Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #125: Class of 96, More Mall Dreams, Too Hot, etc.

1. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 30 years since I graduated from high school. At times, it feels like yesterday. That might be helped by the fact that I have the entire ceremony on video. I can see my old friends and classmates when we were all teenagers with our lives ahead of us. I can feel the promise of the years to come and not the weight of mistakes, missed opportunities, and ‘what ifs.’ I remember not realizing just how big a change was coming as I crossed the grassy field and took hold of my diploma. I think I was just itching to get out of the dress clothes on a warm late spring morning. Then again, way more often I feel like that day was a lifetime ago, and in many ways it was. I am now in my late 40s and most of the time feel as though I must have missed my exit on the highway we were all traveling. My mission now is to either find my way back to that missed exit or to keep going until I find something that makes the missed opportunities worth it. Yes, 30 years is a long time. I do know that I have many years left to fulfill the promise I saw lying ahead of me when I first held that high school diploma in my hand. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen a lot and done a lot in the last 30 years, but I feel it’s like comparing the sales of Michael Jackson’s Bad album to his Thriller album. Most musicians would kill to have an album sell like Bad, but only one in a million can sell like Thriller. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me.


2. I guess I shouldn’t expect too much from people. I put together four polls for my upcoming 250th podcast episode. I’m calling it Listener’s Choice because obviously, the people listening will choose what GenX nostalgia topics are on that particular show. I had people ‘liking’ the posts but not voting in the poll. How stupid is that? It takes literally the same time and effort to click one of the poll options as it does to ‘like’ it. I am grateful to the people who understood the assignment, and the podcast will be a good one. The others, though? It’s like they’re children getting mad at being asked (nicely) to do something to help out around the house. Don’t tell me to pick up my room, I’m going to make a bigger mess! Seriously, I was tempted to block everyone who liked the polls but didn’t vote, and I know because the polls show me each vote and by whom. But going back to the top, I guess I shouldn’t expect too much from people. That’s on me.

Coming soon!

3. It’s funny how a major anniversary or milestone can affect your mind. I mentioned the high school graduation anniversary. That same day was Monday Runday, which some of you might remember as the weekly meetup with my longtime friend and old classmate Mike. We run, or in my case, mostly walk, at a local track. I haven’t run much in the last few months as my left knee has decided to retire early. That changed this week. Perhaps I was inspired by the weather? No, it was the fear of being old. I decided to run more than I have in a while at the track. Now, granted, it was not much, but still good enough. Just the thought of it being 30 years since I finished high school was enough for me to need to prove to myself I wasn’t old yet. My body felt relatively good the next morning, so who knows, maybe I can slowly return to more running. Or I’ll end up crashing out the next time, and I’ll soon be walking with those Nordic walking poles.


4. My sister Ashley passed 14 years alcohol-free this week. If it sounds like a big number, that’s because it is. It was a hard road for her leading up to the choice to quit. There were times when it was really bad that some of us in the family thought the alcohol would be the end of her. But she defeated her demons and became stronger. She defeated her demons and became an inspiration to me. When my alcohol problem was out of control, I looked to her and thought if she could do it, so could I. For me, it will be 6 years without alcohol in September. There have been a few times when the alcohol nearly reentered my life, most specifically the death of my Uncle Eric. I remember that not only am I not drinking anymore for myself, but I am also doing it for Ashley because she impacted me greatly with her own battles. While I am speaking on deleting alcohol from lives, I want to mention another sister, Kate, who is rapidly approaching 300 days, and then a year, alcohol-free as well. Everyone’s journey and reason is their own, but I hope that Ashley and I helped to show her that it can be done. I am very proud of my sisters.


5. For the 3rd time in probably 6 weeks, I had a dream featuring me with a friend or family member hanging out at the mall. This time, I was with my oldest friend, Barry, just wandering the corridors and chatting. Why? Not why is Barry there. That makes sense because I haven’t seen him in a few years, and he has been a hugely important part of my life for 40 years. No, the question is why at the mall always? Am I supposed to go to the Cape Cod Mall and find some sort of answer to something? Do I miss being a semi-pro mall rat in the 1990s? Is it more about the people in these dreams and maybe needing to reach out to them more? I have no clue. Have any of you had a sort of recurring dream, or at least a recurring dream location? I have vivid dreams and lucid dreams, but they are rarely ever connected. I tend to have wild swings of plot lines of my dreams. Having hangouts at the mall come around 3 times in less than 2 months is weird. Especially specifically remembering them. I guess we’ll have to wait for the next episode of Dream Mall: The Series to find out what happens.

The mall of my dreams?

6. All it took was a few 85-degree and humid days for me to immediately begin dreaming of the fall. The irony is, it’s not even summer yet. The first day of summer is June 21st. The heat is one thing. I’m not a fan of the temperatures getting above 80, but you can cope when it’s not humid. That’s the thing that is the worst. The humidity just makes everything feel wet and soupy, which is uncomfortable during the day and just plain gross at night when you’re trying to sleep. I try to wait as long as I can to put in my air conditioner. I only have two windows where I live. Plugging one with a bulky a/c unit means that on days when the a/c isn’t needed, I don’t get any fresh air. This is another first-world problem since many people don’t even have the option of air conditioning. It is supposed to become nice and seasonable again in a few days. I’ll likely be able to hold out for a while longer but there’s only so many days when the ‘real feel’ is 100 that I can endure before the a/c goes in.


7. As luck would have it, a window fan I had for many years finally decided enough was enough. It died and left me roasting during the heat wave. I took a trip to the nearest Ocean State Job Lot to get a good, and cheap, replacement. This fan was a powerful window fan, and I was happy that it was relatively affordable at $40. I got home, and it was 85 and humid inside my apartment, so the fan was going to be a welcome addition. I put it in a window and turned it on, nothing. I was confused. I tried different outlets. I messed with the power switch. Still nothing. Now I was mad because even though the prices are pretty low at Job Lot, you still expect something to work when you get it home. I began getting the packaging together since I’d have to go back and get a replacement. I was angry and pouring sweat in the heat. Then I turned the ‘thermostat’ dial in the middle of the fan. Suddenly, both 9” fans sprang to life loudly and powerfully. It turns out the thermostat is really just an intensity dial for the fans. With it being turned all the way down, the fans wouldn’t move. Yes, I did feel pretty stupid. I will say this, though: better to feel stupid at home than to go back to Job Lot and have them find out I was returning a fan because I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on.


8. I have seen birds do some incredible stunt work when it comes to flying. The way they can change directions on a dime is pretty amazing. I see it a lot when they fly in front of vehicles, yet they can change directions to avoid getting hit. This week, I saw the ultimate in terms of bird acrobatics. I was behind an SUV when a bird came flying in from the left. I think it was a robin, or at least a bird of similar size. This bird flew in between the SUV’s driver’s side tires. You’d figure any animal that gets in between the tires of a moving vehicle is likely not going to survive. This bird not only flew between those tires, but it also managed to instantly cut a corner and fly out between the rear tires and off to safety. I have no clue how it survived. If they have a bird lottery, I hope that one went and bought a ticket because it had luck on its side. Who knows, though, maybe it used up all of its luck and immediately flew into a mailbox or something.


9. I canceled my subscription to a television show pitch website. I had written out a full treatment for a season of a show based on my experiences working in restaurants in the 1990s. I mentioned it many weeks ago in this blog. I’m not done pitching the show. I am just looking for alternatives that don’t cost me $39/mo. with no promises of any views on my work. I went and canceled the membership with a few days left on it. For some reason, a notification popped up saying that my membership would end on December 31, 1969. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, my subscription to that site somehow made its way onto Doc Brown’s DeLorean and was deposited in the past. Maybe that will be my next TV show pitch. I stumble upon a tear in the space/time continuum thanks to my subscription to some random pitch website. On a more serious note, what does that say about their website? If you cancel and it gives you a cancellation date over 50 years in the past, what other mistakes have they coded into that site? Maybe I got out just in the nick of time?

Soon to be delivering my cancellation notice.

10. Every now and then, the old me shows up in terms of exercise. I can’t run really much at all anymore. I have nagging joint pains creeping up more and more, so lifting is less fun. I do the best I can, but there are days when I feel like the best is behind me. This weekend I was feeling lazy. Oh, I spent hours writing, so I was productive, but I ate terribly for lunch and had no desire to do anything. Then the heat wave we have been having got to me. It was 85, and I was sweating. This irritated me. I decided if I was going to sweat, I could at least turn it into an exercise session. So out of nowhere, I got into workout gear and went out for a walk. Now, mind you, it was 3pm, 85 degrees, and I had eaten junk and been sitting around all day. My body survived almost 4 miles before it began to shut down. I would not be denied. I pushed through 5.3 miles, burning 715 calories, erasing the bad lunch, and coming in under my calorie limit on MyFitnessPal. It might not have been as dramatic as the Knicks 29 point comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals this week, but it was a nice come-from-behind win for the day. I hope that it turns into some momentum so I can start feeling like my younger self. I’d take even feeling like 42 at this point. Oh, and also congratulations to the New York Knicks on winning their first NBA championship in 53 years.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #96: Injury Soap Opera, Mystery Box, Hungry Birds, etc.

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.

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.

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.

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

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog. #20: Library Tricks, Move Birds Get Out the Way, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.

1. I was sitting in the library trying to get some work done on a few upcoming projects. It’s rarely dead silent and I understand that. However this time it was unusual as a woman sauntered in with a big recyclable grocery bag that made a ton of noise as she walked. She then proceeded to sit down at a computer and have a full-on loud conversation with someone on her phone. Now I can say for sure what her job was, but she kept telling the man on the other end that she could get him more money and that she’d gotten $20 of what she was owed. She then angrily asked if this was how the whole summer was going to be before storming out of the library with her loud bag crunching along. UPDATE: She came back in and was loud again on the phone, swearing until another woman came over and confronted her. The librarian then had to throw her out.

2. It’s funny in a kind of sad way to see people like EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of my IG/FB stories EXCEPT for the one where I wish people a happy Pride Month. Yeah, I see you homophobes you can take your story likes and shove them up your prejudiced asses.

3. Note to self, don’t sit anywhere outside during the warmer months. You either leave a sweat print on something when it’s super hot, or you act as a duster and get all of the pollen, pine needles, and whatever other random stuff is there to stick to you. Also worms, those little green worms, they’re everywhere and on everything.

4. It was a wild scene driving down this road to a nearby beach. The people ahead of me were going slow, 25mph. I was about 2 car lengths back. Up ahead were 6-7 birds in the road. They looked like doves. I say ‘looked like’ because I didn’t notice them until the car ahead had run over one. They didn’t fly or even really attempt to move. I saw that and swerved to the left. The other birds were running around the road, not flying, but running. I have no clue if I hit one, I did my best to avoid them, but the car behind me stopped. Don’t know why those birds were just clustered along the road like that.

5. When I go for a walk or run I have my headphones on and music playing. I do pay attention to my surroundings but can zone out at times. As I was on a walk this week I was zoned out. I felt like I had tripped over a stick. It turns out it was a dog that I guess was trying to get my attention. It was a puppy, a brown-ish Labradoodle. Even when the owner finally came around to get his dog it followed me for a few hundred feet. I’d have been fine taking the dog with me but I had to cross a main road, and the owner likely had some treats to coax it home.

6. I should have known better than to think I was out of the woods when it came to allergies this year. Typically I have 2 battles with allergies, late April/early May and then mid to late August. I got to the first week of June and finally had a day where my throat felt like it was just caked in pollen. It was like that stupid spoonful of cinnamon challenge from several years ago except slightly less tasty.

7. A double-dip of Halloween entry here. For one, my Halloween pumpkin finally was tossed out. By tossed out I mean smashed on pavement for a video. It lasted from mid-October until the first week of June, pretty good. Second, there is a house in my town that has a group of life-sized skeletons in its front yard that the owners put in funny situations all year long. Currently, they are playing cornhole. In the past they’ve been Santa and reindeer, around a campfire, mowing the lawn, and tons of other classics.

8. When I was 16 I would tear open a bag of M&Ms and pour them into my hand for a quick sugar rush. Now at 46 I tear open several bottles of vitamins and supplements and pour them into my hand so that I can get out of bed without my joints sounding like bubble wrap.

9. In a first for Cape Cod this past week there was an authentic pink flamingo at Chapin Beach in Dennis. Experts think it got disoriented from a hurricane last year and flew north and can’t figure out how to get home. It looked like someone had bought a plastic flamingo and placed it out on the tidal flats, until someone shared a video of the flamingo walking. Now I wonder what other exotic animals might be fun to see on Cape Cod. Nothing super dangerous, but maybe a moose would be fun.

10. I saw a slow-motion car accident in the gym parking lot. I say slow motion because each vehicle was backing out of spaces like snails. They bumped with literally no damage to either. That didn’t stop the people from arguing about who was at fault. Because you’ve got to win the argument even if nothing of consequence comes from it.

11. I will never take for granted that I can be out for a walk on the nearby bike trail and if I time it right I can bump into my Uncle Steve out for a run. The other morning we stopped and chatted for a few and it made my day. Some time will be the last time so I don’t ever want to miss an opportunity if I get it.