1. Twice a year my buddy Steve and I help a couple install and remove their lakeside dock at their property. It is good money for a short amount of time. Typically it takes us 20 minutes to get the 3 pieces of aluminum dock either down into the lake or up the stairs from the lake. It is a relatively fun time as the couple from New York are super nice and very appreciative. I will say though that it gets harder carrying the dock up and down the steps each time I do it. My elbows, shoulders, and low back are tight but getting a fistful of cash always makes the pain go away. That and ibuprofen, lots of ibuprofen.
2. I saw that Alice In Chains is on tour and is coming to Mohegan Sun in a few weeks. Man, 17-year-old me would have killed to see them, even without Layne Staley. Sadly being an adult makes spontaneous concert trips less likely. Oh I could swing the tickets and a hotel room but my mind goes to taking the day off of work and canceling clients, etc. 17-year-old me would probably slap the hell out of me if he heard that but it is what it is. Maybe if the show was a few months away I’d go. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last concert I went to period. Boy, that’s sad. I’ll have to change that in the near future.
3. It can get frustrating when your brain and your body don’t match up. I remember all of my running feats, personal bests, etc. However since my hip injury in 2017-18 I can only match those efforts in short bursts. I get down on myself but then it dawns on me. Who am I trying to impress? Honestly, who cares if I can run a 5:30-minute mile ever again? Maybe in time I can get closer to who I used to be but for now I need to be happy with being able to just be out on the road or bike trail or wherever I go.
4. Leaving things left unsaid is the worst pain. Finding a letter you meant to send to someone very special for their birthday 20 years ago stings bad. On one hand it reinforces the feelings I had for a girl that changed my life forever. Now, 20 years on, it makes me feel a bit empty. For one I have no way to get in touch with her today which means words left unsaid will remain unsaid. Also I know she has a totally full life that I’d never want to disrupt. I’m not saying that if I sent that birthday letter back in 2005 that she and I would be together now but leaving the words unsaid means I’ll likely never know what difference those words might have meant.
5. I am a big fan of ChatGPT. I use it to help me organize my podcast notes, to brainstorm ideas for future YouTube videos. I also enjoy Bing AI to craft realistic images of things I can’t capture with my camera. Perhaps the best new offshoot of these sites is the Sora image tech that’s a part of ChatGPT. You can upload your own photos and remix them into something else. For example, a goal of mine is to take a photo of me in high school and a photo of me present day and mix them together where we’re shaking hands with a caption, “Become the person your younger self would be proud to meet.” Or something similar to that. I had to laugh, though at this idea. I took an old photo of when I discovered a secret solitary grave deep in the woods of Truro, MA. I took a photo of myself hugging it in celebration. The remixed photo shows the spirit of the man buried there embarrassed by my emotional outburst. It’s pretty funny if I do say so myself.
6. This is the longest my hair has been in a lot of years. I used to buzz it to the skin almost weekly for close to 14 years. I am having to get used to having hair but it’s not so bad. That being said I did go on a photography adventure in the woods and ended up with a tick in my hair. I didn’t notice it for a few hours because it was bushwhacking through my hair. Luckily, I found it and dispatched of it. Just to be safe I did take a shower and scald myself in search of any others.
7. That photo adventure was a trip through the overgrown brush to the remains of the West Barnstable Brick Factory. A century ago it was a thriving business on Cape Cod making tens of millions of bricks annually. They dug a hole to measure how much clay they had left to make bricks. In doing so they struck water, flooded the clay pits, and went out of business shortly thereafter. It’s wild to stand before the crumbling facade and other remnants of a once mighty business. It’s also a difficult place to get to, especially during the warmer months. There’s water everywhere, greenhead flies everywhere, and no real trail to the factory. Anyone who attempts to visit should be prepared to get muddy, wet, chewed up, sliced by thorns, jabbed by branches, and of course attacked by ticks.
8. Easter Sunday was so much fun. Food, family, loads of laughs. I had to make sure that I held back a little when it came to eating. On Thanksgiving, I ate so much that I ended up having to go home early because I was filled to the max. I was smart but I still had a good amount of ham, pot roast, mashed potatoes, and a wealth of desserts. It made me very glad that I went for a run in the morning.
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| My running route on Easter Sunday. |
9. A highlight of Easter was the moneymaking idea my niece Emma and I came up with. In the spirit of ChatGPT, we decided to invent ChatCBD. It would be an AI product that reads your stress level and releases the appropriate amount of CBD needed for you to feel better. I have no clue how the product would get made, I’m just the idea man.
10. Easter was also April 20th, 4/20. Naturally, I celebrated with a little edible fun in the evening. I had to look it up and find out why 4/20 is the code for weed. Credit goes to five high school students in San Rafael, California, who in 1971 used "4:20" as a code to designate their meeting time to search for an abandoned cannabis crop, referring to it as "4:20 Louis.” So there you go, the more you know.
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