Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #59: No Shocks, Old Lady Gangs, Dreams of Comedians, etc.

1. New this week. From the person who brought you vacuuming without the hose attached comes another foolish adventure. This time I had someone lying on our PEMF (Pulsed Electromagnetic Field) mat. It has many benefits including reducing pain, accelerating healing, and much more. Anyway, I was turning it on and the person mentioned it didn’t feel too intense. So I turned it up and turned it up again. Well, it turned out that the wires connecting the mat to the power source were not attached. Instead, I had another device hooked in. So yeah I had them lying on the mat while another piece of equipment was getting the current. It only took me a few minutes to figure it out.

2. I am in the *long* process of creating a website for my podcast. One of the arduous tasks in crafting it is making a comprehensive list of all of the links I’ve shared on all 185 (so far) episodes. What’s crazy is how many of these links I’ve shared, some in only the last 2 years, have been closed down. I mean it makes it a lot faster to create the link page, but wow the turnover is really fast on the internet.

Coming soon...

3. I walked into the gym one afternoon this week. It was quieter than usual which was great. It allowed me to more easily scan the crew that was there. My brain must not have been working well. I looked at an older lady riding an upright bike. From a distance, it looked like she had a tattoo on her forehead. My first thought was ‘why did this old lady get a forehead tattoo?’ It was only after seeing another older lady with the same mark that it dawned on me that it was Ash Wednesday. No there is no gang of old ladies with face tattoos.

4. To me if you wear a mask indoors that is your choice. If it makes you feel safe, or if you have a compromised immune system you should do it. I’d never give a cross look to someone wearing a mask, especially after what we dealt with in the pandemic. That being said, if you are inside and wearing a mask under your chin, the chin diaper look, you are a complete moron. Also, if you repeatedly move the mask from over your nose and mouth to under your chin you’re a double-dip moron. Are you immunocompromised or not? If you are then putting your mask under your chin has exposed you to all sorts of germs. If not then why are you wearing a mask? A fashion statement? Man, just dumb.

5. I have a skill I guess for being able to have and remember vivid dreams. I’ve written several short stories based on dreams I’ve had. This week was not a story type dream, but it was memorable. I dreamed I was walking around a mall in California. I was fascinated by the food court, more specifically a Cape Cod themed burger place. While I stood outside of this restaurant I heard a voice say my name. It was famed comedian Norm MacDonald, one of my favorites who sadly passed in 2021. He said ‘Hey I like that restaurant too.’ Then he gave me a classic Norm one-liner. He said ‘you know what the best part about it is? You can actually go inside.’ Meaning that he was making fun of me standing and staring longingly at this restaurant from the outside when I could actually go in and eat. It was pretty funny.

6. Few things in life make me as happy as I am when I get to spend time with my youngest niece. Her 6^th birthday was this week. I loved getting to go over after work and have dinner and celebrate on her actual birth date. My mother makes the joke that my little niece basically owns me. She can get me to do whatever she wants. That was on full display when she proceeded to dress me in pink leg warmers, wristbands, and a headband like I was in a 1980s Jazzercise class. I don’t regret a moment of it though.

7. It took me a few years but I finally got to watch Coming 2 America. The original is one of my favorite movies ever. I can pretty much recite it word for word. I know the reviews of the sequel were middling but to me the movie was perfect. It had so many callbacks to the original. It had everyone they could get from the original. It was a bit sad to see 4 people in the film that have since died. James Earl Jones, Louie Anderson, John Amos, and Dikembe Mutombo. I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the original.

8. A first for me happened this week. I was headed for the self-checkout lines at the supermarket. There I saw 2 women with 1 full shopping cart. They were dividing up the groceries and using 2 registers to check the stuff out. All the while there was a line of us waiting while these Karens hogged 2 machines. It took all of my dwindling restraint not to say something. The older I get the less I care about what I say and to whom. Just a pair of selfish suck bags.

9. I have found a perfect way to have an energy drink I enjoy and save a lot of money in the process. I have liked the Celsius drinks since they debuted in 2005. Part of that is because they were first sold in a small store near where I lived in Delray Beach, Florida at the time. I feel like I was in on the ground floor with them. Anyway, at Shaw’s they now have packets of Celsius in powder form. You typically get 14 packets for $11.99. Quick math, a can of Celsius sells usually for between $2-2.50. If we go low that means 14 cans is $28. So even on the low end I save about $16. On the high end it’s $35 and I save about $23. I love Celsius even more now.

10. With my Etsy photography shop back in business for the first time since 2017 I have decided to really make a go of it trying to sell some prints. This means trying to craft a good, and affordable, ad on Google. It does take a few minutes to get it right, but I’m hopeful it will be a good risk-reward trade. The funny thing to me is that I have done Google Ads before. In fact all of my campaigns I created are still listed. They’re inactive but listed. When did I last create a Google Ad? 2009. Yes, several years before I had my first book deal I was making ads. For what? Promoting my ebooks and my new website. That’s all well and good but it also means I haven’t done a single Google Ad for any of my 9 books, or my podcast, or my YouTube channel, or my website (at least not since 2009). So we’ll see. Maybe I get a few sales and keep the ads going. Maybe I don’t. At least my budget is very low. Hey, I have to be smart. Just because spending $100 a week is ‘recommended’ doesn’t mean it’s smart.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #56: Secret Lives, Exploding Oatmeal, Ruined Coats, etc.

1. You never really know who a person is behind closed doors. You might have met someone a few times. A friend of a friend who had a beautiful wife and daughter and you think to yourself ‘he’s a lucky guy.’ On the surface, he seems cool, fun, and to put it bluntly, normal. Then over time, he ends up being a cheater, so not cool. Last but probably not least so far he ends up being arrested for child pornography. So not normal. This is a real guy I had met on a few occasions and thought seemed like a decent guy. It turns out some are just better at hiding the disgusting truth of who they are. Now he has no wife, no mistress, and no freedom as he’ll be spending probably many years in jail for what he was arrested for. Good, serves you right scumbag.

2. I decided to open up an Etsy shop to sell some of my better New England photography. I have been asked numerous times about selling my photos but it always becomes too time-consuming. This probably will too but if it’s a chance to make a little extra money why not try, right? Time is a flat circle though. I went to Etsy to start crafting my shop. Google wanted to automatically sign me in which was fine. Then the craziness happened. It turns out I already created an Etsy shop for my photography in 2017. I just forgot about it. So now I am just cleaning that up and should be ready to sell photos before this blog goes live.

My Etsy shop logo

3. I’ve seen some stupid drivers but I saw one that is right up there with the worst ever. I mean I can deal with idiots that don’t stop at stop signs. You know the ones who just roll slowly instead of stopping? But this particular idiot then outdid themselves. They either missed their turn, or they were just a complete ass clown. Instead of maybe turning around in a driveway, or at a road, this jerk did a U-turn onto the sidewalk and drove the sidewalk a good hundred feet back to the intersection. Disgraceful and dangerous. Oh and before you go thinking it was some young kid it was a middle-aged mother in a soccer mom van complete with a bumper sticker touting their kid being on the honor roll. Definite Karen.

4. I was sad when I noticed a giant tear in the back of my heavy winter jacket when I hung it up at work. I think I caught it on a door handle that pulled and tore it open. I will end up getting a new one soon since winter is not over. The funny part comes from when I mentioned it to my family this week. My sister said she had noticed the ripped jacket last week but assumed I knew. That means I was going all over the place for days with a shredded jacket that probably made people think I had stolen it out of a dumpster or something. Nice.

5. After updating my iPhone I was surprised by a new app. Image Playground allows you to craft AI images from descriptions, or even better from your own photos. It is for iPhone models 15 & up. I have spent way more time choosing random photos to see how AI sees them. It is so much mindless fun. That is until AI decides that your photo from when you were 3 years old has you looking like a little girl with pigtails. Yay, sorry for my Dutch Boy hairdo, it was the early 1980s after all.

Thanks Image Playground

6. I went for a walk along the beach to get some nice sunset photos and videos. There was a house next to the beach parking lot that was being worked on. As I walked down the beach I repeatedly heard the sound of one of the guys working on the house just yelling and screaming. I kept looking back but there didn’t seem to be a commotion. Plus during my time there no ambulance came for the guy. I’m figuring he should find a different job if doing house repairs causes him to yell out repeatedly. It was made funny since he didn’t seem to be actually hurt.

7. A weird phenomenon that seems to happen to me a lot lately is the following. I spend several hours working on content at my desk. When it comes time for a break, like to go take a drive or something, I immediately get tired and start yawning uncontrollably. I notice it a lot when driving that suddenly I am yawning on repeat. Why is that? I feel like maybe my brain is so focused on work that as soon as I take my foot off the gas my brain is like ‘cool, time to crash.’

8. My goal for almost my entire adult life has been to make my living solely in some sort of creative field. Writing books or travel writing, podcasts, videos, etc. Having been on this path for so many years I feel like I put a lot of pressure on every piece of content I do. At times I believe it’s like a lottery ticket I’ve created. With every piece of content I release it’s like maybe this is the thing that gets the right set of eyes on it to make my goal of being a self-employed content creator a reality. Sure it keeps me motivated to keep going as the next one could be the big winner. It also casts a shadow of disappointment over everything I do when it inevitably doesn’t become my breakout creation.

9. It’s a strange thing. I make the same amount of oatmeal. In the same container. Same microwave. Same amount of water. Same time. Yet despite this every now and then the oatmeal decides to overflow the container. I can never predict it but it seems like it happens right when I let my guard down. Wham! Oats all over the microwave. Yay, good morning.

10. I created a video based on my most embarrassing race ever. It’s up on YouTube now. To sum it up, dehydration and beer combined do not make for a pleasant mix. Anyway, working on that video got me thinking about running and wouldn’t you know it I ended up signing up for a 5K race in May. My body is nowhere near where it needs to be to run but I do have about 10 weeks. You get 15 minutes after you sign up that you can cancel your order and I will admit I was watching the timer tick down debating it. In the end, I’ll end up doing it and just lowering, I mean really lowering my expectations. At least I know I won’t be drunk and crying after this race like I was after the race in the video I made.

My most embarrassing race, but a funny story now.