limited brain cells with.


9. A clean gym is a happy gym. The gym I work at? Clean. The gym I’m a member at? Not so much. The latest adventure was a urinal being out of order leading me to have to use a stall. No biggie right? That was until next to the toilet in the stall was a nice smear of poop on the floor. To top it off there was a sliding footprint meaning someone slipped in it. Me? I had to use my memories of playing Twister to avoid the hazard but still hit the toilet. That’ll be a fun job for whoever has to clean it.


Not too far off from the gym bathroom



10. Cape Cod in the summer equals people backing out of their driveway into the street without hesitating despite you driving toward them. I think it’s the same ratio of stupid people as in the off-season it just is a larger number based on how many people come down to visit. Hell, even the birds forget what they’re doing. I had a bird in the road ahead as I drove, not fast, but instead of it flying to either side of my car, or you know up into the air, it flew at my car underneath it. All I saw in my rearview was feathers.


Song of the Week: Oh Honey -Delegation

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