Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #120: Scam Alert, Too Many Bays, Chinless Fool, etc.

1. Sometimes my brain doesn’t get the message fast enough. I was responding to a local library about doing a speaking event later this summer. I then got a new email from another local museum. My first thought was that it was for another speaking event, which would be awesome. I opened it, and it had a link to an ecard. Thinking it was maybe an invite to some event at the museum, I clicked on it. As soon as it was done downloading, it asked to upload the software. I knew then it was a scam. I deleted the ecard and quickly changed my Google password and turned up my security in my banking app. I got so caught up in the potential of making money selling books that I didn’t spot an obvious scam until it was almost too late. I read that this is something new, where hackers send this type of invite from an email in your contacts, so it doesn’t look suspicious. Just beware.


2. They came late this year, but the allergies have arrived. I had a young client this week who was dragging when he came in. I asked him how he felt, and he said he had a slight sore throat and a stuffy head. I was naturally worried, but he said he thought it was allergies. I told his mother to keep us posted as to how he felt the next morning. She called and had to cancel his appointment because he didn’t feel well. I felt lethargic and a bit foggy the next day. Worried that it might be sickness and not allergies, I went online and checked the pollen reports for New England. Luckily, or not so for me, the pollen count is extremely high this week. I was never so happy to have a couple of clients cancel. It gave me time to stay glued to my chair. Hopefully, the rain coming later this week will knock down the pollen. 


3. Sometimes I don’t understand the way things are labeled on Google Maps. I was looking up a place in Plymouth, MA. When starting to zoom in, I noticed a little section of water in Plymouth Harbor was labeled as Cape Cod Bay. What? Then, further out to see the same water was labeled as Plymouth Bay. Ok? Oh, and in the same vicinity, there were also Kingston Bay and Duxbury Bay. Like, wait a minute, does every town there have a bay? Why isn’t all of it Plymouth Bay? How did Cape Cod Bay slip a little extra chunk of water in there? What is this foolishness? Maybe it’s because it was late and I was getting tired that this bothered me so much. I got a screen grab, so you all can feel the same chaos and panic as I did when I saw this.

Too many bays

4. I have had a pretty good-sized white goatee on and off for a few years. I tend to get rid of it in the summer, but the rest of the year, it looks like a bag of alfalfa sprouts on my chin. That came back to bite me this week. I was the guinea pig for a posture screen app for a new employee. You know, being a good coworker and helping out. She had to take 4 photos of my posture: front, back, and both sides. We did this in our gym. The walls of the gym are white. I didn’t think it would matter. When taking the photos, the AI automatically removes the background so that you can focus on the person. What happened was that in one of the side-facing photos, the AI mistook my white beard for the wall and proceeded to remove it. The end result was me looking like I had no chin. It literally went from mouth to neck. I couldn’t stop laughing. I joked I’d make it my social media profile pic. Or even better, use it on a dating site. Don’t worry, I got a photo of it so you can see this abomination.




5. Word travels fast. I had a really fun author event at the West Dennis Library last week. It was for my latest book, which is all about Cape Cod history. It was a rousing success. The event has paid even more dividends as people who were there have spread the word. In just a week or so since that event, I have added 3 more events to my calendar this upcoming summer. It is exciting because I love doing those events. Being involved in some sort of creative field has been the goal for decades. I try everything: podcasts, books, blogs, social media videos, filmmaking. Getting to do some sort of work in those fields makes me feel alive and fulfilled. I have also learned that when it comes to these events, I need to just say yes and figure things out later. I never want to give an establishment a reason to rescind their offer. Luckily, I have a day job that allows me to be very flexible with my schedule. It really is the best of both worlds. Who knows, these upcoming events may not be the only ones to come from that one at West Dennis Library. Also, the new ones I’ve scheduled could lead to many more. I want it to get to the point that I am so busy that I start needing to cut time from my day job.


6. I mention a lot that I am working hard, trying to pursue a career in something creative. Whether writing, podcasting, or film, anything that allows me to use my creative mind to make a living sets my soul alight. That being said, I also make sure to routinely take a step back and appreciate where I am in life. I am very fortunate to be where I am at this point in my life. I have easy access to many close family members. I still have several close friends nearby. I am, for all intents and purposes, in good health as I sadly hurdle toward 50. This allows me the ability to go out and take a long walk on a sunny spring morning on a beautifully scenic route right from my front door. As much as I am working hard and fighting for my future, I am also very appreciative of the life I have now. Things can and do change, so I have to stop and be present as much as possible while I can.



7. Where were you during the great Instagram bot purge of 2026? This week, millions of bot accounts were deleted from the platform. It sent shockwaves through the social media community. Some big celebrities and influencers lost millions of fake followers. Me? I lost around 50. No, I’m not a big celebrity, but I was at least glad that the vast majority of my followers are real people. Now, granted, some of them might be inactive accounts that haven’t been used in a decade. I have no way to know. Honestly, the other major social media apps should follow suit and clear out the bots. I guarantee it would make the whole experience better without fake accounts that are only created to cause chaos and spread misinformation. I might never have deleted my Twitter (never calling it stupid X) account if it wasn’t overrun with bots, oh, and jackasses.


8. For 2026, I have come up with a couple of fun series of articles to write. One is looking back at 1996, the year in general. This is because it’s 30 years ago, and the year I graduated from high school. I look at music, friendships, relationships, and more. The other one branches off from the first. I call it ‘alternate life timelines.’ What does it mean? Basically, I look at seminal moments from my life where a change to what happened would have caused major ripples in my life. I explain reality and also try to guess where I would be in an alternate world. The first article in that series has to do with my choice to not go away to college right after high school. It ended up being a very deep topic that took 2,700 words to finish. I am excited about this series in particular. It’s sort of like getting to live out a fantasy life without leaving my desk. In reality, I believe that I am where I am in life for a reason. Although I might take a brief pit stop in the land of regret, I can’t stay there. A wise man (Kurt Cobain) once said: “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”

Coming soon...

9. Because I never feel like I have enough on my plate, I decided to start noodling with a pair of new ideas. One book, one television show. The book would be a children’s book about characters that are half animal and half food. They would get fused together with the food they are eating due to a freak lightning strike. Hey, it’s a children’s book; it doesn’t have to be based in reality. The idea came from my niece Sylvie, who said she found a frog and named it Pickles because its back looked like a pickle, green and bumpy. From there, my wacky imagination took over. The other idea is a comedy show based on my experiences in restaurants. I’d base it in the 1990s and use a lot of scenarios that really happened. I could always embellish some and naturally change names, but I think that would be funny. If I had more free time I’d really push these two ideas but for now I’ve got outlines and some sketches. Which would you want to see first?


10. Happy Mother’s Day this week to my mom, Laurie. She has always been my biggest fan, biggest supporter. I admit that a big part of my drive to succeed in creative fields is so that I can validate all of the support and sacrifice that she made for my siblings and me. She went to school full-time while working full-time, while also being the mother of five kids. I have always tried to show my appreciation for that. I believe that I didn’t as much as a kid, but now, as I get into my late 40s, I realize just what my mom did. Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, and thank you. To my sisters, aunts, cousins, and friends who are mothers, I hope the day was as good as it could be for you.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #106: Neverending Winter, Going Viral, Being Stubborn, etc.

1. What a whopper of a snowstorm. On Cape Cod, we got around a foot of heavy wet snow, with nearly double that in some places off-Cape. With the way the roads were, I ended up with a day off from work on Monday. Rather than drive the slushy roads to the gym, I used shoveling the snow as a workout. I only had to do half of the driveway, and I ended up burning over 800 calories in more than an hour of shoveling. It was hard work but a lot of fun as I wore my headphones and played music while some flurries fell. Sadly, the weather shows that we won’t be getting much in the way of melting. It’s supposed to be around or below freezing for the next several weeks. Early in the week, it looked like we might be in line for yet another storm. Luckily, it was a bust, and we only got flurries.


2. After the snow ended, it was relatively warm, so I ventured out before dark. I figured run to the store and get home before it was dark and the really cold air returned. While I was driving, I had to avoid a couple of sidewalk snow plows that were taking wide turns into the street. That was fine. On my way home, I started getting a little comfortable. I thought the roads were nice and safe. Then I saw a plow stopped in the middle of the road ahead of me. It turned out that an SUV had rear-ended it. I don’t think it was a case of bad roads. I mean, they were free of any snow, so the plow wasn’t, you know, plowing. I am assuming that the SUV driver was going too fast, rounded a corner, and slammed into the plow, which was going slower. Seeing that immediately made me slow down and just concentrate on getting home in one piece.


3. I swear that if the people who own the building where I work could, they would not do any sort of upkeep during the winter. We have had the plow people ‘not show’ after one storm. Now, this week, it looks like they hired someone who had never driven a plow to push piles of snow all over the employee parking lot. It wasn’t cleared; the snow was just moved to other areas still in the way. Also, their idea of ‘clearing the walkway’ was literally clearing one shovel’s width of snow. I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean, it took them two years to fix our mini split in the gym so we could have consistent heat. At this rate, we’re going to have to park at the beach and get taken via shuttle bus to work. What a joke.


4. Dedication to the Craft. I was asked by a big Boston Instagram account to get a video of the slush waves for a collaboration. They have close to 350K followers, so I thought it was a nice chance to get some exposure. I went in the morning before work. The snow was packed, but as I trudged through it, I started sinking up to my knees. I pressed on and walked until I reached what I thought was about the edge of the water. I started shooting and started feeling my feet getting freezing cold. It turns out I wasn’t at the edge of the water; I was standing ankle deep in slush water. Still, I couldn’t stop until I got an adequate amount of video. After 30 seconds, I was done. My feet were soaked and frozen. My toes were numb for an hour. I got to work and immediately took off my shoes and socks to thaw my feet out. Nothing like walking around barefoot at your job. I legit had to microwave my socks; that was a fun experience. That being said, my Instagram video, I got for the collaboration, as of this writing, has more than 50,000 likes and over 1 MILLION views. It actually went viral, so I’d say it was a fair trade. Here is that video.



5. Finding out I have a bad case of Golfer’s Elbow (Medial Epicondylitis) is good in one sense because I can get some exercises and a brace and hopefully be good as new in a few weeks. It’s bad in another sense because I do not, and have never, played golf. I found out that my case of it is from doing what I’m doing now, writing at my laptop. A funny side note is that on the day I got my official diagnosis from my boss, my 13-year-old client came in to train. He showed me no mercy like he was a sensei at Cobra Kai. He wanted me to throw a 10-pound slam ball as hard as I could at him. I did my best, but he continued to call my attempts weak. I might be almost 50, but being called out still can work. So my elbow was sore after work, but I’ll never let him know.


6. This week I finished binging Cobra Kai on Netflix. For those who don’t know, it is a series based on the Karate Kid original trilogy. It literally has everyone who was in those movies as part of the 6 seasons and 65 episodes. As a fan of the movies, I absolutely loved the series. It’s the perfect mix of action, drama, humor, and heart. I was every bit as invested in this series as I was in Stranger Things. I won’t spoil much, but having finished the main character has to be Johnny Lawrence and his story arc, despite Daniel Larusso being a big part of the series. It has tons of amazing 80s music, which always gets an A in my book. On top of that, there are so many great characters. There are the kids being trained in karate. There are the characters you remember from the movies. There are tons of Easter eggs from the original movies that fans will love picking up on. What I really loved was that, despite there being good and bad people in reality, everybody was a shade of gray. Even the worst villains had things that made you feel for them or even root for them. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a show to get into.

7. I was chatting with one of my clients this week about how it’s been the snowiest winter in years, and I can’t wait for spring. She is heading to Florida for a vacation. I said it was good for her, but that we still had about 7 weeks of winter left. She said, ‘Oh no, actually it’s only 4.’ What? Spring starts on March 20th. According to her logic, it would begin about February 26th. Maybe she doesn’t know the actual first day of spring? She is in her 80s, so maybe she’s just making up her own calendar now? I just smiled and nodded and said goodbye. In my mind, I’m guessing that in those extra 3 weeks she’s lost, we’re going to end up getting at least one major snowstorm because she jinxed it.


8. I was born blond, so sometimes my brain doesn’t work at full power. I had plans one day this week to get done at work and go to the gym to use the treadmill for an hour. On this day, the temperature was in the low 20s, so my motivation to drive 20 minutes and then work out was low. Then it dawned on me. I work in a gym. We were closed, and I had the entire place to myself. I realized I could *gasp* work out there! I simply punched out, changed into my workout gear, and got onto the treadmill. In the time it would have taken me to drive to the gym, I already had put in more than a mile on the treadmill. All jokes aside, I think I choose to go to the gym so that I’m not just hanging around my job after hours. Like when I was a cook, I didn’t want to then change and go sit out front and have dinner. I just wanted to get the F out of there.


9. Over the last few years, I have felt less guilt about not reaching out to people I don’t hear from because communication works both ways. If I’m not reaching out, it also means they’re not. Still, there is an old friend I haven’t spoken to in over 5 years now that has been on my mind a lot recently. We were very similar personality-wise. This could be the best or worst thing. I tended to see a lot of myself in her, and some of her quirks were like holding a mirror up to myself. That can be hard to deal with. One similarity we have is extreme stubbornness. This comes back to the ‘not reaching out’ thing. We had a bit of a falling out. It mostly came down to my alcohol problems. I was not ready to accept my issues and instead cut her off. By the time I got sober, she was ready to move several hundred miles away. We never did reconnect. She also isn’t on any social media. However, I do still have her in my phone. Remember the stubbornness? I just can’t bring myself to text her. I don’t know if she’ll be happy to hear from me, or if she’s held onto the anger at our falling out. Knowing that we are similar, I think of what I would do. I honestly don’t know if I’d be happy or if I’d immediately go back into the last argument we had. So for now, I’ll share a few cryptic posts, hoping that another friend of hers will see and mention it to her. I thought I had left that stuff back in 2013.


10. When slush waves arrive in winter, it can’t be long until the icebergs return as well. It has been well below average temperature-wise on Cape Cod in the last month. We routinely have highs stuck in the low 20s or worse. On a day this week with highs in the mid-teens and a wind chill hovering around zero, I took a ride. I stopped at a popular photography spot, Bass Hole. It is on Cape Cod Bay, and sure enough, it was totally iced over. It looked, and felt, like I was standing on Antarctica. I lasted 5 minutes in the cold before tapping out. As much as I can’t wait until spring arrives, in 7 weeks, remember, I am glad I got these photos. You can actually feel the cold through them. Side note, it took close to 10 minutes for the tips of my fingers to get their feeling back.

11. The frozen over Cape Cod Bay has been a goldmine as far as photos and videos go. The last trip out this week was to Rock Harbor, which is a part of both Orleans and Eastham. I knew it would be a vast sea of icebergs. The issues had to do with the deep snow and ice. I wore sneakers, which work well on stable ground, ice not so much. The snow was playing jokes. I was walking on it, and it held just long enough for me to think it was solid, only to sink in up to my knees. It made it hard to walk out and back from my car. I also had a few fun times on the ice. I went down a couple of times, including a nice bruise on my right shin. My hands were pretty frozen as well. Despite it sounding like I hated my time out there, I loved every second of it, especially when I looked over the photos. Still can’t wait for spring though.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #99: Speed Changes, Bad Parents, Cheap Store, etc.

1. Maybe this only happens to me, but I feel like I am driving slower on a road if there is a car in front of me. What I mean is that if I am going 40 and there’s a car in front of me, I feel as though I am actually going slower. If I am going 40 with an open road ahead of me, it feels faster. Am I the only one who gets that feeling? Maybe with an open road, I know I could go faster if I wanted to? There has to be some reason for it. Just like how if you drive the same route repeatedly, you can basically black out and still get to where you’re going. It’s like muscle memory.


2. In 2025, when I played Spotify, I typically stuck to one of two playlists. I played my Chill Mix, which consists of a lot of downtempo music, at home. At work, I played a Best of the 1980s playlist since much of my clientele is 50+. It should have come as no surprise to me that when I got my Best of 2025 playlist made by Spotify that it was basically both of those playlists crammed into one. I scrolled through it once and decided that since I heard those songs so much as it is why would I bother playing it? I guess I should try to play more of a variety of music in 2026 just so my best of playlist will be exciting next year.


3. There are tons and tons of great parents out there...and then there are these next people. So I was at the supermarket when I spotted a boy who must have been 4 carrying some food item that he kept dropping, intentional or not, on the floor. The parents kept telling him to stop, but didn’t take the thing he was dropping away. Cut to 5 minutes later, and they come rolling in after me at the little self-checkout section. The mother and daughter, who was probably 10, started checking out and immediately getting mad at the self-checkout register. Behind me, the boy is still dropping that item he had, which I saw was a bag of chips. Then he stepped on it until it popped. Again, the parents tell him to stop but don’t take it away. Oh wait but the best is yet to come. I check out and am leaving. It’s probably 40 feet from the self-checkout to the automatic front doors. Who do I see standing there, not letting the doors close? The 4-year-old boy. No parents around. They had no clue where he was. And it was nearly 8pm. Lucky for them there were no kidnappers around. I can’t be too shocked, though, since the parents looked like if you added them together they’d have the same IQ as a piece of chewed bubblegum.


4. An interesting phenomenon occurs around this time each year. Once the weather starts to get consistently cold, I remember that there is a small hole in the ceiling right above my desk at work. It happened this week. I was sitting doing paperwork and noticed that I had an urge to put my coat on. Out in our lobby, it is consistently 70 degrees, but in our therapy room, where my desk is the temperature slowly drops as you walk across the room. That’s because the warm air is being destroyed by a funnel of ice-cold air above my desk. It comes from the warehouse. In the past, I have taken to shoving a shirt up in the hole, but the air still makes it through. I feel like I’m going to end up with a storm forming in front of my desk where the cold air and warm air meet. I can add it to the list of things we need to have the new owners of the building fix. Sealing the wall in the gym that abuts the warehouse so our heat doesn’t fly right out. Fixing our mini split so we can have quiet heat in the gym, not a 1960s-looking jet engine heater. Putting some adequate lighting in the shady back parking lot. Getting some lines painted in the customer front parking lot. Paving and putting lines in the employee's back parking lot. Any one of those would be great.


5. It’s an interesting window into my life as a child when I look at a piece of pottery I made in school when I was probably in 5th grade. My mom has kept it and now has it as a part of a really cool display with photos and candles, and such. I believe that I have a great imagination and a pretty good creative gene. I mean I do create books, podcasts, YouTube videos, this blog, etc. That being said, pottery was not going to be my chosen path. I made a sort of goblet, and besides the fact that I was 10 or 11, I believe that it shows a bit of possible ADHD. A bunch of different colors, lines, and holes, it’s so busy that it has to be ADHD at least a little. You be the judge.

6. In one of the most shocking stories in sports this year, the Indianapolis Colts have signed 44-year-old quarterback Philip Rivers to play on their team this year. 44 isn’t old in real life, but in sports it is. It’s doubly old when you have been retired for 5 years and are a legit grandfather. It’s kind of a no-win situation for the NFL. Either Rivers plays and does well, and it makes the current players in the league look bad. Or he comes back, and plays badly or worse, gets hurt, and it gets people asking why the NFL allowed it to happen. It’ll definitely be an interesting weekend of football. I must say, though, that the images floating around the internet of the Philip Rivers render for Madden ‘26 are pretty funny if they’re legit. He looks like some dude cosplaying as a football player. Here’s the image if you want a laugh.

7. My friend Mike and I spend our Monday afternoons in the warmer months doing Monday Runday at a local track. We have a running (no pun intended) joke about a store located across the street in a little strip plaza. It is called the ‘cheap store.’ Mike made it up, and I always figure it’s because it’s a low-end convenience store. I also believe it gets this name because of the stream of weirdos that frequent it. I stopped in to grab a few giant 5-Hour Energy drinks. They are the only place I know locally that has them. I was in there a total of 3 minutes, and in that time, I saw 5 people who could have been posts in the blog on their own. If I had to whittle it down to one, I’d go with the guy in the fur coat wearing shorts (on a 35-degree day) with sandals and socks. He was very interested in all of the specific nips that were behind the register. I got out of there as fast as I could to avoid any unseen shankings from the cheap store crew.

Greetings from the 'cheap store.'

8. The irony of old people going on social media to complain about younger people using social media isn’t lost on me. I see more people in general doing it, and I have to laugh. It’s like if you want to prove a point about social media, how about deleting your accounts and living your life? Or better yet, get a pencil and paper and write a letter to the opinion column of your local newspaper, like you would have done in the 1980s? It’s the need to feel important. I put this thought into practice this week. I realized that I got 5-10x more engagement on my photos on Threads rather than on Instagram with half of the followers. I had crafted a story post on IG announcing that I was going to be posting photos mainly on Threads from now on. Then I realized nobody would care about my announcement. So you know what I did? I just stopped sharing photos on IG without having to make a big production out of it.


9. This week, we finally got the classic unpredictable weather New England is known for. We were expected to get some sort of snow, but it kept going back and forth as far as how much. In the days leading up to the storm, it went from an inch to as much as 6 inches. Having lived in New England basically my entire life, I was hedging my bets about as far as how much snow we’d get. Instead of bringing the snow brush inside and lifting my windshield wipers up the night before, I left everything as it was. Naturally, we ended up on the heavier end of the snow totals. It was a snow shoveling afternoon but some good calorie burn according to my Fitbit. It could be a sign of a snowy winter, or, knowing New England, it’ll be 55 degrees on Christmas Day. We’ll see.


10. It’s amazing how time can go so slowly and quickly at the same time. 8 years ago this week, one of my oldest and very first friends of my life died suddenly. He had a wife and a young daughter and hadn’t even reached his 40th birthday. His name was Matt, and we shaped each other's formative years by being there for each other. We played, we rode bikes, we had adventures, we slept and ate at each other's houses, and we fought like brothers. Later in high school and into adulthood we lost touch; life just happens that way. In our late 30s, we reconnected in real life. We would seemingly always bump into each other at the grocery store. That became our adult hangout where we’d share stories of how life was going. One night in December 2017, I was beat up and tired from work. I just wanted to grab a few things in the store and go home. I spotted Matt, but he didn’t see me. I knew there would be another time to chat so I watched him push his cart around the corner at the end of an aisle and quickly got my shopping done. I can still see him rounding that corner forever in my mind. A few days later, I was getting a text from my sister Kate asking ‘what happened to Matt?’ It was a gut punch that in many ways I’ve never come back from. I had experienced death before but we knew it was coming. My Nana, my Aunt Christine, there was a long road to their final sunset. Not with Matt. I saw him one day and a few days later he was gone. Just remember that you don’t always have the time you think you do. Rest in peace, Matt. Until we meet again. For those interested, here is the podcast that I recorded in his memory.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #75: Hand Sandwich, Sleeping Bees, Ruined Trampoline, etc.

1. My sprained ankle happened 3 weeks ago and is getting closer to being healed. Of course, that meant it was time for me to inflict another injury on myself. This time I decided to create a hand sandwich and use the steel of the reverse hyper machine at work as the bread. In trying to adjust the flat pad for a future client, I mistook where my hand was. Instead of having it braced with my left hand, I had nothing. When the arm let go it pancaked my right hand between two steel bars. I had a client on the treadmill and was doing this while she walked to save time. I gasped but didn’t scream. My boss walked in a minute later, and I was basically hyperventilating. I was sure my hand was broken. Luckily, there was a less than one-inch gap between the steel bars so my hand wasn’t completely crushed, just mostly. There was lots of ice, lots of ibuprofen, and lots of bruising and swelling. Oh, and also it was a Monday, and I had a super busy day training clients, so it was a bundle of laughs.

Right after the damage was done, it got a lot worse.

2. Cape Cod and much of the country got its first major heat wave this week. We had several days of weather in the high 80s and low 90s. I finally broke down and put in my A/C. This was also the day of my hand injury so trying to put in the A/C was a battle as I tried to gently put it in the window sill while making sure my injured hand didn’t give way. Then the A/C would have fallen onto the cars in the driveway. It would have been like a sitcom with way less laughing from me. Not to worry though the A/C went in and is working fine, just in time for temperatures to drop at the end of the week, making the A/C not necessary, thanks.


3. In continuing with the healing of my right hand I put some pain-relieving gel on it one afternoon. The stuff works well. After work I went out for a short walk with a little running on one of the hottest days in a few years on Cape Cod. It was only when I got back to my car that I noticed my right hand was on fire. Not literally but the combination of the gel, my profuse sweating, and the heat of the day made the perfect mix. My hand was burning until I could get home and take a shower. I still recommend the pain-relieving gel though.


4. One more thing about that hot afternoon of walking and running. First, when I parked at a small lot along the bike trail, I spotted several crows in a tree. They all had their head back and their mouths wide open. It was so odd and creepy but I later found out that they do this on hot days to keep cool since they cannot sweat. Second, while walking the trail, I had 2 different chipmunks I passed that didn’t run away. These chipmunks were sitting beside the trail in the grass too hot to run or care that I was there. I literally could have reached down and picked one up. When the ‘real feel’ is 105 at 6pm, I guess I can’t blame them.


5. When leaving the house one *much* cooler afternoon this week, I spotted a bumblebee sprawled out on top of some blue hydrangea flowers. It was just lying there so I got out my phone and grabbed an up-close video and photo. It wiggled its antennae a bit and when I blew on it to see if it was ok it did move its legs a little. I read that bees sometimes sleep on or in flowers. I also read that they do something similar when they are near the end of their life. When I got home later the bee was gone, so I don’t know if it flew away or if it was picked off as an easy meal.

Was it just sleeping?

6. One thing I am trying to figure out. Is it common for people who own Jeeps to line their dash with rubber toys and other assorted toys? Is this something new? I have seen way more such Jeeps over the last few months than I’d expect. Maybe I am seeing the same few Jeeps repeatedly, but I don’t think so. These Jeeps tend to have a handful to more than a dozen toys on their dash. It’s interesting. I’m curious, but not curious enough to take time out to Google it.


7. I saw on Instagram last week a story featuring a handful of girls running to and jumping on a trampoline located in the dunes of a beach somewhere on Cape Cod. I thought it would be a fun adventure to find and get some photos and videos of to share on social media. Of course, because we’re not allowed to have nice things as soon as I started researching it I found that it had already been ruined. I went out to where it was located and sure enough, some piece of garbage had sliced the trampoline open, making it useless for anyone who might want to go have a little summer fun. Can you imagine being that much of a sad loser that you see something that you know makes others happy and you feel you have to destroy it? Absolute scum. The rumor is it might get replaced with a new one so I have made it a point not to share where it is just in case.

People suck

8. For those who don’t know this summer marks the returns of the cicadas for their visit that occurs once every 17 years. On Cape Cod it has been interesting. We have them but they have not ventured all the way down Cape. Where I live we don’t have any cicadas. I want to try to get a few photos of them since if I don’t I’ll have to wait until 2042. I had to drive about 20-25 minutes west to get to where they have been routinely spotted. I stopped at a marina and could hear their hum so I knew I was in the right area. The problem was that I didn’t know where to stop to try to look for them. Plus it was a gray and drizzly afternoon. I ended up not getting any photos. The best I got was seeing a few in the road but I wasn’t going to stop my car and get out to take photos of a cicada. Oh well there still is plenty of time left in the summer.


9. It is still weird for me to be back in the routine of getting regular haircuts. I had been shaving my head pretty routinely for about 14 years. Long story short I have not been a fan of my hair as it doesn’t grow straight or curly. It grows somewhere in between. I started growing it out in November as a sort of birthday gift to my mother, who has hated my shaved head intensely. With the return of hair meant the return of haircuts. I now keep the top longer and the sides and back short and faded. It doesn’t look bad, and I’m actually enjoying it. This week it was time for a haircut. I have been going to the same barber shop for over 25 years, when I have hair to cut that is. The barber who cut my hair I had never been to. I gave him my haircut instructions and let him have at it. All in all it looks great but I did have a mini heart attack when he wet my hair to trim the top. When he was done he showed me how it looked and he had parted my hair much in the same way it used to be parted when I was like 10 years old. Once I messed it back up it was good, but I worried I was going to be stuck looking like the kid in my old school picture there.

For a moment this guy came back, though much older

10. Even though summer is only a little over a week old it’s time for me to start planning my annual end of the summer vacation. I take my week’s paid vacation the week before Labor Day. It ends up being somewhere around 11 straight days off from work which is always good. Last year I took a 3 day road trip to northern New England, specifically northern New Hampshire into Vermont and then back home through the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. I am thinking this year should be another 3 day road trip but concentrated in Maine. I haven’t been to Maine since 2019 so it’ll all be fresh again. Time to get to planning.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #57: Bloody Good, Diet Woes, Don't Call Me Sir, etc.

1. At my work we have something called compression therapy. You get wrapped up in these pads that squeeze your body stimulating the lymphatic system to get moving. It is great for your overall health. When you do this therapy it is 30 minutes you relax and then when the session is done someone comes in and unwraps you. If somebody has done the compression therapy enough they might feel comfortable enough to start unwrapping themselves to help. A person was doing that before I got in the room to assist them. It all seemed fine until I went back in to clean off the pads. It was then that I noticed the splatters of blood on different parts of the various pads. It looked like a crime scene. The worst part was there was another person set to use the compression therapy and as I wrapped them in the pads I kept noticing other drops of blood I had missed. I had no poker face and was horrified.

2. The only thing that could possibly rival the bloody good story above at work this week was the following. My boss got a great deal on a used mannequin. He intends to use it to display clothing featuring the business logo on it. Makes sense. The funny part was how it arrived. It was in pieces. So bringing in the top half and the arms was fine. However, nothing could prepare me for the sight of my boss walking in with this naked ass mannequin bottom up near his face. I couldn’t have written it any better. We ended up stashing it for a while in the compression therapy room but kept the door closed since it looked like we had killed and dismembered someone in there.

3. Only I could vacuum a room for several minutes not realizing the hose wasn’t attached. Granted I wondered why the vacuum had such terrible suction but it wasn’t until I turned around and saw the disconnected hose on the floor that it all made sense. I have said it a million times, I was born blond so don’t be shocked at stories like these.

4. I spent an evening tearing up an old carpet and then slicing it into strips with a box cutter. I was so focused on getting it done right after work that I didn’t bother to put any sort of mask on to protect me from dust. Eventually, I brought several contractor bags of rolled-up carpet slices outside. My body was exhausted from the workout. Then later on while relaxing not wearing a mask came back to haunt me as I got a major bloody nose from inhaling all of that dust and whatever else was underneath the carpet. Oh well, at least it got done.

Yeah, it was a little like this.

5. In the coming weeks I am shooting the scenes for my first acting gig. It’s funny because I made tons of skits as a kid with my camcorder and craft scripts for my podcast weekly yet trying to get lines I didn’t write memorized is really tough. I printed out all of my scenes and have had trouble getting the lines down. One solution I had was to print them out again, only in a much bigger font. It’s like speaking to a dog, and then saying the words again slower like that will suddenly make the dog understand you.

6. I could be on the strictest of diets but will never not be a sucker for a new flavor of Doritos. I have loved them since I was a kid and any time they release a new flavor I will try it. The latest proof of that is the Late Night Sizzlin’ Cheeseburger flavor. I definitely enjoy them. Every now and then some Doritos are okay, but when I see there are more flavors in this Late Night series that’s when the ominous music starts to play and I feel my pants begin to get tighter. Oh well, six-pack abs are overrated anyway, right?

Dangerously good.

7. Did my first real interior paint job this week. A subtle gray paint on half of my apartment. Luckily I wore clothes I was cool with throwing out because to no one’s surprise, I got paint all over me. Also, put in new flooring in the form of carpeted tiles. That was fun as well but hell on the knees. The room does look a lot better but my body needed a day to recover for sure.

8. I was under the impression on Instagram that once things you post on your story are gone (after 24 hours) nobody can see them except you in your own archives. This week I had some random person like a story of mine from 5 ½ years ago. Not sure how they got to see it. It was very creepy and suspicious that I immediately blocked them just to stop any weirdness before it really gets going. I mean you need to be a special kind of weirdo to deep dive someone’s IG story back more than 5 years.

9. This winter has been one long hibernation. It’s like I’ve done a lot of work, content-wise, but I feel like I’ve been holed up. I don’t know if it’s the cold. I don’t know if it’s being busy with work. I don’t know if I need a change physically to gain energy. Maybe it’s my diet being bad and my body doesn’t produce the energy from bad foods. One or all of these things need to change soon. This blah chapter feels like it’s run its course.

10. Being called ‘sir’ by someone much younger is still a very weird thing. I don’t feel that old (most days) so I definitely don’t feel like being called ‘sir’ is warranted. But I’m also not going to be some mid-life crisis guy who corrects someone young who calls me sir. It actually shows respect for your *ugh* elders. I mean I call people much older than me sir. Wait, so I guess I’m much older than these people? Man, it’s time for a nap followed by dinner at 4pm.

I'm not this guy...yet.

Without A Map #14 - In My Footsteps Podcast