1. As the Back Injury Turns: My low back injury is slowly, very slowly, getting better. It’s taken ample use of the PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) machine at my work, loads of ibuprofen, Icy Hot patches, and a portable TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) unit. Despite all of these weapons in the battle to feel normal again, it’s still been the worst back injury I’ve had yet. Getting out of bed, out of my car, or bending to pick something up, or putting on my socks and shoes, is no picnic. One good thing to come from the injury is that I feel even more empathy for those who deal with debilitating back pain for long periods of time. Hopefully, before this blog has even been posted, I’ll be back to the gym so that I can get started on the next injury in the long line of them that has summed up my 2025.
2. I had a few things I wanted to get from Amazon this week. One issue was the fact that I didn’t qualify for free shipping. I was literally only ten cents away from qualifying. So what did I do? I went to their dollar bin to find something inexpensive to add to it. Sure, it was something I didn’t need, but, ironically, I’d end up saving money by getting that something extra. So what did I end up getting? A little travel-sized deodorant. Hey, it was a dollar. The best part is that I guarantee when the package arrives, I’ll have forgotten I ordered it and wonder what it’s doing in there.
3. This week in 2019, I went on an amazing 6-day, 2100-mile road trip across much of the Eastern United States. To celebrate, I created videos of each day using the photos and videos I took from that time. The videos are such a fun reminder of what is still my greatest adventure to date in my life. However, there isn’t a happy ending. Fun fact: a few months after I finished that road trip, I had a hard drive crash and lost about 80% of the photos and videos I took on that trip. I was only left with what I had already uploaded onto social media. Those are what I used for the videos. So as happy as the videos make me, they barely scratch the surface of what could have been. But it’s not over. I kept that ruined laptop. My plan is to try one last-ditch effort to remove the hard drive and try to find those ‘lost’ files. Maybe I’ll find them, likely I won’t, but either way, come next week, that old laptop will probably be smashed and thrown in a dumpster somewhere.
4. This is at the same time the best and worst time of year. I love all of the holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, but they also make it nearly impossible to keep your diet in check. It’s even worse when you’re looking to drop weight. I feel like I’m punting on the last 6 weeks of the year when it comes to health. I’ll get on a streak of a few days of good eating, but then I’ll be like, ‘hey it’s the holiday season and you should just enjoy yourself.’ Then wham New Year’s comes and I’m staring at 10 extra pounds to lose, on top of what I already wanted to lose. Oh well, it’s not my fault I love food. I just seem to love the bad ones more and more as I age.
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| How I will likely look come spring. |
5. For those looking for a new show to binge, I highly recommend Welcome To Derry. This is the prequel show to the IT movie franchise. Stephen King raves about the show, which is a good sign. As of this blog, I have watched the first four episodes. There are eight in total. It is beautifully shot. You will feel like you are in the early 1960s when the show is set. I don’t want to spoil much for those who might be interested in watching. Yes, there are familiar characters, or at least their relatives. Yes, Pennywise does appear. Yes, there have been some gory moments and good jump scares. If you like any of the IT movies, I recommend watching Welcome to Derry on HBO Max.
6. A fun little moment on a walk this week. The Beatles Anthology 4 was released on November 21st. It included remixed versions of the two new songs they put out in the mid-1990s, Free As A Bird and Real Love. These used the advanced audio technology that Peter Jackson used in his Beatles Get Back documentary, which he released in 2021. The big thing it does is it can isolate vocals in a song. This worked wonders for the poor quality John Lennon demos that were used in the *new* Anthology songs. It was first used on the 2023 Now and Then, which was promoted as the final new Beatles song. I had already heard and loved the remixed Free As A Bird, where Lennon’s voice sounded like he was in the studio with the other Beatles. I intentionally waited until I was out on my walk to listen to the remixed Real Love. I went and sat by the river and played it and just soaked in the scenery and the new sound. I highly recommend listening to both of the 1990s versions of those songs and then the new ones so you can fully appreciate the improvements in technology.
7. My YouTube channel suggestion this week is Vampire Robot. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s actually a great slice of nostalgia. The channel is filled with hundreds of videos inside different classic stores over the decades, mostly the 1970s through 1990s. It seems to be all old news b-roll footage. There is no narration; instead, it's just uncut video of people shopping in old mall stores and the like. I find it easy to click on any video and feel like I’m transported back to that time. There are other slices of life videos as well. I recommend the channel to anyone who likes nostalgia or who wants to relive their childhood.
8. Where I have my desk is right beside a window. I’m sitting there now, looking slightly to my right. On this day, it has been raining. No big deal. That is, except for some reason, the rain has made the area around the window a hotbed for bird action. No, not birds in the nearby trees singing. For some reason, the rain has apparently made the shingles and roof extra tasty. I have had to repeatedly go and bang on the window or the wall, as I keep hearing the sounds of little feet and beaks trying to tear into the shingles. It’s your standard blue jays, woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees trying to make a meal out of the soaked wood. If it were summer, I’d have the window open and I might try to grab a few photos of these foolish birds, but it’s winter, so I can only bang on the glass and shout like an angry old man.
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| Stop eating my shingles! |
9. This week is the birthday of my sister Kate. As I like to do with a lot of family and friends, I put together a little video featuring photos of us as kids way back in the far-off land of the 1980s. This year, more than any other, while looking at these old photos, I could see the resemblance between my sister and me and other family members. I could see nieces and nephews of the same ages, I could even see one of my uncles in my face. Obviously, we’re all related, but it sometimes comes as a surprise just how much we can look like each other. It became a game to see who I might look like in the photos. Although nothing beats the photo I found of my family back around 1910. In that photo, I could see several living family members who resembled people from 3 or 4 generations ago. Pretty wild stuff.
10. I don’t think I am alone when I say that what I do for work, I don’t usually want to do after work. Like when I worked in cooking, I didn’t want to cook at home. This meant loads of microwaved stuff, which I still enjoy. The thing is, working as a personal trainer for 10 years has left me less than enthused to go to the gym during my downtime. I find it a chore to go now. So much so that I’d rather layer up and go for a walk outside with temperatures in the high 30s instead of spending an hour in a warm, but crowded gym. It has become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where I go to the gym less, feel bad about myself, and that makes me not want to go and be seen at the gym by people who remembered me when I was in great shape. Things could be worse, though. Despite not wanting to go to the gym much anymore, I am still relatively healthy when compared to others my age. I still hold on to the belief that if I truly wanted to, I could snap myself out of it and be back to being in pretty good shape in short order. Sadly, I might be one of those ‘new year, new you’ fitness people in 2026.
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