1. I got an important message on Facebook this week. I need to convert my security to two-factor authentication before a certain date. The date? December 31, 1969. So not only do I need to change my security settings on Facebook, but I also need to find Doc Brown and the DeLorean and go back over 50 years to do it. It doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in security settings when they can’t even get the year right. If I have no other choice, I’ll wait until they at least get the date right before I go switching up my security settings.
2. Stand By Me and The Princess Bride were two of the most important films of my childhood in the 1980s. Rob Reiner was one of the most important directors of the last 40 years. Far beyond his work as Mike ‘Meathead’ Stivic on All In the Family, he created some of the most beloved films of my life. Death comes for all of us. It is undefeated. But for someone so beloved in Hollywood to be murdered in his own home in his late 70s, it’s beyond awful. I’m sure more details will be coming out in the weeks to come, but it appears as though it was his own son who did it. Sad, so damn sad. RIP Rob Reiner.
3. I signed up again for Netflix this week. It was mostly due to my FOMO over the final season of Stranger Things. I signed up for the lowest tier, with ads, for $7.99. I was anticipating being overloaded with ads. Thus far I have watched four episodes of Stranger Things Season 4, because I have to catch up, and I have yet to see one single ad. I even had to go check and make sure I didn’t accidentally sign up at a higher tier. You know what that means, right? At some point in the near future, the luck will even out, and I’ll be watching a show that is 75% ads. I have jinxed myself, but it’ll be worth it for Stranger Things, Cobra Kai, and Black Mirror.
4. I absolutely loved IT: Welcome To Derry. The show was loaded with easter eggs for lovers of the IT movies and also expanded the lore of those movies and the book. The plan is for 2 more seasons, each taking place in a different year as Pennywise continues his quest to destroy his enemies, present and future. If you enjoy horror, you’ll love this. It’s shot beautifully and should win an Emmy for cinematography, and other things. The acting is first-class. There are 8 total episodes, and each one feels like a movie in and of itself. I will not spoil anything for those who are watching or are going to watch. All I’ll say is that at the end, you’ll see how the prequel show lines up with the movies. Excellent.
5. In the continuing adventures of training my 12-year-old client comes this gem. We normally throw a 10# medicine ball back and forth for almost our entire 30-minute session. This week, his shoulder was tired, and his legs were tired from snow fun. I found a workaround by having him kick a kid’s rubber ball. His heart rate was still getting up there, and we made a game out of it. Luckily, without any weight to the ball, it could hit anything and not cause damage. Well, almost anything. During our session, the very first kick he did managed to be a line drive to my nuts. I had to not sell the impact, otherwise the whole session would have turned into him trying to nail me in the junk with the ball, or something more dangerous. In all, it was a fun time with 300 calories burned by me.
6. I have vivid dreams quite often. I will wake up multiple times per week, remembering whatever the dream was that I had. Most of the time, they are just random stuff, as most dreams tend to be. This week I had a dream like that, although it did feel like it had more meaning. I was at a school track with my friend Mike, of Monday Runday fame. For the first time ever, we were joined by our other friends Steve and Greg. What made this dream stand out was that our friend Pete showed up. Sadly, he passed away from cancer a little over 3 years ago. In the dream, he was drinking a specific type of water that, in the dream world, we recognized as being one taken off the market because it was proven to cause cancer. He had to have me and Greg scrub down the bleachers with soap and water so he could safely sit on them, as he had a compromised immune system in the dream. I don’t remember much of what we spoke about; it was brief, but I remember the water and us all bringing up how it had been pulled for causing cancer. I wish there were some special message Pete had for me to relay to the others. Maybe there was, but I forgot it. I think the fact that he was there, and I had never dreamed of all of those other friends before, makes this a special dream. Thanks for visiting, Pete.
7. As a big fan of the Back to the Future movies, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of time travel. I can’t build a time machine. I don’t know how to make a flux capacitor. However, little did I know that I didn’t need to build a time machine. I have access to one in the basement in the form of the dryer. I was drying my laundry this week and waiting for the last 3 minutes to tick off on the timer. All of a sudden, boom! It’s back up to 19 minutes! I went 16 minutes into the past just like that. Nothing important happened, like me knowing the Powerball numbers or being able to save someone from an accident. Nope. In fact, it was just the fact that my clothes apparently weren’t dry in the time the dryer said they would be. So, in conclusion, the dryer isn’t a time machine, but it is a liar.
8. A strange occurrence happened one afternoon this week. We had a day of pretty steady rain, but as the sunset drew close, I noticed that there were some breaks in the clouds. I figured it was a perfect excuse to get outside since it was in the 50s in mid-December. I drove to a nearby beach and snapped a few cool photos before heading back to my car to post them on social media. While I was sitting in my car, I heard a strange sound. I thought it was either a kid screaming or an odd dog barking. I looked in my mirrors and saw a fox standing in the parking lot, maybe 20 feet behind my car. I stepped out and began shooting a video. It trotted away, but not before making that same odd barking sound on video. I went back to sitting in my car, but heard the barks a few more times and saw the fox walking through the parking lot toward the beach. Being foolish, I got out and started trying to find it to get more photos or videos. Now I had watched the fox running, and it didn’t look injured, so I felt like I wouldn’t get attacked. It was also dusk, so it was hard to see where it could have been hiding. Eventually, after walking across the entire beach, I heard it barking again. It was sitting up on a hill next to a fence, barking. I didn’t dare get too close, so I didn’t end up getting any more video. A person walking to the beach also heard the fox and thought it might have been calling its mate. I wasn’t going to keep chasing after it, especially since it disappeared under the fence. I did get the video, though.
9. I have been writing for decades. I first wanted to become a writer when I was in 2nd grade. I’ve done poetry, song lyrics, short stories, novels, blogs, and various other types of books. Despite having some experience in writing, I am surprised at how much of a learning curve there is for me when it comes to script writing. As some of you know, I am working on a script for a feature-length film that will be happening in the summer of 2026. It’s based on an old short story of mine, The Cabin, which I wrote in 2009. First off, I have to revise the actual book since my writing has improved in the last 15 years. Then I have to adapt that into a script. Why is it a learning curve? I guess it’s having to include a lot more ancillary details like where the scene is, some of how the camera should shoot, descriptions of actions, and the like. Think of it as having to describe everything that’s happening in as much detail as possible. Luckily, I have some time to get the first draft of the script done. After that, the director of the film, who has loads of experience, can help guide me to the finish line.
10. It was three long weeks that I wasn’t able to go for any outdoor walks. The weather was the main culprit. The only thing better than the 45-degree and sunny day was digging deep into my past with 90s Pop Radio on Pandora. Oh, but not just '90s Pop, but the ‘Discovery’ setting, deep cuts, man. After about 3 miles of my 5.5-mile walk, I was full-on back in the 90s, and it was bliss. I want to find a way to make 2026 more like the 1990s because the 2020s have been the worst decade of my life. Not sure what I can do to make that happen. Music, yes, a lot of the same friends, yes. Unfortunately, I am on the downside to 50, no matter how much I listen to Nirvana and wear flannel, that won't change. Maybe it’s a mindset. In the 90s, my whole life was an open road, and seemingly anything was possible. Now in the 2020s, it’s like I’m on a pothole-filled dirt road running through a wide-open desert with no side streets and no scenic overlooks. Maybe that’s the goal for 2026, to bring back the wonder I had for life in the 1990s. I’ll get to work on that.
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| This is how the 2020s have felt in my life. |
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