Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #81: Squirrel Thief, Current Slang, 5-Second Rule, etc.

1. On Sundays, I like to go out, if the weather is good, and listen to a favorite podcast. I have a few spots I tend to visit that are quieter, shady, and relaxing. The podcast I listen to is usually about 2 hours. Keep that in mind. I went to a recreation area and parked in a nice shady spot and had my windows down. It was perfect weather. The local bike trail goes through this recreation area, so there was a string of riders and runners going by. Also, there was this one guy. When I first got there, he was standing by the bathrooms. He had a backpack and a sweatshirt on and looked a bit scrubby. Within minutes of my parking, he walked over and sat at a picnic table right in my line of sight. He was eating chips and just staring mostly at people going by, but also down at the ground. I’d say within an hour of me sitting there, he had put his head down on the table and seemed to have fallen asleep. How do I know he was asleep? Well, because he left his bag of chips on the ground, and a hungry squirrel was able to come right up to him and start ransacking the bag. Sure, if the guy moved the squirrel would scamper off, but it would inevitably come back and go for the chips. I honestly thought it was going to try to get into the guy’s backpack, or bite his ankle, which would have been even funnier. In all I stayed in that parking lot for over an hour and a half, and when I left that guy was still face down on the picnic table. Even starting my car didn’t wake him.


2. Monday Runday is a fun tradition. I meet my friend Mike, and typically his wife and kids, at a local track. We run, we walk, we chat, it’s always a good time. Sometimes we’ll see other people walking their dogs, or playing baseball on one of the fields. This week we had a first. From out of the woods, well the woods that divide the track from the pickleball courts, came a group of men. There were probably 6 of them, all over 60, and all at least 50-75 pounds overweight. Were they there to walk the track? No. They stood around a plastic merry-go-round for probably 20 minutes and then retreated back into the woods. I mean, come on. At least ride the merry-go-round if you’re going to hang out on a playground.


3. I am now at the age where I have to go on the internet to find out what certain slang terms mean. I’m from Gen-X, so we have our own slang that I’m sure my parents didn’t understand, but to me, that all seems normal. The term I had to look up was ‘rizz.’ What the hell does that mean? Well, apparently it’s the middle of the word charisma. Okay, that makes sense. I’m trying hard not to say how dumb that is. Much like in sports, they now say ‘chip’ for championship. Shouldn’t it be ‘ship?’ Oh well, I’ll keep saying wicked, awesome, chill, and whatever. You young folks can have your rizz, chip, cap, and sus. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going outside to yell at clouds.

Me in the not-too-distant future.

4. When you have friends who want to see your mom when they are on Cape Cod, it just goes to show that you have a good mother and good friends. In the last few weeks, I’ve had 2 people ask to see my mom, 1 of whom I wasn’t even there for. I know for a fact that a handful of other friends would visit my mom if they lived closer. It’s the same for me. I can name off a bunch of friends whose mothers were positive presences in my life as a kid up to now. It’s a good feeling all around.


5. Hanging on a branch pretty much above the mailbox at work is a giant hornet’s nest. It is pretty intimidating to stand under it to take a photo since you can see all of the hornets on it and flying around it. Luckily, it’s just high enough up that the insects don’t seem to care about people below. I will be honest, though; my first thought was to throw rocks at it and then jump in my car and drive off. If I were 14, I would have but growing older made me think of the consequences. I didn’t want someone walking by having a nice afternoon when they suddenly get ambushed by hundreds of angry hornets. Plus I guess these particular hornets are pollinators and eat other insects so we’ll keep them around. Of course, now that I say that the damn nest will fall into my car when I drive under it with my roof open.

Yeah that looks safe

6. Some days are better than others. And then some days are all-timers. It’s not every day that I get to spend time with one of my oldest and dearest friends. Hasan and I go back 35 years and my life is immeasurably better for having grown up with him. Now, as guys in our late 40s, it is so much fun to reminisce about those days. It’s even better to tell stories of growing up to his 9-year-old son. We played mini golf and went for ice cream. It was a perfect summer afternoon with perfect weather. I wish we lived closer so that these times would happen more often, but I cherish them when they do.


7. Speaking of the mini-golf game. I hadn’t played in many years so it was fun to get to do it. Luckily, Hasan had 3 free game passes, we literally scored a free game. I arrived at the place first and was getting out of my car. I took my keys and went to go put them in my back pocket. It was then that I felt something. I thought the pocket was inside-out. Nope, I had done laundry that morning and a sock was stuck to the Velcro of the pocket. I was so glad that there was nobody around to see me with a sock stuck to my shorts. I quickly threw it back into my car and laughed because it just fits with my life, and obviously made for a good blog post.


8. The mini-golf game itself was a blast. I grabbed a scorecard and a pencil, but never used it. Once I realized that I wasn’t going to set the course on fire with my play, I switched it up. To seem like his dad’s fun friend, I started hitting the ball like Happy Gilmore to make Hasan’s son laugh. The funny thing was I actually played better like that. If you don’t know the Happy Gilmore putting form just Google it. The majority of the game was spent reminiscing about the old days as we took 5-6 strokes for most of the holes. To be fair, Hasan’s son did make several great shots. This included a no-look putt, which once he made it became his go-to for all of his shots.

My putting form

9. You forget just how crazy summer traffic on Cape Cod can be until you drive Route 28 (the main road) for more than a few hundred feet. Going from mini-golf to ice cream was less than 3 miles and typically would take 7-8 minutes but it took at least 15. It was worth it since I haven’t gone out for ice cream in a long time as well. The highlight of this part of the day was teaching Hasan’s son about the ‘5 Second Rule.’ He spilled a cup of M&M’s at the table and I grabbed a few off the seat and ate them. He was laughing, and I said to Hasan that I would forever be known as the guy who ate M&M’s off of the ground. It was that and trying to toss M&M’s into a practice hole for mini-golf. Fun all around.


10. All it took for me to be over summer on Cape Cod was driving on Route 28 in Hyannis one day, and driving on Route 28 in Harwich the next day. The number of bad drivers and brainless pedestrians was staggering. Stop signs mean ‘stop’, not roll through, or stop with half of your vehicle in the intersection. Also, crossing the street is fine, but there are reasons why crosswalks exist. When a bunch of beach ‘bros’ just decide to cross wherever they feel without looking, they deserve to become a hood ornament. Oh, and to prove I wasn’t a hypocrite, I did use a crosswalk when I stopped to go into a store. But yeah, Labor Day can’t come soon enough.


11. The most notable example of bad drivers was when I was on a relatively clear back road. Up ahead, I see a car literally stop in the middle of the road and begin to perform a terrible three-point turn. This was as vehicles were approaching. I mean, seriously? You are that stupid and selfish that rather than finding a road to turn down to do a turn around you put others at risk to feed your sense of entitlement? Then the idiot waved to us like he appreciated us ‘allowing’ him to be a total sack of garbage. Like I said, Labor Day can’t come soon enough.

The countdown is on.

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

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

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

My last visit to Quiznos in Orange, CT in 2019

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

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

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

Bald-Faced Hornet on my car

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

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

Not the way to awaken from a dream.

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

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

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