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Showing posts with label dollar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dollar. Show all posts

Monday, May 6, 2024

Initial Impressions 2.0 #15: No Trespassing, Dogs v. Texting, Google Car Is a Rolls-Royce?, etc(5-6-2024)




1. Have you ever noticed that it is typically the houses that look abandoned, have unkempt yards, no grass, and rusted-out cars littering the property, these are the houses that have ‘No Trespassing’ signs. It’s like don’t worry I don’t want to get any diseases by stepping foot on your garbage property. How about taking the money you wasted on several No Trespassing signs and using that for grass seed, or a bucket of house paint?





2. I don’t understand how someone can work for a supermarket chain and hate all of their bosses so much that they constantly transfer to other stores in that chain. I also don’t understand how if they hate management at all of these stores why they don’t go work for another chain altogether, or get into a different industry. Unless you signed a contract with your job you are not forced to work there. It’s almost like they’d rather just be angry and spiteful because it’s easier than looking for a new job.


3. I grabbed a few energy drinks at a local dollar store because they were crazy cheap. I didn’t get a bag so I walked out and back to my car holding a few cans. On my way, an old man, likely mid-70s, joked that I couldn’t drive home if I was drinking those. I laughed and thought about offering one to him but could already hear the ambulance sirens in my mind if the man drank something like that.


4. It would have been my Nana's 100th birthday this week. She has been gone for nearly 15 years but it only took me a few minutes to come up with a dozen things that I immediately associate with her. It shows her importance in my life even as our times together fade further into memories. I do things like this because I want her memory to remain alive and as long as I live all of my grandparents will live on.





5. I was paying for groceries at self-checkout with cash. I had some extra change in the center console of my car so this was an easy way to get rid of it. In the end, I owed 1 more cent. I actually looked around the area for a random penny on the floor, but no luck. I grabbed out a dollar and wouldn’t you know it the dang machine eats it. It was a 10-minute ordeal of finding someone to open the machine to get the dollar out. The person who helped actually put a penny in so I wouldn’t have to try the dollar again. To top it off the lady overseeing the self-checkout area then decided to give me a lecture about how to properly insert money into the machines. I said as nicely as I could that I knew how to pay at self-checkout seeing as how I have done it literally hundreds of times. As I walked out I said to myself ‘this is going in the blog,’ and here it is.


6. I actually saw a cat wandering around in a neighborhood. There was nothing odd about the cat, but I feel like over the past several years, especially on Cape Cod, outdoor cats have become increasingly rare. We have a coyote problem down here. Not sure if outdoor cats are still common in other places. Or maybe they still are everywhere and I just don’t notice them.


7. So in all honestly what is more dangerous? Texting while driving? Or having a dog in your lap? They both seem equally irresponsible yet only one can get you a ticket as far as I know. Are there laws against dogs being in a driver’s lap? You wouldn’t have a child roaming around while you drive, so why let a fidgety dog jump all around you while you’re behind the wheel of a 2,000-pound weapon on wheels?


Cute but dangerous



8. While out driving I saw this beautiful Rolls-Royce. It was slowing down to turn onto the road I was on. I was momentarily shocked and confused as I saw nobody driving it. Then as it turned it all made sense, it was a European model of the vehicle so the driver’s side was opposite to here in the U.S. For a brief moment, I wondered if the Google Maps vehicle was on Cape Cod, and also a Rolls-Royce for some reason.


The next Google Maps car?



9. Every now and then I see people driving in a parking lot and using their turn signals when going up and down rows of vehicles. I think I see this about as much as I see people using their turn signals for actual turning on the road. Maybe not that much but it does seem odd to use blinkers inside a parking lot. I have seen way more examples of people not using their blinkers on the road though but I think that’s more common everywhere these days.


10. I was thrilled when I stepped on a set of bilateral scales at work and the numbers were exactly the same on each. When I first got to my current job 3 years ago I had a misaligned hip that caused the end at the time of my competitive running. I was 15 lbs heavier on my left than my right when I first used the bilateral scales. The work I’ve done to fix my hips has paid off which makes me very happy. However, I was hit with a cold slap of reality when I added the 2 scales up and it was more than I had ever weighed in my life. So yay my hips are good again, and boo it’s diet time. 


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Sunday, March 10, 2024

Initial Impressions 2.0 #6: Old Houses, Phantom Whistling, Dollar Store Love, etc.

#6: Old Houses



1. I live not far from where my Nina and Grampa lived for 20 years when I was growing up. I occasionally make the street part of my running route so I can see the house's exterior to bring back fond memories. This week I saw that it is in the process of being sold. It is far too expensive for me to do anything (as all houses on Cape Cod are), but I took solace in the fact that I could go onto Zillow.com and look at dozens of photos inside the house. It looked different than when I last stepped inside in 1993 but still familiar. The current owners did right by Nina and Grampa.


2. Despite living by the ocean pretty much all of my life, and despite having taken hundreds of sunset photos along the waterline at the beach, I somehow still can misjudge how far I am from the water when taking the photos. I went to take a photo of an amazing sunset this week at a beach in Harwich and to my dismay I was too close to the water and I ended up with water above my ankles and soaked shoes. Great photo though.


The water soaking my shoes as I got the photo.



3. I fell down a rabbit hole of looking at old covers of the ‘classic’ Weekly World News faux newspaper. If you don’t remember it from the 1980s and 1990s it featured things like Elvis and JFK being alive, interviews with aliens, bigfoot encounters, and of course the legendary Bat Boy. If you need laughs just Google it and thank me later.


4. It’s amazing how certain places remind you of certain people. Good memories are powerful. Thus I enjoy visiting such places, especially one specific beach that was the backdrop of several wonderful moments with a person that redefined my life. I might never get the chance to tell her that, but I know how important she was and that might have to be good enough.


Good memories aplenty here, always.



5. In Stop & Shop a pair of 20-something guys not so secretly asked some heavy guy in his 50s if he had any Adderall to sell them. Obviously loud enough that I could hear it walking by. Seriously, parents and kids shopping around them, they don’t care, they need their drugs. Three absolute losers, I could only shake my head.


6. I pulled up to a bank to use the ATM, a few seconds after a man in a truck pulled up closer to the bank and got the door before me. He was nice and offered to let me go ahead. I had several transactions to make and could have been a jerk and let him wait several minutes but I let him go ahead. It was a good week so I didn’t want to risk any bad karma.


7. Walking around the frozen section of the grocery store there was a funky song playing. I could hear someone in the next aisle whistling loudly to it. When I got over there I still heard the whistling but couldn’t tell who it was coming from. A guy working there seemed to be the source but his mouth wasn’t moving or looking like he was whistling. So of course I had to get right up next to him to find out because I guess it was that important. Yes, it was him and he smiled and nodded. Finally, I could go about my day with this important question answered.


8. I think I have crossed over into one of those people who love dollar stores. I went into a local Dollar Tree looking for one thing for a costume party I was going to. I found that quick but then spent 10 minutes wandering the aisles and leaving with an armload of things and only spending $10.


I might be this person now.



9. Can we just get rid of Daylight Savings Time already? Losing an hour of sleep in a snap is not something I enjoy especially when sleep is one of my favorite things. Maybe if we do Work Savings Time where we lose an hour of work? While still getting paid for that hour of course.


10. Sure anybody can decorate their house/yard for Halloween or Christmas, but I have to tip my hat to those who go all out for other holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. That’s true dedication to celebration.

Dedication to celebration(AI Image)



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