Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #132: What’s Old Is New, Fire Lanes, Slow Demolition, etc.

1. Sometimes everything clicks and what’s old feels new again. This is about running. The week began with the latest installment of Monday Runday. The weather was perfect, but my legs were feeling like lead after two 5-mile runs in the preceding three days. But sometimes you just need a little motivation, and running with my old friend Mike did it this week. He has become the runner while I have regressed into a walker over the last few years. Granted, it’s due to injury, but still I look at him and wish I could magically morph back into my running peak. I pushed through the initial fatigue and ended up doing 5 miles in 52 minutes, my best overall run in probably three years. It gave me three 5-mile runs in four days. I know I haven’t done that since probably before Covid. I have no idea what my ceiling might be in the latest return to running. My knees were aching the day after Monday Runday, so rest was in the cards. That being said, I do feel pretty good about my chances of running a race again, maybe even before year’s end. I likely just jinxed myself and will fall down the stairs next week for daring to have hope.


2. At my age, when I start to feel momentum in life, I tend to keep calm and just let things play out. Sure, I get excited when my fitness ticks up, or I have great author events, or I have days with lots of podcast downloads, or even the growing anticipation surrounding my upcoming film The Cabin. I shudder to say I am ‘older and wiser,’ but even 10 years ago I’d have felt this positive trend and gone right on social media to post all about it. It was like I needed to let people know something good might be happening soon. Now, even though there might be some good things happening soon, I’d rather keep it to myself. It just means it’s more of a surprise when it happens. Plus, life can be a rollercoaster. If you post about every single good and bad thing that happens, it makes it look like your life is either very exciting, or very chaotic, or both at the same time. Rest assured, when good things happen, they will be in this blog above all else. The bad stuff will too since it will make you feel better if you’re having a bad day.


3. If you enjoy the wacky comedy of Will Ferrell, you will like his new Netflix series The Hawk. I am a big fan and thought it was hilarious. It is about a washed-up former great golfer who is attempting a comeback to the PGA tour. I will admit that I initially thought it was a movie. I was excited to see it was a 10-episode series. You also get SNL alums Molly Shannon as Hawk’s wife, and Chris Parnell as his rival. There are tons of classic Will Ferrell scenes. I won’t spoil them, but I will say watch for the storyline with his hand, as it’s pretty damn funny. I wasn’t surprised that it’s gotten subpar ratings. Like I said, if you like Will Ferrell, you will like The Hawk, but if you don’t, this series won’t do anything to change your mind. This won’t be at the top of my list of shows I’ve watched since returning to Netflix in December. That honor probably goes to Dark, or 11.22.63 because of my little crush on Sarah Gadon. Think of The Hawk as a 10-part SNL sketch, and I mean that in a good way.

4. I take every opportunity that I can to promote my podcast on social media. It is the main way to try to bring in new listeners. That being said, I also understand that in addition to bringing in new listeners me promoting my podcast also can entice scumbag scammers to show up. Nearly every time I share my podcast to a few Facebook podcast groups, I end up getting followed by one of these jackass people. It never fails. They follow me on Instagram, or try to friend me on Facebook. At least on Facebook, I take one look at their profile and see that it says they will promote my podcast for whatever low sum of money they say. I know to immediately block them. This week I had some jerk follow me on IG, like 15-20 of my recent posts, you know, to look like they’re not a scammer. Then they commented on one photo to tell me they DM’d me to tell me how they can promote my podcast. The comment was deleted, and they were immediately blocked. These morons make it so easy. The funniest part is they go on about their prowess at social media marketing, but they have a handful of followers. I almost want to say, look dude, I have 100x your followers on IG. How about you give me money to promote your rinky-dink crap profile, or just stop wasting me time? I will never, ever, give one cent to some weak loser begging for money to promote my content.


5. Once and for all, is it illegal to park in a fire lane? I ask because I see all the time vehicles parked in clearly marked fire lanes in front of stores. Looking it up, yes, it is 100% illegal. It makes me wonder if anything is ever done about it. This week I saw some young guy in an SUV parked in a fire lane in the rain. The vehicle was blocking the rampway where you can easily roll your cart onto the parking lot. People had to go around and push the cart off of the curb. In the grand scheme of things, parking in a fire lane is not a huge offense. Still, why even bother having it as a law if 99.9% of people who do it have nothing happen to them? The fine is supposed to be up to $100 in Massachusetts. It might not sound like much, but I bet if someone got caught and fined, they’d think twice. They need to put some low-ranking cop on fire lane duty, either driving around to check, or watching security footage. Or just get rid of the fire lane altogether if the law is never enforced.

6. Having a mechanic that you trust and who does a great job is worth a lot. The trouble with that is once word gets out that you’re good and fair, everybody wants to get their vehicles worked on by you. I bring my car to Ormon Automotive in Harwich. They always do a great job, and their prices are better than fair. I’ve needed exhaust work on my car for a few months. There was no doubt I was going to Ormon. But like I said, they’re always busy. I dropped my car off early one morning and went to walk the bike trail, which is nearby their shop. I ended up walking 3.5 miles, which was great. However, they were only able to give me an estimate on my car. This was because of how busy and backed up they were. Sure, I could have left my car all day and gotten it the next day, but I had things that needed to get done. We set up a time for next Friday to get the work done. I don’t mind waiting because they are worth it, plus the things I need done aren’t going to destroy my car in the next week, so there was little risk. I highly recommend Ormon Automotive if you live in the Mid-Cape area. You will hear about them again in next week’s blog, I’m sure.


7. We all were kids once. I think as we age, a lot of us forget that. We see kids doing things that we used to do and chastise them for it. Obviously, if it’s something super heinous, then they should be stopped. I am talking about little mischievous things that in the grand scheme of it all don’t matter. I say this because I put that into practice this week. I finished a beautiful afternoon run and arrived at my car parked at a recreation area. There were loads of kids passing by on the bike trail or playing on the playground and fields. I sat at a picnic table stretching some and recovering. A few hundred feet away, I spotted a teenage boy. I could tell he was planning something. I watched as he sneaked over to a small power shed, which I think is used to turn on the large floodlights for the sports fields. Once hidden from view, except by me, he scaled the side and climbed up onto the roof. I lost sight of him but figured he was just sitting up there. Did I rat him out? No. Like I said, I was a kid once and scaled my share of things I shouldn’t have. Of course I was usually smarter and didn’t do it during the day at a crowded park, but hey, if he gets caught by someone else it’ll be his own fault.


8. It amazes me when someone else is clearly a bad driver but gets mad at you for pointing it out. At a busy intersection, there was a line of cars trying to turn left on Cape Cod during the summer. The thing about intersections and traffic lights is that they have intervals where they change to let people go in the other directions. I know you know this, but apparently some people don’t. There was an idiot lady who was three cars deep to turn when I got a green arrow to turn at the intersection. Rather than just wait for the next signal change, this jerk pulled right in front of me a good five seconds after she would have had a red light. Naturally, I beeped and yelled because she was an entitled idiot. Her dumbass reaction was to be shocked that I dared to call her out for her poor driving and lack of intelligence. She easily could have hit me, and it would have been her fault since she ran a red light. It doesn’t matter if she was next up to turn; this isn’t Human Centipede; you’re not connected to the car in front of you. These types of stupid people are a big reason that I don’t like summer. Before you say ‘it happens everywhere,’ I’ll counter by saying 99% of the bad driving I see on Cape Cod is during the summer.


9. This week saw the birthdays of my youngest and twin sisters Lindsay and Ashley. At my mom’s, we were able to have a little celebration for one of them, Ashley. It was a classic family memory. I sat with Ashley and my oldest niece, Kaleigh, and enjoyed a huge batch of garlic bread pizzas. It was both English muffin and Italian bread. Those were amazing. The festivities became legendary, though after. I got a small cake for Ashley. It was Cookie Monster, complete with googly frosted eyes and a cookie in his mouth. My mom put in several candles, probably ten or so. She wasn’t sure if they were old, but they ended up being the icing on the cake. My youngest niece Sylvie called in to be on FaceTime to help sing Happy Birthday. Once the candles were lit, we began to sing. A problem came when the candles decided they didn’t want to cooperate. Ashley blew them out, only they kept coming back. So the candles kept relighting themselves. Next, they started heavily smoking. We were all cracking up. The entire moment ended with the candles being pulled out of the cake and dumped into the sink where they finally stayed out. The cake was good; the birthday festivities were better, though.


10. It is okay to step back and relax every now and then. In fact, it is recommended. Days can blend together in a wash of productivity, rushing, hoping that you’ve done enough to justify a few moments of peace and quiet. Get up early, go to work, work hard, go home, or go to the gym; maximize every moment you have. It is good to have drive and determination, but doing it day in and day out without stopping to recharge leads to burnout. Over the summer, I have been getting better at forcing myself to take time to do absolutely nothing of consequence. I have content work I could be doing. Nope, it can wait. I really want to go for a run. Nope, let your body relax. At first it feels like you are wasting precious time. In reality, you are reclaiming it. It indeed feels like time goes faster the older you get. So why not stop speed running through life and stop to enjoy it a little more? Even writing this right now is doing too much, but since I felt this way, I thought I’d get it out. There are plenty of days to grind from sunrise to sunset. Just make sure that you make time to watch that sunrise or sunset rather than using it to light your candle that is slowly fading out.

Sometimes you just need to stop and go with the flow...

11. A fascinating story to watch over the coming few years is the slow demolition and replacement of the Bass River Bridge. It is located just down the road from me and allows traffic to pass over Bass River between the towns of Yarmouth and Dennis. The current bridge is not the original and is nearly a century old. It has needed replacement for years. The decay is so bad you could see exposed rebar. For the last few months, one side of the bridge has been closed, with traffic being squished into barely more than a lane of traffic. The actual demolition of the bridge has begun. They are starting from the east end of the bridge and very slowly tearing it down. The entire side will be replaced, widened, and have a multi-purpose path. Then the same job will begin on the other side. Before any Cape Codders get excited, this process isn’t expected to be finished until 2031. Until then, it’ll be interesting to watch the bits and pieces get removed and replaced. Here is a quick video I got while out on a run.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #123: A Classic Story, Birthdays & Graduations, Meteors, etc.

1. It sometimes shocks me to think that I have been a part of social media for 23 years. My first profile was created for Friendster in 2003. We’re closing in on half of my life chronicled online. This is all on Facebook, as nothing original from Friendster or Myspace exists anymore. I check the memories page on Facebook daily. It creates some fun snapshots of different chapters of my life. One rabbit hole that I fell down this week had to do with the last year of my Nana’s life. There wasn’t much of substance relating to her from 2009. However, a specific memory popped up this week. It involved someone hitting my parked car while I was at my Nana’s house. In short, the guy did a U-turn and rear-ended my Jeep, destroying the rear axle. This guy was a weirdo and wanted desperately to go inside and talk to my 85-year-old Nana. Why? To tell his side of the story? It’s like, dude, you hit my parked car, tell me the story, not my grandmother. Anyway, I went way down the rabbit hole of that accident story and turned it into a great blog (I think). It was the last classic story of my life while my Nana was still alive. You can read the blog here: The Final Classic Story From My Nana's Life



2. I was asked to do an author talk about my latest book for this summer at a local library. It was all set up with the date and time. Then the person who reached out to me about the event said the date they agreed to had already been taken. Funny how they offered it and agreed to it, but then went back on that. Okay fine. So I rescheduled. I filled out paperwork to use their conference room, which I’ve never had to do for any event I’ve ever done. Whatever, it was all set. This week, the same person reached out and said they needed to reschedule yet again. No reason given. So I sent in a pair of dates I could do, making this the third different set of dates for a show at this same library. I am not sure if they are incompetent. Maybe they think they can just jerk me around and I will continue to reschedule my talk, which, remind you, they reached out to me for? While I love to do these speaking events and I will be way more flexible than I probably should be, part of me wants them to not be able to accommodate my new dates so I can just tell them to take a hike. We’ll see what happens.


3. After writing the full treatment for a sitcom I am trying to get picked up, I joined a website where people post their shows in the hopes that television companies and execs will see it and possibly want to create it. I am hopeful but not holding my breath since I know that for every person like me, there are probably hundreds of others, many likely with good ideas as well. I want to make the best impression I can, so I shot a video and shared the full details of the proposed show. Any decent profile needs a photo, so obviously, I wanted to put a good face out there. That’s where the hiccups came. No matter what I did, the site kept saying there were issues with my photo. I tried several photos before finally contacting the website. I explained my issue and then also said I could send the photo to them, asking if they could just put it on my profile. Instead, they recommended changing the size, the DPI, and the file format of the photo. Each time it didn’t work, and I reiterated that it might be easier to just send them my photo. Finally, after three times of being given advice that didn’t work, they asked me to send the photo. Gee, thanks for listening. It only took a week and a handful of messages. I don’t think that I missed any opportunities in the week that my profile was up without a photo, but still, would it have taken more than five seconds to plug my photo in? It probably took 1,000 times more effort to write three emails than it would to click and post. Oh well, it’ll be worth it if the show gets picked up.


4. Despite creeping toward 50, I still enjoy playing basketball every now and then. I don’t play competitively; my body can’t handle that. I go to a nearby recreation area where there is a court that is almost always empty. I went this week to shoot around for a while. It was a perfect afternoon. Well, except for one thing. It’s pollen season. Oh boy, did that come into play. Every time I bounced the ball, a puff of yellow dust came up. I made it 15 minutes before I was getting gassed, but I pressed on. I needed to make it to at least half an hour of good cardio. By the time I hit that mark, I was pretty much choking on the pollen. I must have had a cloud of the stuff all around the court like I was Pigpen in Peanuts. My black shirt and shorts were coated in yellow like powdered sugar on a donut. That being said, it ended up being a good shoot around, and I burned over 300 calories. Not too shabby.

Me playing basketball this week.

5. I highly recommend The Burroughs on Netflix. I had been waiting for it since I saw the first trailer a little over a month ago, and it did not disappoint. Without spoiling anything, it is basically like a perfect mixture of Stranger Things and Cocoon. It centers around a retirement community that is a town in the middle of the desert. It stars several big-time actors like Alfred Molina, Bill Pullman, and Geena Davis. She is excellent, and there is a nod to Thelma & Louise in it. It is eight episodes, so an easy binge. Or you can be like me and savor it and only watch one episode per night. Even then, it only lasted a little over a week. It has been really popular on Netflix since debuting, so my hope is that it gets greenlit for a second season because there is a lot of room for more story. Go and check it out if you can.

6. A nightmare scenario almost came true this week. Since Memorial Day Weekend has passed, the beaches have gotten their porta-potties back. There is a beach I like to spend a few minutes at on my way to work most days. I took a little walk and decided to use the facilities before heading back to my car. A few steps from the porta-potty, I spotted what looked like a septic truck entering the parking lot. I figured whoever was driving saw me. Then I heard the beeping of it backing up. It dawned on me that they were there to empty the porta-potty. For a brief moment, I didn’t know what they were going to do. Bust in through the door? Strap the thing to the truck and take off with it? Even if they didn’t see me, I knew they weren’t just going to knock the porta-potty over to empty it. They’d have to open the door, which was locked. I don’t know why I felt this sense of dread while listening to the truck backing up. I stepped out and gave a wave to the driver, and everything was fine. I hope those guys get paid well. I have seen some of the most disgusting porta-potties, and knowing that people have to clean them is just nasty. So yeah, pay the septic people more, they literally deal with shit for a living.


7. This weekend, I was able to see my nephew Landon graduate from high school. It’s an interesting feeling to watch someone you’ve known since they were born taking that step into whatever the next chapter of their life is. I say this time around is interesting because next week marks 30 years since I graduated high school, so my mind has been back in those bygone days of 1996. At times, I feel like I have one foot back in my youth with the other foot trying to keep me moving forward into the future. There are times when I feel confused. How can the younger generation of family be moving on to the ‘real world’ when I feel like I haven’t firmly established myself? Luckily, I am not the only one. Everywhere I look, I find people my age expressing how they don’t feel like they’ve got being an adult down to a science. I kind of long for the days of having a textbook to follow when going through classes in school. Now all you can do is keep walking the path you’re on and hope that you’re going the right way.




8. Pontificating aside, the graduation was a fun family event. The weather was rainy and windy. It held off when we all arrived, but by the time we walked outside, the wind was kicking up, and the rain had started falling. It’s a shock to the system to be standing outside on the last weekend of May with wind chills around 40. A sunny and warm outdoor graduation would have been better, but I’m just glad I was there at all. I didn’t get to see my nephew Liam’s graduation, and my niece Emma’s graduation was during COVID. I did manage to see it from outside the fence at the high school, but it wasn’t the same. I wish we could have had a family cookout after, like we did for my oldest niece, Kaleigh, but just being with a good chunk of family was a pleasure that I don’t get nearly as often as I wish I did. We got some photos before the rain really kicked up to remember the day.


9. Staring down 50 in 18 months, I think, has made my sentimental side take over a lot in my life. I find that there are a lot of achievements, celebrations, graduations, and such that give me mixed emotions. I am happy to see and be around family, but then I end up feeling a bit empty and bittersweet. It’s not anything they do. It is the sad reality that we don’t all get together like we used to. I miss the giant holidays at my grandparents' houses. I miss big cookouts, family reunions, and hangouts just because. As we all go down the roads of our own lives, sometimes they can take us further from each other, even though we might not physically be too far apart. Jobs take up hours, and schedules don’t match. Other obligations can make it so that only when events like achievements, celebrations, and graduations come around can the family find a way to be together. It’s bittersweet because there are only so many of those types of events. If I could, I would have family get-togethers every week until we got so sick of each other that we had to pause them to recharge. Sadly, that isn’t in the cards for me currently. All I can do is check my calendar to see what the next event is that might result in another big family gathering.


10. There was a high wind warning this weekend. It was on the day of my nephew’s graduation. It really picked up in the afternoon with winds gusting 40-50mph. Despite the terrible weather, I needed to head out to the store plus to get gas. I could feel how bad the wind was while driving. It felt like my car was being pushed side to side at times. At this point, it was only in the mid 40s with wind chills dipping near freezing, at the end of May. I stopped for gas and didn’t pay attention to the wind. When I opened my door, the wind took it. The door ended up smashing into a trash can and sending it toppling over. I picked it back up, but it made the person pumping gas next to me look worried. I don’t know if she thought I was mad about gas prices and just karate kicked the garbage over. I figured I’d leave it a mystery rather than explain to her about the wind. She probably wouldn’t have believed me, or freaked out, scared, and taken off.


11. It’s not every day that a meteor comes flying into the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s even rarer when it happens only an hour from where you live. This weekend, we had a meteor rumored to be about three feet in diameter explode through the sky around Boston. The sonic booms were captured by all sorts of cameras. Apparently, the sound could be heard anywhere from Montreal to Delaware. It happened around 2:30 pm, and I was inside, so I have no clue if we could hear it. Reports said it landed in Cape Cod Bay. Not sure if anyone is going to try to find it or not. Plus, there was a rare Blue Moon that same night. So to recap, on the same day in Massachusetts, there were gale-force winds, snow, a meteor, and a blue moon. I love my home.

Radar picking up the exploding meteor(WWLP)

12. My niece Kaleigh celebrated her 27th birthday this weekend. It’s amazing how fast time can go. I fully remember my sister Kate being pregnant with her and having me drive my beat-up old Ford F-150 down the bumpiest roads we could find to try to induce labor. I have vivid memories of moving all of our stuff into a new house with my stepfather, Serpa, on the day Kaleigh was born. He and I were the last to the hospital to meet Kaleigh. I was 21 and had orange-yellow hair, an eyebrow ring, and a hemp necklace. It was the dawning of the full-on quarter-life crisis. I remember those early months being a travel trio with Kate, Kaleigh, and the numerous people who thought she was my daughter. My sister’s reaction was always priceless. I bring these memories up because, for as much as I am not a fan of getting older myself, I can deal with aches and pains and grays because I know I got to spend so much quality time with my nieces and nephews. The bittersweet feeling I tend to get around their milestones as they grow mainly comes from knowing that with each passing day, our roads grow further apart. I don’t have regrets about not spending enough time with them as kids because I actually did. In a world where I have had way too many regrets to count, the time I spent with my nieces and nephews is not one of them. I tend to get very reflective in moments like these. It was a good week for family and a good week to be reflective.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #111: First, Film Business, Three Things Sir, etc.

1. Over the past 5 weeks or so, I have seen a huge uptick in the number of followers I have across social media. This began with a video of slushy ocean waves at a Cape Cod beach that went viral when shared by a much larger Instagram account. In the time since, I have had tons of shares, tons of follows, and tons of comments. It wasn’t until this week that I had a seminal moment that comes when one’s social media presence starts to grow. First! That was it. Does anyone remember when a larger account would post something, and the first few comments would be people racing to comment ‘First!’ It was like it was a badge of honor, or bragging rights for something that really didn’t matter. My social media presence is not that large. It’s more than doubled in a month, but still not on the level of most influencers or celebrities. That being said, having someone on TikTok comment ‘first’ on a video I shared of a sunset made me feel next-level. I can now put that on my creator resume: Had a guy comment ‘first’ on a video. I have finally made it. Now, where is my blue check mark without me having to pay for it?!


2. After a week off from work due to the blizzard, it was hard getting my head back in the game. It was like I needed to remember exactly what it was that I did for work. It took an extra energy drink just to get me through the day competently. Sadly, it wasn’t like returning to work from a fun vacation. It was returning after being wailed on by a once-in-a-decade snowstorm and then spending the rest of the time either without power or in a daze, trying to get my bearings back. It was as if I needed an extra day off to fully recover from my week off. With spring less than 3 weeks away, I can only hope that winter is starting to lose interest in beating the hell out of us in New England.


3. I immediately contradict that last entry with this one. The slush waves returned to Cape Cod for a short engagement. Temperatures in the teens at night allowed the phenomenon to happen at a few north-facing beaches in the town of Brewster. I was beside myself with excitement. They looked so cool in the bright sun. The slush piled up in a neat semi-circle on the beach, creating a makeshift barrier between the ocean and land. I would have stayed and watched them for as long as I could, but I had to get to work. That evening, I ventured back down to the same beach. By now, the tide had gone out. The slush waves had led to the return of the ice chunks, although in far smaller form than they were a few weeks ago. I had thought I had grown tired of walking through ice and snow and soaking my shoes, but lo and behold, there I was again up to my ankles in snow trying to get the best angles for photos. Hey, when it’s 90 and humid in August, I’ll be living in the photos and videos of those cold winter days.



4. Welcome to the film business. I learned that things aren’t always smooth sailing when it comes to movies. Longtime readers know that last summer and fall were highlighted by the work I did on the When Henry Met Henry short film. It is a fictional meeting between famed authors Henry Beston and Henry David Thoreau, co-produced by Frank Durant, who wrote the screenplay. We filmed in mid-October, and everything went well. Being that it is a short film, we expected that it would be totally wrapped and edited before the end of 2025. We routinely asked the editor how things were going and rarely got clear answers. My hope is to enter the finished product in at least one local film festival. Those things have deadlines. I needed to know when this film would be done so that I could plan accordingly. This past week, I heard from the editor. He asked if I could at least double what he was getting paid for editing. I was caught off guard but also pretty pissed off. Here he was more than four months after wrapping filming without a finished film, and to top it off, he was asking for more money. That being said, I was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. I want that film done, and if I balked at the editor’s demands, we might get a poorly done job, or we’d have to edit it ourselves. So I agreed to double his pay. It is technically within our budget of what we raised for the film, so it’s not back-breaking. Still, it was kind of a dick move. I have learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to the film industry. To wrap it up, I hope to have the finished film within a week or two, plenty of time to enter it in a festival I’m interested in. It’ll all work out in the end, hopefully. Except for the editor, I won’t ever do business with him again.


5. This week saw my youngest niece, Sylvie’s 7th birthday. She is, without a doubt, one of my favorite people to ever walk this earth. I am lucky that I have probably at least a couple of handfuls worth of people that I can give that distinction to. They are mainly family and a few close friends. I have always been seen as the ‘fun uncle.’ I never called myself that until my nieces and nephews and their parents gave me the distinction. With Sylvie being the youngest and almost guaranteed to be the last of this generation in my family, I take full advantage of the time I have where she still gets super excited and hyper when she sees me. My mom says she owns me, that I am wrapped around her finger. That’s 100% true. I pretty much do whatever she wants because I want to be associated with fun memories when she grows up. For this birthday, it didn’t disappoint. I had butterfly hair clips in my beard and was fully made up. Eye shadow, lip gloss, eyeliner, the works. I had needed to go to the store after the birthday party was over, and was joking that I just wouldn’t go all made up. The thing is, Sylvie did a good job with the makeup, meaning I didn’t look like a clown as I feared. So I still went to the store in all my made-up glory. It was another present for her birthday. Someday, Sylvie will grow up and not think I am cool anymore, so I cherish all of the moments I can make while she still does.


6. I passed 2,000 days alcohol free this week. It’s amazing how, when you get so far out from a big change in your life, you can almost forget the journey that it took to get to where you are. September marks 6 years since I kicked alcohol the F out of my life. It was a big problem for a while, so I want to make sure that I take every opportunity to celebrate the accomplishment. For too long, I felt I needed alcohol to cope with life and to make me feel better about who I was and where I was at the time. The last thing I wanted to be for younger members of my family was a cautionary tale of things not to do. I have found now 2,000+ days away from my last drink that I am a little of both. The cautionary tale is not to let alcohol become your master. Also, the redemption, if you are down and feel like you might never get up, just keep moving forward and never stop trying. I had days where it was like my brain was on autopilot. My car would seemingly drive itself to the liquor store every day. It was a battle to get out of that habit, but once I was clear of the addiction, I could look back and realize how lucky I was to get away from it. My father is the biggest alcoholic I’ve known in my life, and my greatest fear was ending up like him. The one and pretty much only thing he taught me was that a weak man lets his demons run his life. I chose to be stronger and better. 2,000 days and counting.



7. I got a bit of confirmation this week on something I thought was true. Back late in the summer, I got my car’s oil changed at a Jiffy Lube I had gone to many times. They informed me that, for some reason, they could not get my oil filter off to be replaced. This was even though they were the ones who put the filter on in the first place. I left there thinking they were just incompetent and/or lazy. I would get my answer the next time I needed an oil change. That came this week. I chose to go to the nearest Valvoline spot, which was about 40 minutes from me. The entire process was great. Tire pressure checked, fluids topped off, oil changed, oh yeah, and the filter removed without issue. So, needless to say, it was incompetence and laziness at Jiffy Lube. I don’t think I’ll ever go back there. I’d rather drive 40 minutes each way for a guaranteed positive experience. Thank you, Valvoline. You will see me again.


8. My newest show I’m obsessed with binging is Yellowjackets. The show is about a high school girls' soccer team whose plane crashes deep in the Canadian wilderness and their attempts at survival. It’s a little like Lord of the Flies, but with mostly teenage girls. The show takes place in two timelines. The past is 1996 when the crash happened. I love that because it means the girls would have all been my age, so I immediately relate to them more. Plus, they play a lot of great music from then. But then there’s the other timeline, which is present-day, where the survivors of the crash are trying to cope with the trauma of the events. I won’t spoil anything, but just know it’s far more gory than you might expect. I just finished the first season. There are three out so far, with a fourth that’s supposed to debut soon. It’s also got Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis as the older versions of two of the characters, which makes the show even better. It comes highly recommended.

9. Going to Walmart is always double the fun. You get to shop for some cheap stuff, and you also get the extra bonus of people watching. Several times in previous blogs, I’ve mentioned the wacky people I’ve come across when visiting Walmart. This time was a slight disappointment. There were no weirdos inside, well, maybe besides me. When pulling into the parking lot, though, I was cut off by some idiot in her SUV. Like she couldn’t wait one extra second for me to pass? She just had to whip out in front of me. I handled it coolly. I followed her around the parking lot until she eventually kept driving. I can’t say if she left and didn’t come back because I found a spot and went in. If you’re gonna be a jerk and nearly cause an accident because you’re jonesing for some Walmart goodies, I’m going to be just as petty and tail you around the lot. So I guess in a way, I was the person today that I would have been looking for to write about when visiting Walmart. Who would have seen that twist coming?


10. My oddest interaction this week was not at Walmart but at the grocery store. At one particular store, there is a 60-something-year-old man who fetches carts. I can tell he doesn’t like his job based on what he mutters to himself as he walks around. This visit to the store ended with me walking outside. There was some idiot who had parked their car in the fire lane and left it running unattended. I walked in front of it and stopped to make sure there weren’t any cars coming. The cart guy, out of the blue, says ‘okay sir there are three things.’ I turned around with a confused look. I said ‘excuse me?’ Then this guy finally did what a normal person would have done and asked if it was my car. When I said no, he apologized. I said, ‘okay well that’s one thing.’ I then walked away, not giving him the chance to say or do anything else weird. I have no clue what his three things were or whether he waited outside for the jerk that owned that car to come back.


11. I walked the nearby stretch of the Cape Cod Rail Trail for the first time in nearly two months. That part was great. Getting to walk five miles outside, even if it was drizzly and 45 degrees. However, I wasn’t ready for the sheer number of downed trees scattered across the bike trail. I spotted at least six good-sized trees along the trail in about ½ mile. I can only assume it’s the same or worse throughout the rest of the bike trail. Even as much of the snow from the recent blizzard has melted away, it will take a lot of work to remove what must be many dozens of trees from the trail. Spring is next week, and yes, you’ll be able to ride or walk the bike trail, but it will be a while before you can do so without having to stop and navigate around fallen trees.

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 #94: Fine Tuning, Hack Attempt, Soaked Walk, etc.

1. After celebrating my birthday last week, and frankly doing a little bit too much celebrating over the last few months, a change is needed. I can tell that I need a serious detox. I need to eat better and go to the gym more, and probably lay off the edibles for a while. Sadly, as my age creeps up, I start to realize that these changes are necessary. I can either keep doing whatever I want and enjoy a steady decline until I am useless. Or I can make a few changes and prolong my vital years for a while. I’m not saying I’m going to suddenly be the guy who’s at the gym 6 days a week and eating a nearly perfect diet again like I was doing in the pre-COVID years. Still, when you wake up the day after your birthday feeling your age, a little fine-tuning won’t hurt.


2. A major difference between me today and me 20 years ago is consistency. What I mean is that in my 20s, I could skip the gym, or miss a day of vitamins, or skip a healthy meal, and it would have no consequence. I would still feel energetic, vital, and ready to conquer the world. Now, in my late 40s, I can still have those feelings, but there’s a big caveat. I have to be consistent. I have to be consistent with healthy eating, consistent with the gym, and consistent with vitamins and supplements. It’s almost like if I skip any of those for a few days, my body just assumes it’s time to shut down and get old. If I keep up on these things, it’s a way to trick my brain into thinking we’re still in our 20s, or at least 30s. I say this because, as I mentioned in the first entry, I skipped on all of these things for a few weeks, so no wonder I woke up the day after my birthday feeling a thousand years old.


3. It’s kind of ironic that even though I work as a trainer, I rarely use our gym facilities to train myself. I think I see it as still being at work. That means that if I got done before we were closed and I was in the gym working out, and people came in, I could easily be coerced into doing some sort of work off the clock. In those times when I do workout there, like I did this week, I am presented with option overload. Every possible piece of equipment for me and me alone. It leads to a great workout, but also a workout where by the time I leave, I am no longer a solid mass, I am some sort of liquid that flows out the back door and to my car. I was totally gassed and then had to run errands before finally getting home to eat dinner and collapse into my chair like a puddle of melted ice cream. All good stuff.


4. One night this week, I was comfy in my chair, relaxing as the melatonin started to prep me for a good night’s sleep. Then suddenly, my phone alerted. No, it wasn’t a friend or family member; it was a fraud alert from my bank. Some idiot had tried to use my debit card for a purchase, but luckily, it was flagged. Well, there went my drifting off to sleep. I had to immediately wake up to report the fraud and cancel my debit card. It all went well, the fraud was caught, and I wasn’t charged. If you’re wondering just how much the attempted fraud added up to, it was a whopping $10. Yup, that’s right. It’s like if you’re going to try to steal my money, at least go for broke. Ten bucks? Needless to say, I did not get a good night’s sleep after having to deal with that, but I am grateful that this idiot got caught and didn’t get one cent of my money.


5. For those who have been reading my blog for a while, the cute girl I have mentioned a few times in the last few months came back into my work this week. It’s funny how I look forward to seeing her, but in reality, it’s such a short window of opportunity for face time with her. Honestly, it’s like 2-3 minutes, maybe once every 3 weeks. I do try my best to have something interesting to say, or to try to say something that might make her laugh. There’s not much else I can do. I can’t linger too long and pry too deeply into her life since I am at work and she hardly knows me. If this were 15 years ago, back in my prime of cryptic posts, I might have said too much, or used my Internet detective skills to find her online and tried to find a way to ‘bump into her.’ Now, as I am rocketing toward 50, I just try to not look or sound like an idiot while she’s in the office. That has to be enough at this point in my life. I’ll see her again right before Thanksgiving.


6. If anyone is looking for a great station to craft on Pandora, I’ve got a new one for you. If you like smooth R&B from the 1970s through early 90s, create a station with the 3 following seed songs: Knocks Me Off My Feet by Stevie Wonder, All This Love by Debarge, and Oh Honey by Delegation. I created it this week, and it has played nearly nonstop anytime I have music going. If you enjoy that type of music, you won’t be disappointed. It’s amazing how I’ve had my Pandora account since 2009 and still have a few of those original stations. My Grunge station, Torn Jeans and Flannel, was the first one I ever made. Anyone else have Pandora that long, or have you mostly gone to another music app?


7. Not sure if it’s just my site, but this week there has been an annoying glitch on Facebook. I love looking at the memories page to see what was going on in the past, especially since I’ve been on Facebook since 2007. This week, I haven’t been able to see all of my memories. It’s mainly because I get one or two memories that go on repeat. For example, I had one day where there was a sunrise photo from last year that was repeated 18 times before moving on to the next memory, and that memory was repeated 16 times. Then it was just the end. You would think that with the billions of dollars the guy who owns the site has, he might spend a little to fix glitches. I mean, I enjoyed those memories, but not a never-ending loop. Who knows, maybe Facebook is becoming like a dying mall, where yes, it still is operational, but the owners are just letting the tenants move out and the rats and spiders move in.

The future of Facebook?

8. I was lucky this year and got basically a full week of birthday celebration. It finished off this Thursday with my mom, stepdad, one of my sisters, and one of my nieces. Besides just getting to see them, we had a good laugh at the fun array of gifts they got me. Food was a big one as I got two meals of my mom’s amazing chicken stir fry. Then there was a family-sized box of Count Chocula cereal, my favorite. My cake was three slices of cheesecake. This was topped by a flashing keychain alarm and a small pocket knife, since I do enjoy wandering in the woods on random adventures. Oh, and a little straight cash homey, as Randy Moss would say. It was an awesome haul and capped off what was a really fun birthday week.

My birthday haul, pretty legit

9. One of my new pleasures on YouTube is a channel called Ros – Adventure Cat. It is a super cute, very chatty, orange and white cat who has a small camera on his collar. It’s a vlog from a cat’s point of view. It has subtitles for what Ros says as he roams around looking for birds and mice. There are hundreds of videos, and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes cats or just cute, fun content. My only problem is that I am going to end up getting attached to Ros, and someday something bad will happen, and then my life will be shattered. Until then though, I’ll be binging cat vlog videos.


10. I had two choices. I could do some content work in the morning and go for a walk in the afternoon, or vice versa. I chose the latter. I figured if I didn’t get up and out in the morning, I might not go at all. Well, I chose wrong. At first, my walk was fine. It was cloudy but mild. Great. So I decided to do a little longer loop around a new extension of the bike trail near where I live. As I went down that way it began to drizzle. Still, no big deal. Then, there I was, nearly 3 miles from my car when the skies opened up. It started pouring rain. I had to take my headphones and shove them in my shirt so they wouldn’t get ruined. I was walking the bike trail in the rain for over 45 minutes, totally soaked. It ended up becoming a fun adventure, mostly because I had no other choice. By the time I got back to where I parked, it was like I had gone swimming in my clothes. Oh, and of course, when I got back to my car, the rain stopped. The afternoon was sunny and 60 degrees, by the way. Wicked boo.

11. Similar to my game of chicken with my air conditioning in the summer, we have reached the same game with the heat in winter. Yes, it’s not winter for another 6 weeks but in the next week on Cape Cod, we will have several nights where the lows are in the 30s. Luckily, I have a small electric wall heating unit in the bathroom. I can turn this on and it does a fairly decent job of warming up the general area. Saying that, I haven’t used it to try to heat the entire apartment with the temperature hovering above freezing. I try to hold out on the heat until Thanksgiving, since it will stay on until sometime later in March. The irony is that my preferred temperature when the heat is turned on is actually lower than where I set my A/C in summer. It’s kind of a weird anomaly. Anyway, I am sure next week will be a test. How long can I hold out? We’ll see.

In My Footsteps Podcast Episode 219: Podcast 5th Anniversary: The Genius of Monty Python, Restaurant Storytime 10: Injured Again, 70s Events I Was Alive For, Monopoly(11-5-2025)

 

The genius of Monty Python. Restaurant injury stories. Major events of the 1970s that I was alive for.

Episode 219 marks the birthday week for the podcast and its host! Let's get to celebrating! We have infamous birthday stories, special guests, and more. Hope you brought your own cake.

It kicks off with the legends of comedy, Monty Python. From dead parrots to silly walks, to insane but catchy songs, these British icons have been influencing comedy for over 50 years. We will do an overview of their career with more to come in the future.

We return, for possibly the final time, to Restaurant Storytime. The tenth edition is all about the greatest injuries I suffered during my tenure in the unforgiving kitchen. Knives, cheese graters, cleaning chemicals, and more. It's like a PSA for what not to do.

In honor of birthday week, and to make me feel old, we have a special Top 5. This week we will look at the 1970s events I was alive for. It was barely more than two years but there were a lot of famous and infamous events I was alive for.

There is, of course, a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule looking at the creation of the iconic board game Monopoly.

You can support my work by becoming a member on Patreon. Or you can Buy Me A Coffee!

Helpful Links from this Episode

• Buy My New Book, In Their Footsteps!
• Searching For the Lady of the Dunes True Crime Book
• Hooked By Kiwi - Etsy.com
• DJ Williams Music
• KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• Cape Cod Living - Zazzle Store
• Subscribe on YouTube!
• Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog
• Webcam Weekly Wrapup Podcast
• CJSetterlundPhotos on Etsy

Listen to Episode 218 here