Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #68: Bonfire, Odd Cemeteries, Serial Killer Training, etc.

1. Every time I think I’ve seen everything something else wacky happens. I was sitting at the beach on a beautiful sunny afternoon. It was just a perfect day and I was listening to a podcast and enjoying the spring air. I thought at one point I noticed some smoke from an area straight ahead on the sand but there were people around and I was not paying that close of attention. That was until the fire department showed up. It was then that I noticed an old lady is a red sweater and plaid pajama pants waving them over and pointing to where I had seen the smoke. According to another bystander who was explaining it to a car parked near me the lady had called the fire department on a group of people with a small fire going. Not sure if it was for cooking or just relaxing next to but the firefighters chatted calmly with them and the fire was put out. I stayed a half hour longer and the old lady and the group of people were all still there so I don’t think there was a problem after but who know for sure.

2. I am a slacker when it comes to transcribing my podcasts. I know they help people find your show in searches and such but it can be tedious and you typically need to pay for sites to do it. Occasionally I find free trials to allow me to get an episode or two transcribed but that’s it. So when I found a site that has so far allowed me to transcribe nearly 30 shows for free you bet your ass I’m just shoving the files into that site assembly line style. I’m going to go until they either shut me down or I transcribe them all. If you’re interested the link is here: https://restream.io/tools/transcribe-audio-to-text

3. There is a cemetery located near where my friend Mike and I do our Monday Runday exercise. If we get tired of running around the school track we will sometimes go for a run through that cemetery. What makes this run unique is not the cemetery itself but how the cemetery is laid out. If you run all of the paved routes in and around the cemetery you get a surprise if you are recording your run on a fitness app. It turns out that the cemetery’s lay out is shaped like a hand extending its middle finger. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. Now it is a fun part of some runs because I can share the satellite image afterward and get some laughs.

The cemetery layout I couldn't make up.

4. The vast vast majority of people who come into my day job are great people, like 99%. It is an easy task to work with so many good people who are looking for help getting healthy. That fact makes the bad ones stand out far more. There is one guy I hope is just a memory soon. He’s vaguely racist, vaguely homophobic, and definitely creepy. He looks like a lobotomized Art Carney, with big bulging eyes and a voice that gets really quiet when he wants to say something disturbing. The best part of seeing him is the sight of the door closing behind him as he leaves.

5. A few months ago I wrote about how my recommended videos on Facebook were all hydraulic presses crushing stuff and super hot metal balls being placed on or in different things. It was an odd combo but one that was a self-fulfilling prophecy since I’d keep clicking these videos when they popped up. Well I have an update now. I don’t know how these topics first got suggested to me but currently my Facebook Reels feed is filled with people removing beehives and videos of old super dirty and gross cars getting power-washed. I also have just found out there is apparently a game called PowerWash Simulator where you play as someone who runs a power washing business. I cannot promise you I won’t go watch videos of people playing it.

Yes this is a real game

6. This week we had to move some unused gym equipment into storage at my day job. It had to be hauled outside and put into the back of my boss’ van. I am one that I have always had a sarcastic sense of humor. My Nana used to say we were ‘sharp’ on that side of the family. I try to be quick with witty and funny quips. I might have crossed a line this week though. As I walked through the lobby at work carrying a 100 pound punching bag over my shoulder I remarked to the people who were watching that I was practicing to be a serial killer, I’d already gotten the carrying of the body down. I think(hope) they knew I was joking but if I get a cop knocking on my door asking about unsolved murders I’ll know someone in that lobby took me seriously.

7. I was excited this week to see that Buzzsprout, the site that hosts my podcast, was allowing you to have a transcript of your episodes for free, at least temporarily. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a slacker when it comes to transcripts so I’m taking full advantage. The funny part of this entry is that when you get the transcript, you can go in and edit it naturally. It can divide the transcript up by different speakers which is a cool feature. That being said I host my show by myself so theoretically the AI shouldn’t be detecting any other speakers. All of my transcripts have at least 2 speakers detected with one show having 11. Eleven speakers?! I mean I can do some different voices but really. I had to go into each episode and discard the different speakers feature, but otherwise, it’s been a huge help for me.

8. This is the time of year where I am torn. Not about anything important but about getting my car washed. I have a white car and where I park it gets caked in pollen and other various debris during the spring. I always need to wash it but the issue is spending money at the car wash only to have it covered in filth again by the next morning. I don’t know what a good ratio is. Do I wash it once a week, every other week? Or do I never wash it and let the rain do the job? That’s bad news when we have a dry spell, my car looks like it’s been abandoned in a field for years.

9. I was hanging at the beach one afternoon this week. It was cloudy but you could tell the weather was shifting and the sun was on its way. Once it came out I took a nice walk by the water, soaking in the scenery. Rather than going back to my car I sat at a table near the snack bar area. It’s not open yet and neither are the bathrooms. A few minutes later, a man drove into the parking lot in a Mustang. Not a new one but an early 2000s one that looked beat to hell, including a torn-up and taped sunroof. He parked way far away and walked all the way over just to find out the bathrooms were closed. I was surfing my phone so I hadn’t paid attention until I heard him pull on the door. He then started talking to me about nearby construction and I tried to be polite but really didn’t care. I just wonder why he parked 200 feet away when there were open spots next to the bathrooms, quicker road to disappointment.

10. According to my mother, I have been on a hot streak with my gifts for special occasions over the last few years. For Mother’s Day I had to keep my streak. Months ago my mom mentioned how much she missed her butterfly bush that had been outside of the living room window for years. I filed that away specifically for Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, I have little knowledge of plants. Luckily I went to a local place, Hart Farm in Dennis, where my mom took us kids for years especially to get corn. They directed me to the exact butterfly bush I needed. My gift streak is alive and well.

The butterfly bush I got my mom for mother's day

11. Speaking of Mother’s Day I have been fortunate to have many strong female presences in my life who are mothers. My Nina and Nana, my sisters Kate and Lindsay, my Aunts Kelly, Susan, and Emma. There are also loads of friends. However, nobody can hold a candle to my mother. She has always been my biggest supporter. I feel a lot of the time that I am working hard on chasing my dreams to validate her support. She dealt with a few less-than-stellar men in her life, unfortunately, one is my father. She also went to school full-time at night to become a nurse while also working full-time and raising 5 kids between 8-15 years old. There are many times that I sit and wish I could do more for her but until that time I figure that being a decent responsible person is a fair enough tribute.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #43 - Early Birthday Gift, Owl Chats, Free Food, etc.

 

1. One of my oldest friends Hasan came down to Cape Cod from up near Boston with his son for a visit. I’ve known him since 1989, so yeah a long time. What was really neat is that he wanted to see my mother in addition to wanting to see me. It was a great reflection on what he thought of her and what our family meant to him growing up. We got to sit and talk for a good 90 minutes in my mom’s living room and it felt like it was back in the 90s again. It was a perfect early birthday present for my mother who hadn’t seen Hasan since we graduated high school in 1996.

2. Piggybacking on that last one. I took a quick detour into the basement storage area at my mom’s and found an audio cassette Hasan and I recorded probably back in late 1990, or early 1991. My plan is to try to get myself a cassette-to-computer USB adapter to try to get that audio saved. I feel like a 34-year-old cassette might only have 1 play left in it so I have to make it count.

It likely has 1 play left in it.

3. What’s with people who wear sunglasses indoors? Is it supposed to be a fashion statement? It’s one thing if it’s those transition lenses that change from inside to outside. But really, it doesn’t make you look cool with your shades on looking at cereals in a supermarket. Although I will admit that I felt kind of cool during Covid when masks were mandatory and I’d go into a supermarket with a mask, sunglasses, and a hoodie. At any other point in time, I’d have been the sketchiest guy ever, but in 2020 I was being safe.

4. Living across the street from a small plot of conservation land I am used to brushes with nature. From coyotes to turkeys and loads of rabbits, I see animals all the time. One night this week while getting ready to brush my teeth I could hear loudly outside a pair of owls engrossed in conversation. They were so loud I could hear them through closed windows. I quietly opened a window and recorded them chatting. In the end, they must have been hooting loudly outside for at least 20 minutes. At one point I wanted to tell them that was enough I got the point, but I don’t speak owl.

5. “Beards are like sweatpants for your face. It doesn’t matter how chubby you’re getting when wearing one.” – Chad Daniels

I love that quote from comedian Chad Daniels. It does hit a bit close to home though this week. I’ve been growing a pretty impressive long mostly white goatee for about 7 months. At this point though I am torn. I like it, but it is also kind of emblematic of not caring or taking care of myself. Not shaving leads to not doing other things at least for me. Slacking on the gym, slacking on eating right, or taking my daily vitamins. There are times when I am deep into beard life that I think I need to get rid of it to spark a wave of energy. So maybe that’s coming, but it’s also getting colder…

6. Maybe a little TMI but it’s funny. At work in our public bathroom, we have a thing called Air Scense. If you don’t know it’s a deodorizing spray for when someone drops a bomb in the bathroom. There’s the TMI. The funny part is the fact that the citrus-scented spray bottle we have has basically been empty for close to a year. Yet every time we think it’s done it has more sprays left. It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode when Kramer test drives the car and wants to see how far past ‘E’ the needle can go before running out of gas. It’s like we can buy more stinky bathroom spray but we’re finding it more fun to see how long it can last us.

Nothing lasts forever, except maybe one of these.

7. My new obsession is chili mango chicken drumsticks. They sell them, fully cooked, at the Shaw’s near me. Not only are they good, but they’re cheap. This is naturally a bad combo for me since it makes it easy for me to buy way too much for not a lot of money. At first, I thought there must be a catch as to why they’re cheap, so far I haven’t gotten sick, or grown an extra limb. Granted there is still time for that, or to just gain loads of weight. We’ll see.

8. A recurring statement I have made on social media is a U2 lyric. ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.’ That pops up in my Facebook memories every now and then with the oldest one I’ve seen being 2008. I still stand by the statement that I haven’t found what I am looking for in life. On one hand, it’s hilarious that I still haven’t found whatever it is for going on 17 years. On the other hand, it’s pretty depressing that I’m wandering down this road searching for something that I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it success? Is it happiness? Is it stability? Is it love? I still don’t know.

9. I ordered food through the McDonald’s app this week. Yes, don’t judge, stress eating is an issue I am trying to deal with. Also, have you seen the deals you can get on that app? It’s dangerous. Anyway, I placed my order and got the receipt via email on my phone. I went inside and waited for close to 25 minutes before asking if they’d received my order. I showed them the receipt and they made my food. The woman said the app was having issues and that I wasn’t the only one. Flash forward a few hours later and I got a follow-up email from McDonald’s telling me that due to the problem with the app, my payment was being refunded. So not only did get some good (but bad for me) food, I also ended up getting it for free. Double win, and maybe soon a double chin.

10. There are few things more demoralizing than going out for your longest walk in over a month and ending up injured. It is my right plantar fascia (arch) and I honestly have no idea how it happened. My days of running are likely done to a degree, but walking? I’m just trying to get back close to the shape I was in before Covid and it’s like roadblocks just keep landing in my way. I feel like saying ‘ok universe, I give up’ and getting one of those motorized scooters. 

Maybe I should give up and just become this guy.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #42 - Daylight Savings, Hornet Ambush, Who Are You?, etc.

1. Why do we still have Daylight Savings Time? The first day of ‘falling back’ left us with a sunset time at 4:34pm. Combine that with the temperature in the low 40s and it’s like a highway to depression. I was doing some content work when I looked at the time. It was after 3:30pm and I realized I had an hour of sunlight left. I had to rush outside to enjoy some cold and windy sun just so I didn’t feel like I was missing out. I wish it was just 75 degrees all the time with a sunset of around 7pm. That would be my ideal setup. By the way, the next time the sun sets at 5pm is February 4, 2025. Only 4 months away.

2. Whatever happened to Quiznos? 15 years ago they were everywhere. I remember making it a point to visit the Hyannis location near me probably weekly. The Baja Chicken and the prime rib steak subs were legendary. Then again I was far less healthy when I visited them frequently. It was like in a flash both Cape Cod locations were gone. I went on a major road trip 5 years ago all around the eastern U.S. and one of my most important stops was at the nearest Quiznos to me located in Orange, CT. Out of curiosity I just checked and that location is now gone. In fact, the closest Quiznos to me currently is over 6 ½ hours away in Montreal. I’d love a Baja Chicken but not if I need a passport to get it.

My last visit to Quiznos in Orange, CT in 2019

3. Driving home from work one night this week, naturally it was after dark. This was a main road so I have rarely if ever seen animals crossing due to the higher volume of traffic. What I saw that night was scarier than coming upon a deer. At a pretty windy, blind curve there in the middle of the road was a woman standing there. She was barely visible, luckily I wasn’t going fast and had time to slow and swerve. It was crazy. She didn’t even flinch as I approached. I didn’t see anything about an accident in that area on the night so I’m hopeful that she wasn’t hit by someone else.

4. A strange phenomenon I found recently was in my Facebook Messenger app. I found that people I wasn’t friends with, that I might have had 1 conversation with many years ago, were popping up as ‘online’ and ahead of many actual friends. I had a few times looking at names and wondering who the hell they were. Only when I finally clicked on one did I see our chat history. There were a few from 2016/2017. Like why do they get priority over actual friends & family? I ended up restricting these accounts so I wouldn't see them anymore. Sorry to any of them but not really.

5. A few weeks ago I mentioned how I end up with tons of yellow jackets on my car on some warm days at work. I think it’s the trees dumping pollen on it and the bees use my car as a buffet. Luckily they are no bother. Fast forward to this week and I was finishing a walk on a warm afternoon. When I got back to my car I did not see loads of yellow jackets, not even one. What I did see though was a massive Bald-Face Hornet. It is probably the size of 3 yellow jackets. But it was wandering around on the hood of my car and up along the driver’s side door. Again it was pretty chill so I didn’t worry about being stung. That was until a minute later. You see, I uploaded a video of the hornet to social media while standing on the other side of my car. By the time I got back to the driver’s side, the hornet was gone. Being a nice day I had my windows cracked open. My first thought was that it had crawled into my car. I didn’t see it despite looking for a few minutes. That being said I’d be lying if I wasn’t expecting it to ambush me while driving and I’d end up flipped over in a ditch.

Bald-Faced Hornet on my car

6. One morning driving to work I decided to stop off to shoot the sunrise at the beach. It was peaceful and beautiful and also came at about 6:20am. I took my time to enjoy it but this also left me behind when it came to getting to work. So I was flying down the road and making up time. When I got to a back road I was still going pretty fast. Up ahead a majestic scene was unfolding as a deer gracefully stepped out onto the road from some reeds. That is until it saw me coming and it basically dove back through the reeds like something out of a cartoon. I then finally slowed down wondering if I might see another deer but no such luck. I did get to work on time though so it was a half-win.

7. There’s nothing better than being in a nice deep sleep and your left calf deciding it’s time to explode. Yeah, getting a random calf cramp at 5am will end your dreams really fast. Does anyone else get those? I don’t get calf cramps at night often but any cramp I get is that same spot. Oh well, it beats when I was working in restaurants and I had bad Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Back then my right hand would ball into a fist and go numb while I slept. Then if I rolled over and opened my hand I’d get those terrible ‘pins & needles’ that would wake me up. It got so bad that I either had to sleep with my right arm hanging off of the side of the bed, or worse, I had to wear a winter glove to stop my hand from balling up. Good times.

Not the way to awaken from a dream.

8. Change what you can change. Control what you can control. That doesn’t mean don’t worry about those things you can’t change, or are out of your control. It just means to focus on the good things you have because those things you can’t control are going to happen regardless. Life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react to it.

9. I went to help take an aluminum dock out of a lake this week. It’s something my buddy Steve and I do in the spring and fall for a nice couple from New York. I’ve been helping for 3 years now. It’s relatively short work and good money. Sometimes the dock feels like it weighs 1,000 lbs. Other times it’s cold, or wet. This time the weather was decent and we did it toward sunset. It was a pretty smooth removal of the dock and we had a good time chatting with the couple before we left. Of course, as I age I realize that just because something was pain-free at the time doesn’t mean it truly was. I got up the next morning and both of my elbows were tight and sore. Steve and I joked that we might eventually need to recruit people to help us as our bodies are falling apart.

10. When I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom I typically try to leave the lights off. I know my surroundings so I can navigate my way without incident. Plus if the lights are turned on my brain immediately thinks it’s time to wake up. Just remember if you’re making your way to the bathroom at night with the lights off to check if the toilet seat is down. It’s way safer (and cleaner) to pee that way in the dark rather than hoping you find the bowl and instead make a mess on the floor. Anyway, the seat wasn’t down and well you know the rest. Luckily the rest of my overnight jaunt to and from the bathroom was without incident. 

Initial Impressions 2.0 #18: Is This Thing On?, Remote Controlled Moron, ATM Etiquette, etc.

1. I’ve been messing around with the idea of turning this blog into a second podcast for weeks now. I decided to make an attempt at recording a video version of last week’s blog. I set up my microphone and my Ring light and it looked halfway decent. I decided to use my Clipchamp video editing software to record the video since it has a green screen option in post-editing. So I recorded the entire podcast, probably something like 15 minutes. Once I was finished I was trying to figure out how to stop the recording. The only problem was I hadn’t even started recording. It’s not just ‘hit record’ and go, no there are more steps for Clipchamp which I wasn’t aware of. I basically talked to nobody for 15 minutes, yay. After that my eyes were hurting from the Ring light so I shelved the video for another time.

2. It’s not every day that you see someone wash their car at a gas station. There was a woman who after pumping gas used the squeegee and cleaner that is next to most gas pumps to quite literally wash her entire SUV. She even had her own rags to dry it off. I don’t think the attendants can do anything really since it probably happens almost never. Still, it was weird to watch. Needless to say, it motivated me to wash my car, but at an actual car wash.

3. I’m lucky to live only a few minutes drive from the beach. I take advantage of that nearly every day. I’ll go and sit and listen to music, or a podcast, or just listen to the ocean. I’m setting a peaceful scene here. It’s rare to see something I’ve never seen before at the beach. The other day though I was relaxing and got to bear witness to a seagull throwing up next to my car and another seagull leaning over and eating that throw-up like it was no big deal. It was like something out of a gross-out movie.

Yeah, it was kinda like that...

4. I don’t get how someone can be standing in their driveway driving their remote-controlled car into the actual road repeatedly and then get mad at me for having the audacity to drive to work. Either selfish, entitled, or stupid, or a fine mix of all three.

5. It’s not every day that you see a squirrel inside, let alone inside the gym where I work. Granted it was a cute little fluffy one but it’s not good for training people if you have a wild animal crawling along pipes on the ceiling. It was in there when nobody was around so it wasn’t too bad, but I was surprised nobody heard me in the next room yell when I spotted the squirrel. It scurried away through a hole around a heating pipe in case you were wondering.

It didn't even wipe down the equipment after!

6. It’s at the point now that anytime I see a beautiful girl anywhere I just assume she’s either too young or is in a relationship. I might be right or wrong but I can’t really find out because a stranger walking up to a beautiful girl and asking her age and status typically won’t fly unless you’re in a bar and can blame alcohol. Sadly I don’t drink anymore so I can’t use that excuse. Maybe they should all wear IDs that share the info?

7. From the ‘You Can’t Un-see That’ Department: I went into the locker room at the gym to quickly use the urinal. There are also a pair of stalls. As I turned the corner to where these were located an older man came out of one stall with his pants and underwear around his knees. He proceeded to open the next stall to go in there with his bare ass hanging out. It was not a pleasant sight early in the morning. I rushed out of there just in case he did something in that other stall. Sadly even though I didn’t see his face in there I found out who he was because he was the only person in the entire gym wearing jeans to work out.

8. Having a Facebook fan page for my podcast I have had to get used to being spammed by bots claiming my account will be shut down. I tend to get 3-4 a week at least. I’m not sure if it was a bot but the other day I had the same account leave the same comment on my last 8 posts. No sir, if you are real, I don’t want your help in getting more YouTube views. I’d basically be paying a bot to give me a virus.

9. A common sales trick in advertisements is to put the word ‘only’ or ‘just’ in front of a high price to make you think it’s actually a good deal. When I hear I could lease some rando SUV for ‘only’ $649/mo (plus a huge initial down payment of course) I picture the marketing people laughing at potential buyers as they put that into the ad copy.

10. An update from a few weeks ago. I shared a photo of a beach near my work that had a sign telling people they couldn’t drive their vehicles down a paved section and onto the beach. Apparently, the sign wasn’t a good enough explanation. Now as you can see there is a large rock at the beginning of that paved section. I guess it was figured that if people can’t read, or understand what the image of a vehicle with the red circle with a line through it meant, they’d understand a giant rock blocking the entrance. Where’s the ‘shaking my head’ emoji?

How it started. How it's going.

11. In your opinion what is proper etiquette when in your vehicle at an ATM? Do you keep back from the vehicle in front of you a bit like you would if you were standing at an ATM? Or do you get right up on their bumper? I keep back because it just seems more polite. If I was standing at an ATM and the person behind me was on me like a backpack I’d be pretty pissed. So why not the same for in your car? I don’t know that was just something that popped into my head.