Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #137: The Cabin Prologue

1. For weeks leading up to my departure from Cape Cod to go produce my feature film, The Cabin, everything was smooth. The fundraiser went off without a hitch; I got my hotel, rented a car, and we hired the whole crew. In my mind, this was the next natural progression in my creative journey. The last five years have been one long road of continued growth. It’s funny how, despite all of the things I just mentioned, the old insecurities came creeping up the day before I was to head out. It was like the Imposter Syndrome and the little negative voice in my head decided to make themselves known. When I woke up on Monday, I felt this tension and these nerves that hadn’t been there even the night before. It was as if the reality of the situation finally stepped to the front. The voice was asking me if I knew what I was getting myself into. It asked who I thought I was, trying to do something new and challenging. It tried telling me that I would be found out and this project would fail. I have had to battle these demons of self-worth and self-confidence for way too long, and this is no different. I have been told every step of the way that the script I wrote is good. We have everything set up to make the best film we can. I have the funds, the place to stay, the car, the time, and yet despite all of that, the voice still came calling. I had to take a step back and reassure myself that I deserve this opportunity based on all of the hard work and sacrifices I’ve made throughout the years. It’s almost as if the closer I get to this new, exciting opportunity, the harder those old thoughts push back. Only when I open that door and step through will those voices shut up. They won’t do it on their own. I have to make them by believing in myself.


2. To time things right, I had to put off doing my laundry until the day before I left for Pennsylvania. I wanted to make sure I had all of the clean clothing possible for the movie shoot. No need to stop at some dollar store and buy shirts made of recycled paper. This meant that those extra days without doing laundry saw me wearing clothes I haven’t taken out of the closet in a long time. Thankfully, I do have enough that I didn’t run out. I suppose there are some guys who have enough outfits to last a handful of days, and if anything goes wrong, they’re stuck wearing an old T-shirt they’ve been using as an oil rag for years. The only downside to waiting to do laundry was the sheer size of the load. The laundromat I go to doesn’t have a good spin cycle to rinse the excess water out of the clothing. This means when I take them out of the washer, they weigh a ton, sopping wet. You do get a workout having to carry the basket. In total, to get that load of laundry done and fully dried, it took about 2 ½ hours. Lucky for me, all I had to do on that day was wash clothes and pack. If I had made any plans, they would have needed to be postponed. Telling someone you can’t meet them because you’re doing laundry sounds like a lame excuse because you don’t really want to see them. Next time I do a huge load like that, I’ll have to weigh it to see just how much of a workout I get when carrying it.


3. Once everything was packed and ready for the long drive out to Pennsylvania, the last thing on my list of things to do on Cape Cod was checking for a few things for the trip and the shoot itself. This meant going to Dollar Tree and Ocean State Job Lot. Hey, I’m not looking to gash the movie budget by getting expensive items. Mark, the film director, asked me to look for cheap clothes we could ruin for the film as well as some LED lights for a few scenes. As is typically the case when I go to these stores, I wandered around looking for any deals I didn’t know I needed. I got a cheap T-shirt for shredding but found myself interested in some of the other clothes. I literally just mentioned above that I didn’t want to get such clothing for my regular wardrobe, and yet here I was on the edge. I will say that teenage me would have scoffed at shopping at Job Lot, or as my Nana used to call it, ‘Odd Lot.’ Now, I find the savings more appealing than caring what some rando might think of whatever I get. I got a cool travel bag for toothpaste and things of the like. The piece de résistance, though, was buying unknown-brand energy shots at both Job Lot and Dollar Tree. They would no doubt come in handy on the long drive out. Eventually I had to remind myself that I could always come back again once the movie was done being filmed.


4. The anxiety was in full-court press Tuesday morning as I got ready to leave for Pennsylvania. Despite checking repeatedly, I still believed that I was missing something when packing. I finally had to accept that everything was good and leave. I was a little early when I got to my mom’s. It was there that I was leaving my car for the week. Leaving it at the airport wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, something like $80 for the week, but $0 is way better. It’s a good thing I was early too because it took a few minutes at the airport to figure out where to go to get my rental car. My sister Ashley, who drove me to the airport, had to circle the parking lot a few times while we figured out the protocol. Eventually she parked in front of the main terminal of the Hyannis Airport while I ran in to check. I was renting through Budget but got rerouted to Avis. The terminal was empty, as I guess not too many people are arriving or departing from Cape Cod on a Tuesday morning in September. The actual process of getting the car was easy and took a few minutes. I had wondered how many people went to the airport to rent a car but didn’t come in via plane. Surely I can’t be the only one. Oh well, they didn’t ask any questions, so I wasn’t sharing any info. Shortly after, Ashley was helping me toss my luggage into the backseat of a pretty sweet Honda Accord. Of course, it began to rain once I was ready to drive, but we’ll get to that in a moment. I was very grateful that my sister took time from her day to drop me at the airport. The money I saved alone on parking and an Uber probably covered the gas and tolls on the trips out and back.

This was what it looked like, except mine was gray.

5. Speaking of tolls. Because this was a new adventure, I wanted to try a few new things. I’d never rented a car for a trip, so driving a pretty new one with a touchscreen display was an immediate luxury. I also wanted to try a different navigation app, so I went old school with MapQuest. It all seemed fine at first. You get to pick out an avatar to move across the map while you drive. I picked someone who looked like he was from Lord of the Rings. I just kept calling him Gandalf. It was my choice to keep the toll option turned on while driving. It was already 450 miles, and I figured that was the fastest, so I could spend a little money on tolls to speed things up. What I didn’t expect was MapQuest not only bringing me to the toll road, the Mass Pike, which was expected, but also taking me off and back onto it. It was like they saw the toll option on the app and wanted to see how much they could rack up for me. I yelled that Gandalf was screwing me over, which wouldn’t have made any sense out of context. I had no clue what my toll bill would be. They do everything by license plate now, and you get a bill sent. That leads to another issue you may have guessed. It’s not my car, so it will be the rental company getting the toll bill. I am sure they will just use my card to pay for it, as I would expect. I do wonder if I can get a receipt so I can see just how much I paid. Oh, and I got rid of MapQuest and went to an old reliable in Waze. That whole getting me on and off the Pike twice was weird. I plan on keeping the toll option off for the drive home as well.


6. I have driven in all of the bad weather. Rain, snow, storms, wind, so when the weather report said some rain along my driving route, I was prepared. What I wasn’t prepared for was a near-death experience. For a while, going through Western Massachusetts, the rain was basic showers, nothing to be too concerned about. Then as I crossed into New York, it changed. Showers became sheets of rain. It was like a whiteout to the point where my windshield wipers were almost useless. The final straw for me came when I came up on a ramp after stopping at a rest area. I was merging, but the rain was so dense I could hardly see the semi truck barreling down. I was in the middle and didn’t know whether to slam on the brakes or gun it. I gunned it, and that truck was coming up fast. All I thought was, ‘man I should have gotten the insurance on the rental.’ I was sure the truck was going to knock me into the guardrail. Luckily, I sped up enough, and the truck driver was able to get into the other lane, so a tragedy was averted. That incident convinced me to pull over and wait out the heaviest rain. My thoughts of arriving in Pennsylvania early went out the window. But hey, I arrived alive, which I think is more important than arriving early. The rain ended up staying moderate much of the way, only really stopping when I was within an hour of my destination. Naturally, as soon as I parked at the motel, the first sound I heard when stepping out was a loud boom of thunder.


7. To answer a question I asked after a 450-mile drive in one day, yes, you can get symptoms similar to jet lag when driving. It’s known as travel fatigue, but oh boy did I have a bad case of it upon arriving. Driving that far, stopping only 3 times, and having to white-knuckle miles of road due to serious rain left my brain resembling a fried egg when I got to my motel room. I texted my mom at first so she wouldn’t worry. Then I texted Mark, the director of The Cabin, so he knew I arrived. He wanted to meet up and start going over logistics of the shoot. My brain was trying to escape through my ears by this point, but I mean, I was in PA for the movie, not a vacation. I was hungry and a bit dehydrated, so trying to listen and formulate thoughts was tough, but I did my best. It was mostly catching up, going over the shoot dates, and planning some of the smaller minutiae that might fall through the cracks. Lucky for me, the following day was basically the one ‘vacation’ day I’d have. We didn’t have plans to do anything related to the movie until later in the afternoon. This gave me plenty of time to hydrate and relax. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it was the most I had driven in one day since I drove to Florida in 2005. On that trip, I got into Southern Virginia in one day from Cape Cod, which I think is over 600 miles. I was so hell-bent on beating the time that MapQuest had said for my arrival and was way ahead until the rain hit. Now I am gleefully anticipating the drive back home, part of which will be at night, and I am sure full of jet lag the next day. Oh wait, sorry, travel fatigue.


8. Travel fatigue made the choice of what to do for dinner much harder. My brain didn’t want to form coherent thoughts, so I did a lot of staring at local maps and various restaurant websites. In order to get the blood flowing again, I needed to just get moving. A half-mile away was a Sheetz, which is a convenience store chain in the Northeast. I decided to walk down there, which allowed me a cool view of Lamb’s Creek. There are more than 800 Sheetz locations, but none in New England, so when I am out in their neck of the woods, I stop in. It’s the same thing with Wawa. Not sure why, but visiting stores I can’t regularly see on Cape Cod is thrilling to me. Their claim to fame is having an actual cooking line there to make food. This isn’t like reheating pizza slices or microwaving egg sandwiches. No, this is an actual line with people working. I say all of that and didn’t order anything. I grabbed typical things, drinks and snacks. I did make sure to get enough stuff that they had to give me a plastic bag with their logo. Yes, they had branded merch in the store, but that costs money. It’s far easier to have them give me a bag that I can keep and eventually forget where I got it from. I am sure before I leave, I will be back to Sheetz. I saw a few brands of things I want to try. Yay, visiting a convenience store is exciting to me now. Man, I’m old.

9. My mind was set on having Chinese food the night I arrived in Mansfield. There were two places close by; it was just a matter of deciding which one. Mark made sure to let me know that the one located a block away, Lucky Star, was the better one. By this point it was dark out, but I had only had a protein shake during my 450-mile drive, so I needed to eat before I crashed out. Rather than drive literally 500 feet, I again just walked. No, I didn’t have PTSD from driving in the rain; these places are literally within walking distance. Mansfield is a college town. A very small college town with a population of under 3,000, but it is a college town nonetheless. So it has a walkable Main Street with lots of stores clustered together. When I went down to order my food, the streets had a charm to them. There were string lights on either side, and even though it was now September, there were still families and groups of friends out walking. I felt right at home. Two things about Lucky Star: their food was great, and the price was lower than similar places on Cape Cod. It was a win-win. I got sesame chicken and also a take-out menu as a souvenir. The portion size was also amazing. Lifting the bag was like a mini workout. I will say that the travel fatigue was a killer. I was eating and expecting to immediately feel 100%, but I was just a puddle. I was able to eat and stayed up until maybe 10:30pm, but my body was desperate for sleep. I was so tired that the bed, which was a little too firm for me, didn’t hold me back. I crashed and enjoyed the one day of being able to ‘sleep in.’ The rest of the week would be earlier wake-ups and longer days than a typical workday on Cape Cod.




10. The rain continued into the next morning. In fact, it was more heavy thunderstorms. My plan of walking a nearby bike trail went up in smoke. I used that extra time to go to the closest Walmart and gather supplies for the crew that Mark had laid out. This Walmart was a big one. It was made more impressive by the rolling hills surrounding it. As I walked toward the entrance, a huge bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a crackling roar of thunder. A guy walking out asked loudly, ‘Who angered Zeus?’ That was pretty funny. Inside, it was a typical Walmart, although larger and cleaner than most I’ve seen. The people, though, fit right in with what you think of as Walmart folk. Not all, mind you; most of them were just ordinary people, but you had a good group of stereotypical odd folks wandering the aisles. I think it was the most I’ve ever bought at Walmart with food and drinks for the next shooting day or two. I went to self-checkout because, of course. A woman was working there, or more like watching me check out. I don’t know if she ever even looked at me while I was there. When I rolled the cart away, there wasn’t even a sound. I guess she’d have noticed if I stole anything, so why bother to interact with customers?


11. An interesting, and probably fitting, thing I’ve noticed since I started my journey off Cape Cod. The sights and music remind me of people from my life. It’s like I have been driving through previous chapters of my life as I am on this road to a new chapter. There were tons of moments like that on my drive up to Pennsylvania. Passing places that somehow sparked memories of old friends or family. Sure, I was playing my music on the drive, but it still seemed to capture the right emotions of this journey. It culminated while I was in Walmart. My favorite Grateful Dead song, Eyes of the World, came on. It’s an 18-minute jam, and a fairly odd choice to play at a Walmart. But it reminded me of an old friend, Dan, who I worked with for years cooking. He was a writer, and he pushed me to be a better writer, mostly to stop his trash talk. That never would work. That really put the icing on the cake for the symbolism part of this trip. I am fulfilling a dream, shedding parts of my old self, and also trying not to lose the essence of who I am. It’s having one foot in the future while keeping one eye on the past. I wanted to make sure I noted this phenomenon before I forgot about it in a sea of filming days.




12. As soon as the rain stopped, I was itching to get outside. I went to a nearby ‘bike and hike’ trail. One thing I noticed was how it immediately got insanely humid as soon as it wasn’t raining. It was still cloudy and maybe 75, but I was sweating pretty good after only about fifteen minutes. In total, on the trail, I walked a mile. There were more spiders than people. I did manage to spot a cute brown cat but only got a fleeting glimpse of it. I think it lived in a house right off the trail. The big thing I wanted to explore was an abandoned old bridge that crosses the Tioga River, which the trail runs along. I wasn’t desperate enough to walk the 2.5 miles in each direction, though. Nope, I drove out to where it was to hike down. Seriously, it was in the middle of nowhere. I passed vultures and crows eating a dead deer. There is an overgrown road leading down to the bridge. It’s now referred to as the Graffiti Bridge and has been closed since the mid-1970s. It is obviously covered in graffiti, which is where the name came from. I was hoping to see a live deer along the riverbanks, but sadly only that poor dead one along the road. The walk was totally worth it, and I got tons of photos and videos of it. I briefly thought of not walking onto it but figured if I didn’t I’d regret it the instant I got back to Cape Cod. It was very peaceful and way less creepy than expected based on the photos.




13. We unofficially got down to business around 4pm on Wednesday. Mark came and picked me up from the motel, and we went to his house located in the next town over. The plan was to start formulating a plan for the movie shoot while awaiting the arrival of the rest of the cast. I quickly made friends with Mark’s dog named Django. He was very old and had limited mobility. Mark even said that this past spring his family thought they were going to have to put him down. But he was there, still kicking. For me, filming a movie was all brand new, so I made sure to sit under Mark’s learning tree and ask loads of questions. One thing that hammered home that I wasn’t on Cape Cod anymore was the wildlife. To save money on the budget, we planned on using a beautiful larger shed in Mark’s backyard to stand in for a location in the film. So I am looking out of the back door and thinking about whether deer ever come through the yard. As if he were psychic, Mark mentioned that he gets a lot of deer in the yard. I laughed and then jumped back when I spotted a lone deer walking out from behind that shed. I don’t think the deer is psychic, but stranger things have happened.


14. Dinner was an event. I went with Mark. We picked up his son Anthony, who lives a few minutes away. The plan was to go meet a few others from the cast who had arrived and were staying in another hotel in Wellsboro. As we all got acquainted, or reacquainted, in the parking lot, we decided to go eat at Pizza Hut. It was convenient because it was literally a block away. For a moment, I thought Mark had said ‘Frog Hut,’ which got me intrigued because it was a place that, when looking for food on this trip, looked interesting. It was right across the street from Pizza Hut, so from our table I could see it. I hadn’t eaten at Pizza Hut since I was in high school, so it was very full-circle on this trip. There were six of us at a big table; the rest of the restaurant was empty when we got there around 5pm. The server was really friendly, and we all ordered. Then the positive coincidences continued. Someone ordered a pepperoni pizza. That’s not the coincidence. No, the server came out with a large pepperoni pizza that someone had made by mistake, and she asked if we wanted it for free. Well, you can guess what we said. There we are with all of our meals plus a free large pizza. It ended up becoming part of the food for the film crew the next day. As we laughed and told stories, the server came back and said they had made a mistake with someone’s food. She brought the mistake out, and the person who ordered took it, but then she also said they were remaking it. In the end, we got two free items. It was as if they knew we were making a movie and they wanted a positive write-up in my blog. In reality, it was one cook who made mistakes. He actually came out and apologized. We were all fine with it since it resulted in free food.

The Frog Hut

15. The Cabin wasn’t just the title of the film. It was also the largest shooting location. In order to have the film appear as isolated as it needed to be, Mark found a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I don’t use that phrase lightly. To get to it, we had to drive 25 miles north, near the New York border, to a very small and very rural town called Osceola. When I say ‘rural’ I mean like sparse houses, and of the ones you’d see, half of them looked like the people would shoot you and turn you into a skin suit if you put a toe on their property. It was one-part terrifying and one-part exhilarating. The cabin itself is owned by hunters, and oh boy could you tell. There had to have been more than 20 stuffed deer heads and deer skulls, all over the walls and on various tables. There were also stuffed squirrels, a turkey, a black bear, and probably other animals scattered about. Our job on that first trip out was to clean it enough to make it camera-ready. This meant some sweeping, covering up objects that didn’t fit with the movie’s theme, and blocking areas to fit upcoming scenes. Blocking just means getting the scenery set, like moving a bed back so we could get a clear shot of the bed where the main character in the film is supposed to be sleeping. It probably took us longer to drive out to the cabin than we were there cleaning. It was a mix of rustic, modern, confusing, and horrifying. It would prove to be home for us all for the entirety of two days of the movie shoot.

What the buck is going on?

16. We ended up making that long and lonely drive out to this cabin three times. The first time was the most memorable. It was around 6:30pm as we got deeper into the drive. I kept hoping I’d see a deer, or even a bear. What I got was lightning, and lots of it. When the rain had stopped that morning, the humidity began building. By the time dusk rolled around, it was in the mid-80s. As Mark explained it, heat lightning was a common occurrence in that area due to a similar weather pattern. On the drive out, as the sun sank behind the surrounding hills, I became fascinated with the lightning. I shot video and photos trying to get bolts of lightning. This lightning never let up. It was literally like 15-20 flashes per minute for probably three hours. That is not a stretch. It was amazing. As we got near the end of cleaning the cabin, I again wanted some lightning photos. Behind the cabin is a pathway that leads to a big clearing up a hill. There was a birdhouse on a high pole, and I thought a photo of the lightning behind the birdhouse would be money. None of the photos captured the lightning bolts. It was around this time that all of our phones got the emergency alert: tornado warning. Here we were in the middle of nowhere as it got dark, and now there was the potential for tornadoes. I turned my back to the lightning and shot a video of me explaining what we were doing and the tornado warning. All the while, the pink sky behind me was exploding with lightning flashes. It ended up being one of the best, and most surreal, experiences of my life. Once we had cleaned the cabin to Mark’s satisfaction, it was time to leave. We drove the dirt road out as the lightning made the sky look like a movie special effect. If I didn’t have the videos, I wouldn’t have believed it. There didn’t end up being any tornadoes. We also didn’t see any weird people out there, at least on that first day. The first day of the movie shoot came next, and we all had to make sure to be at Mark’s house by 8:15am. Luckily, the first scenes to be shot were inside his house, so it was shaping up to be a good way to ease us into filming The Cabin.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #100: Back In Time, Fox Sounds, 90s Mindset, etc.

1. I got an important message on Facebook this week. I need to convert my security to two-factor authentication before a certain date. The date? December 31, 1969. So not only do I need to change my security settings on Facebook, but I also need to find Doc Brown and the DeLorean and go back over 50 years to do it. It doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in security settings when they can’t even get the year right. If I have no other choice, I’ll wait until they at least get the date right before I go switching up my security settings.


2. Stand By Me and The Princess Bride were two of the most important films of my childhood in the 1980s. Rob Reiner was one of the most important directors of the last 40 years. Far beyond his work as Mike ‘Meathead’ Stivic on All In the Family, he created some of the most beloved films of my life. Death comes for all of us. It is undefeated. But for someone so beloved in Hollywood to be murdered in his own home in his late 70s, it’s beyond awful. I’m sure more details will be coming out in the weeks to come, but it appears as though it was his own son who did it. Sad, so damn sad. RIP Rob Reiner.


3. I signed up again for Netflix this week. It was mostly due to my FOMO over the final season of Stranger Things. I signed up for the lowest tier, with ads, for $7.99. I was anticipating being overloaded with ads. Thus far I have watched four episodes of Stranger Things Season 4, because I have to catch up, and I have yet to see one single ad. I even had to go check and make sure I didn’t accidentally sign up at a higher tier. You know what that means, right? At some point in the near future, the luck will even out, and I’ll be watching a show that is 75% ads. I have jinxed myself, but it’ll be worth it for Stranger Things, Cobra Kai, and Black Mirror.


4. I absolutely loved IT: Welcome To Derry. The show was loaded with easter eggs for lovers of the IT movies and also expanded the lore of those movies and the book. The plan is for 2 more seasons, each taking place in a different year as Pennywise continues his quest to destroy his enemies, present and future. If you enjoy horror, you’ll love this. It’s shot beautifully and should win an Emmy for cinematography, and other things. The acting is first-class. There are 8 total episodes, and each one feels like a movie in and of itself. I will not spoil anything for those who are watching or are going to watch. All I’ll say is that at the end, you’ll see how the prequel show lines up with the movies. Excellent.

5. In the continuing adventures of training my 12-year-old client comes this gem. We normally throw a 10# medicine ball back and forth for almost our entire 30-minute session. This week, his shoulder was tired, and his legs were tired from snow fun. I found a workaround by having him kick a kid’s rubber ball. His heart rate was still getting up there, and we made a game out of it. Luckily, without any weight to the ball, it could hit anything and not cause damage. Well, almost anything. During our session, the very first kick he did managed to be a line drive to my nuts. I had to not sell the impact, otherwise the whole session would have turned into him trying to nail me in the junk with the ball, or something more dangerous. In all, it was a fun time with 300 calories burned by me.


6. I have vivid dreams quite often. I will wake up multiple times per week, remembering whatever the dream was that I had. Most of the time, they are just random stuff, as most dreams tend to be. This week I had a dream like that, although it did feel like it had more meaning. I was at a school track with my friend Mike, of Monday Runday fame. For the first time ever, we were joined by our other friends Steve and Greg. What made this dream stand out was that our friend Pete showed up. Sadly, he passed away from cancer a little over 3 years ago. In the dream, he was drinking a specific type of water that, in the dream world, we recognized as being one taken off the market because it was proven to cause cancer. He had to have me and Greg scrub down the bleachers with soap and water so he could safely sit on them, as he had a compromised immune system in the dream. I don’t remember much of what we spoke about; it was brief, but I remember the water and us all bringing up how it had been pulled for causing cancer. I wish there were some special message Pete had for me to relay to the others. Maybe there was, but I forgot it. I think the fact that he was there, and I had never dreamed of all of those other friends before, makes this a special dream. Thanks for visiting, Pete.


7. As a big fan of the Back to the Future movies, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of time travel. I can’t build a time machine. I don’t know how to make a flux capacitor. However, little did I know that I didn’t need to build a time machine. I have access to one in the basement in the form of the dryer. I was drying my laundry this week and waiting for the last 3 minutes to tick off on the timer. All of a sudden, boom! It’s back up to 19 minutes! I went 16 minutes into the past just like that. Nothing important happened, like me knowing the Powerball numbers or being able to save someone from an accident. Nope. In fact, it was just the fact that my clothes apparently weren’t dry in the time the dryer said they would be. So, in conclusion, the dryer isn’t a time machine, but it is a liar.


8. A strange occurrence happened one afternoon this week. We had a day of pretty steady rain, but as the sunset drew close, I noticed that there were some breaks in the clouds. I figured it was a perfect excuse to get outside since it was in the 50s in mid-December. I drove to a nearby beach and snapped a few cool photos before heading back to my car to post them on social media. While I was sitting in my car, I heard a strange sound. I thought it was either a kid screaming or an odd dog barking. I looked in my mirrors and saw a fox standing in the parking lot, maybe 20 feet behind my car. I stepped out and began shooting a video. It trotted away, but not before making that same odd barking sound on video. I went back to sitting in my car, but heard the barks a few more times and saw the fox walking through the parking lot toward the beach. Being foolish, I got out and started trying to find it to get more photos or videos. Now I had watched the fox running, and it didn’t look injured, so I felt like I wouldn’t get attacked. It was also dusk, so it was hard to see where it could have been hiding. Eventually, after walking across the entire beach, I heard it barking again. It was sitting up on a hill next to a fence, barking. I didn’t dare get too close, so I didn’t end up getting any more video. A person walking to the beach also heard the fox and thought it might have been calling its mate. I wasn’t going to keep chasing after it, especially since it disappeared under the fence. I did get the video, though.



9. I have been writing for decades. I first wanted to become a writer when I was in 2nd grade. I’ve done poetry, song lyrics, short stories, novels, blogs, and various other types of books. Despite having some experience in writing, I am surprised at how much of a learning curve there is for me when it comes to script writing. As some of you know, I am working on a script for a feature-length film that will be happening in the summer of 2026. It’s based on an old short story of mine, The Cabin, which I wrote in 2009. First off, I have to revise the actual book since my writing has improved in the last 15 years. Then I have to adapt that into a script. Why is it a learning curve? I guess it’s having to include a lot more ancillary details like where the scene is, some of how the camera should shoot, descriptions of actions, and the like. Think of it as having to describe everything that’s happening in as much detail as possible. Luckily, I have some time to get the first draft of the script done. After that, the director of the film, who has loads of experience, can help guide me to the finish line.


10. It was three long weeks that I wasn’t able to go for any outdoor walks. The weather was the main culprit. The only thing better than the 45-degree and sunny day was digging deep into my past with 90s Pop Radio on Pandora. Oh, but not just '90s Pop, but the ‘Discovery’ setting, deep cuts, man. After about 3 miles of my 5.5-mile walk, I was full-on back in the 90s, and it was bliss. I want to find a way to make 2026 more like the 1990s because the 2020s have been the worst decade of my life. Not sure what I can do to make that happen. Music, yes, a lot of the same friends, yes. Unfortunately, I am on the downside to 50, no matter how much I listen to Nirvana and wear flannel, that won't change. Maybe it’s a mindset. In the 90s, my whole life was an open road, and seemingly anything was possible. Now in the 2020s, it’s like I’m on a pothole-filled dirt road running through a wide-open desert with no side streets and no scenic overlooks. Maybe that’s the goal for 2026, to bring back the wonder I had for life in the 1990s. I’ll get to work on that.

This is how the 2020s have felt in my life.

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 #2: Life Chapters, Snowbows, Being A Morning Person, etc

#2 - Life Chapters

1. When you stop and really think, it’s amazing just how many chapters your life has. They’re based around certain people, relationships, places, and jobs. In the end, all of them end up shaping you into who you were, are, and will be. You never know when an old chapter will end, or when a new one will begin.

2. The internet went out at work and everything came to a stand-still. I find it funny that I grew up in the 80s and I had no internet access until I turned 18, but even I have no idea what to do with myself if it goes down. I’m not saying I want to go back to only a few channels on TV and the Dewey Decimal System for research though.

3. I was going to check on a person doing some treadmill work and was distracted by the amazing sunset outside. Suddenly I couldn’t care less about the person on the treadmill, they could have gone flying off of it. I needed to grab my phone and get a photo through the trees. Priorities.

The sunset photo in question.

4. I am a morning person, but not an early morning person. There is a huge difference between waking up between 7-7:30am slowly and gently and waking up at 5am hoping that any caffeine kicks in ASAP.

5. I hate when I’m wearing long sleeves and I roll up the sleeves to wash my hands and the sleeves slide back down and get soaked under the water. First World Problems.

6. The other day it was snowing while the sun was out. I was hoping to see a "snowbow." I was laughed at by people at work who thought I was making it up. You know, there are other ‘bows’ besides a rainbow. Snowbow. Fogbow. They thought I was talking about new Pokemon unless those aren’t ‘in’ anymore, then I mean that thought I was talking about (insert popular reference here).

7. One of my bucket list photos I want to take is one of deer on the beach at sunrise. On Cape Cod, this is actually a real possibility. I got so close this week as 4 deer were walking down the road toward the beach I was going to for sunrise. Then they decided to go off toward the woods, sabotaging my great moment. I felt like running after them and trying to chase them to the beach. Or at least buying a few stuffed animal deer and faking the photo.

I want a photo like this, just real and not AI.

8. From the ‘I Was Born Blond’ department. Where I live the washing machine is connected by a switch that you flip up or down to open the hose to let water in to wash the clothes. It is usually in the ‘off’ position. So I went to do laundry and flipped it to what I assumed was ‘on.’ Only when I went back down an hour later to put my clothes in the dryer and heard the washer beeping did I realize I had flipped the switch ‘off’ and the washer had basically been yelling at me to turn the water on but I hadn’t heard.

9. I watched the 1964 driver’s ed short film, Red Asphalt, to review for an upcoming podcast episode. It was definitely a bloody and at times gory scare film. However, I think the horror films I watched growing up conditioned me to not be easily startled so I only had a few moments of being caught off guard, but for kids of the 60s I could easily see this being a shocker.

Viewer Discretion Is Advised

10. It still amazes me after so many years of going to the gym how hard it is for some people to simply clean a machine they use. It amazes me more how angry they get when you ask them if they’re going to wipe their nasty sweat off a machine. I shudder to think about these people’s hygiene in other areas of their lives.

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