1. It’s the time of year when people start pulling their boats out of the water. This
past week one guy was pulling his 30-foot boat out at a ramp at
a local beach. It was a weird dichotomy as it was definitely a cool
boat, but he decided to blast Ice Ice Baby while hooking it up. I think within a few months of that song coming out in August
1990 I was embarrassed to play it and I was 13. Granted I didn’t
see the guy super up close so maybe he was Vanilla Ice. That would be
the only person on Earth I could see proudly blasting that song in
2024.
2. This week marked 15 years
since my infamous Caught In A Rising Tide video. It was one of my
first YouTube videos and was a funny experience of me walking out to
Wing Island in Brewster to get some photos only to return an hour
later with the tide coming in. I ended up walking through nearly 2’
of water, soaking my shoes and pants. People asked why I didn’t
take my shoes/socks off and I figured I’d end up with splinters
from the boards I was walking on which would lead to infections and
then maybe losing a foot. Soaked shoes made more sense. I went back
to Wing Island and shot a sequel video. No, I wasn’t stuck in a
rising tide but it was a fun and fitting follow-up video.
3. I decided to treat myself
to a pizza from Domino’s. Now I know that some people don’t like
Domino’s but they do have over 20,000 locations worldwide so
they’re doing something right. Anyway, I ordered a 3 topping medium
pizza from them and went to pick it up. They were super busy inside
so what happened next was understandable. They handed me my pizza and
I immediately noticed it was a large. I checked the receipt and it
said medium so I got an upgrade for free. It wasn’t all sunshine
and rainbows though. In addition to the pizza being a large, it had
additional toppings including mushrooms which I am not a fan of. I
will say that picking mushrooms off a pizza was a fair trade for
getting a free upgrade to a large.
4. I am approaching 47 years
old and yet every year I am still amazed at how quickly the sunset
times roll back in the fall. It’s like one minute you blink and the
sunset is 8pm and then you blink again and you’re walking out of
work at 6pm at dusk with an owl in the trees near you scaring all of
the little creatures below. The way I found out it was an owl was not
that I saw it, I didn’t stick around. No, my co-worker saw it do
some swooping over the parking lot in search of dinner.
5. I was pretty zoned out at
work trying to get caught up on some paperwork. I was so focused on
my computer screen that I didn’t notice the encroaching intruder. A
small spider was slowly descending from the ceiling on its web. I was
so into my work that I didn’t see it until it was quite literally
an inch from my face right between my eyes. Only then did I let out a
yell in surprise. Don’t worry though the spider was not smashed. I
grabbed its web up above and coasted it to the floor behind my desk.
6. In other insect news we
have had a stowaway cricket inside my work for weeks. Sometimes it’s
quiet, other times it chirps so loudly that it seems to echo off of
the walls. Today its chirping was loud enough that I actually tracked
it down. I grabbed a paper cup and a tissue and went to work trying
to coax it into the cup. To my surprise, after I asked it nicely to
get in, and promised I wasn’t going to just crush it, the cricket
crawled into the cup. Then he got smashed. Just kidding, I brought it
outside and let it go in the grass.
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| Am I the cricket whisperer? |
7. There are 2 days each week
when I have to be at work early, typically around 6:40am. My body is
now used to waking up around 4:45am. However, getting to bed the night
before is still a harrowing task. The routine I have now that is
working relatively well consists of popping 2 melatonin at 7:30pm
followed by a 3rd
at 8:30. This usually results in me being knocked out by 9pm. It was
easier in the summer to wake up so early. Now with sunrise being
close to 7am when my eyes open at 4:45, it’s easy for my brain to
try to trick me into thinking it can’t be time to wake up yet. Each
time I get up on time is still a minor miracle.
8. Nothing better than being
awakened from a deep sleep at 3:30am by thunder so loud that I could
feel it shaking the house. I spent a half hour trying to go back to
sleep for a little longer but the thunder and lightning were so
severe I just gave up and got out of bed at 4:30. Despite being tired
I would much rather deal with a few severe thunderstorms than the
once a century Hurricane Milton that is wrecking Central Florida.
9. A fun memory that popped up
on Facebook this week dates back to 2016. My sister Ashley and I were
at Longnook Beach in Truro, MA which is very remote with little to no
cell service. We spotted a middle-aged man with a bicycle walking up
the 50-60’ sand pathway to the parking lot. Out of nowhere one of
his bike tires popped. The weather was a bit misty and feeling bad we
offered to pack him and the bike in my car and drive him home.
Luckily he wasn’t far but it was another remote section of little
Truro. Then things got weirder. We helped him get his bike inside his
house and he offered us tea. We politely declined as it was a little
odd. He was insistent on giving us something as a thank you. This
ended up being in the form of a random CD. It looked like a mix of
tracks by some unknown artist. Maybe it was him, but who knows since
once we got back in the car I was already looking for a trash can to
throw it in.
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| Longnook Beach in Truro, MA |
10. A first for me happened
this week as I got to see and photograph the Aurora Borealis, aka the
Northern Lights. They are rarely visible this far south, typically
being seen in Canada or maybe at best Northern New England. I took
the long way home from my mother’s house and stopped at Gray’s
Beach, aka Bass Hole, in Yarmouth Port. It was not even 7:30pm and I
could see the pinks and greens in the sky. It was beyond words. I was
mad that I didn’t have my regular camera, or my tripod for my
phone, but still what I got ended up being some of my best photos
ever. The atmosphere was like a rock concert. A chilly Thursday night
at the beach on Cape Cod and there must have been 200 people there.
The parking lot was overflowing. It was an experience I won’t soon
forget.
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| Aurora Borealis at Bass Hole in Yarmouth Port, MA |
